AlZilla

I still think you had something on your hands. You were eating chips, applying ointment or something. It's inside the panel but outside the carving. No way a random drip/spill/smear was that precise on both sides. Or, maybe something on the tool you backgrounded with.

The so-called splotchiness actually looks purposeful. Inside the panel, outside the carving itself. I wonder if you had some contaminant on your hand while you were carving. I'm not a fan of perfect anyway. Vinyl is perfect. Leather lived a life and working hands don't replicate the exact same motion meticulously, exactly the same, every time for 10,000 times.

Welcome to the rabbit hole. The problem is that whatever machine you look at, the next one up is a "just" few hundred dollars more. But then at some point the machine becomes too big to conveniently do smaller items like wallets, bags, etc. Keep us posted about your progress.

Yeah, that looks good. Don Gonzales has a video where he demonstrates a quilted technique. He laid the diamond pattern out, swivel knifed it, beveled with a shader and used ... I think it's called a Beader ... in the center of each tuft. It looks similar to what you have. Nice work.

Tough call at this point. I think I'd sooner leave it blank, if it doesn't somehow tie into the other 2. Mirrored bass left and right with the initials in the center would have been interesting. Some kind of 2 or 3 part diptych, rather than 3 unrelated panels. I'll be interested to see where you land with it

Put something in the bottom left corner to balance the panel out. A ripple of the water out of which he's leaping, maybe.

I don't know, looks like a seasoned pro to me. Clean, precise, tight. It's going to be great.

I think the challenge in front of you is going to be matching the existing thread if you want an invisible repair.

Well, not a best kept secret any more. That Bruce guy went and blabbed ... Never heard of it before now.

Wow. I didn't know such a thing existed. Definitely one of the best kept secrets in leatherworking. Thank you!

Very nice work. Lucky guy that you get to make it.

I struggled early on. Then I found that wetting the leather like when I'm stamping ended all my problems. Also, an advocate for dip dyeing, but not the 3 to 5 minutes recommended above. Just long enough to get the desired color. I did some larger pieces today and couldn't dip them. A wool dauber and applying the fiebings dye full strength worked fine. Wetted the leather first, of course. I applied the dye at a rate sort of like I was painting a wall - loaded the dauber and worked a section at a time. "Dipping" doesn't mean you need 5 gallons of dye, by the way. A large shallow pan will do or a smaller container that you work the piece through work fine for me. Then return the dye to a container.

I've only been at this leather thing a couple of years now. When I first started learning about leather types, one of the 1st things I read was that "genuine leather" and "real leather" are the lowest form of leather you can find. As above, they can be ground up leather formed into a sheet. That said, I just bought about 20 belts from Walmart on clearance for 2 bucks each because they had nice buckles. I'll incorporate the belts into some low wear/stress function. Maybe.

Good luck with it. The pricing is such that I could see it working for someone who wanted to spend their time tooling and finishing, especially with the free shipping over $50. I'm in the middle of punching 5 or 600 silly little holes on a project so the value of pre-punched is not lost on me...

The knob on the right, as mentioned, is a little pretension (which I suspected but kept quiet until it was confirmed). The bottom is to set your take up spring. That part I know because it looks a lot like a Singer 111 type of tension unit. The biggest difference I see is that pre-tension gizmo on the right - the Singer (and others) unit has a little flag with 3 holes to accomplish the same task. That take-up spring can cause you trouble if it's not just right, too. On any sewing machine. It's worth double checking. Have you tried it out on thicker leather? I thought Cobra had a pretty good reputation for sending their machines ready to sew.

Is Mom's pen and ink? Maybe on canvas? You should frame the 2 and hang them side by side. A hundred years from now the family might get a kick out of talking about great, great Uncle Stewart and great great Grandma's artwork.

Definitely like the dragonfly / lily pad one.

Post those pics here and the hive mind will tell you, and the rest of the world, exactly what you have. Right down to it's DNA sequence and a weather report for the day it was made.

I wouldn't abandon it. Hit it with the saddle tan and I bet you'll never see it. Try it on a piece of scrap.

I'm going to suggest you find some other leather that you don't care about to test on. To pile on Mulesaw's comment, I recently talked to a taxidermist friend about old hides. He says tanned hides can certainly dry out to where they're just not salvageable. I'll follow along to see how you make out.

Assuming that you started at the top in your picture and things deteriorated after you turned the corner, how did it look when you got back to 3 layers? Funny how it looks fine until you turn the corner headed down and then the tension looks unbalanced and gets progressively worse.

This question got me poking around the net (as you no doubt did) and I came across a page recommending "one of Aileen’s tacky craft glues" to reglue the leather down. No clue what it is, but it may bear investigation. Here's the page, in all it's splendor: https://throughavintagelens.com/2010/04/restoring-vintage-cameras-iii-techniques/ I was really expecting to find that recovering the cameras would be the preferred method, but apparently not. I can understand wanting originality as a collector but if a suitable leather could be found, I don't think replacing it would be too hard. EDIT: And here's a PDF from Kodak that says mild soap and then white glue to reattach the leather. restoration_inst.pdf

So, here's a thread that should get you on the right trail. There's even a link for a close-enough manual:

I've never bought sheepskin from these guys, but I've bought a bunch of other stuff and never been disappointed. https://www.glacierwear.com/buckskin-leather-hides-deer-buckskin/shearling-sheepskin-leather.html