nstarleather

Yeah that $80-$100 a hide for Essex. Latigo Horween is on there…

PM me for the list to be emailed ...if you need it Leather March 2024 .pdf

Yeah I certainly didn't comment with any expectation of a free fob die...

I wouldn't call it a "scam"... they said "I’m considering sending out free keychain cutting dies to a few interested leatherworkers. " Which is quite a bit different than "if you give me feedback, I promise to send you a die"... But I do agree that it is a little deceptive. Just my two cents!

Hey folks, I have a decent lot of this blush Blarney leather from Seidel Tannery. It has a peachy pink color with a white back. 5-5.5oz roughly. Probably have around 300 feet of it. Only $1.50 per foot plus shipping from South Carolina. It’s a nice leather just not a color that I have a lot of use for. Lightly corrected. Somebody wants to make me an offer on all of it. We can also do that.

So the machine is ancient… like older than me. I’m 43… Which is why I guess the machine is probably Italian or American because that’s what was around back then. I doubt it’s metric just because of the spacers I have seemed to correspond to inches and fractions of inches. What you say about the tolerance is adding up makes sense, I think I’m going to see if I have a 1.5” spacer, and if it lines up with one 1 inch spacer and two 1/4” we sold a lot of belts last year, so I’m not terribly worried. I was just curious, as if it was normal or not… apparently there’s a lot of variation in machines.

It's not often but more often than you'd think...

I've got like 3 sets of blades all the same...unless some ancient ones were different...machine is super old. Yeah I compared some other blanks and it seems legit but I wanted to find some confirmation...strangely haven't seen the discussion before.

No I haven't but they're all the same, which wouldn't be the case with wear. I've got dozens of different spacers: 1/8",1/4", 1/2", 1", 1.5" etc...all come out to slightly narrower I can't imagine it's not on purpose.

Hey everyone...this is something that comes up from time to time with customers that my 1.5" and 1.25" belts area actually narrower than those measurements. When I set up the stripper to cut the width that's just how they come out. My dad has always said it's because it's meant to work with buckles so they don't rub. Is this kind of a standard thing or is my machine weird? You can see my machine is se up with 1" and two .25" spacers.

Almost all of my dies are custom. In general I get either .75" high but when I go really big for my double headed clicker I do 1.25" I currently have two suppliers one who makes wood filled steel rule dies which are generally less expensive and another who will do either all metal welded or fully forged. In the past my wood filled supplier was cheaper but now steel welded has only been slightly more expensive for simple dies. I don't hand stitch so we don't need holes usually but when we do they tend to add a lot to the cost. Depending on what I'm "asking the die to do" as in how much stress it's going to be under (thick material, narrow area, complex bends, etc) I've found some wood filled dies don't hold up well at all. I don't make a whole lot of dies for own products, these days 90% are for when I have a wholesale account asking for a product.

No idea! I’ve not worked with those besides ostrich.

If I were you I'd try to sell as a lot and include it as a freebie (and maybe not even mention in the description).

Yep you did it! Pattern seems the same!

Sea turtle? Interesting! Seems plausible.

someone commented this and I tend to agree: I just see that flex point (armpit?) on the middle right of the piece, which means ‘something with arms and legs’ It’s not ostrich, elephant, hippo, pretty sure it’s a reptile or amphibian - edit - I would lean towards real, not embossed bovine, based on the variation of shapes - compare to https://leatherwks.com/products/turtle

Have this post and nobody has been able to identify the 4th picture:

I think the roadmaster is gone but I have more of the metallic Stead Stuff. Send me an email and we can discuss. nstarleather@shtc.net

Like yes and no...like material is only going to be a real factor with exotics like croc, shell, stingray, etc...the material cost in a watch band made from $2 a foot leather and $20 a foot leather is 10x but the cost in one band is till just a few dollars at the most. Same goes with hardware unless you get into precious metals like gold, silver or platinum. I'd say most of the cost would be labor and craftsmanship, cutting by hand, stitching and fancy edge finishing is where most of the "real cost" differences are if it takes a skilled crafts person working in an area of the world with higher wages a long time to make it, then you'll eclipse all the material factors very quickly when it comes to cost. Of course then you have marketing and brand but those are kinda abstract and have varying amounts of importance depending on the customer.

What color?

Wanted to share a trick I discovered. We use rivet backed conchos in a few of our items and we’ve had 2 issues in the past that have frustrated me: 1. Small rivet backs are hard to set in thick materials like a quality belt or on our case barrettes. 2. The small backs pull through eventually on heavy use items like wallets (I have a private label customer who uses Buffalo Nickel conchos). In the past I had sourced separate larger “Concho backs” to solve the pulling through issue from but they didn’t help on thick materials. A couple years ago we found out that the cap for line 24 snaps are a perfect solution. Because they extend down into the material they work great for thicker materials, but can be pounded down even for thin ones. I apologize somebody else came up with this already, but I haven’t seen it elsewhere.

I agree we tens of thousands of patches but it's definitely not artisanal...I suspect you could do it in a way to come out with a high quality belt but people tend to cut corners. Brand new model with the screen and all like $10k-$15K...used with a less advanced interface $3K-$6K used.

These things are cool...I used one to sew velcro to patches...it's very "one use" but if you have the volume it can totally be worth it. Not nearly as expensive as you'd think, especially used.

Yeah they were just trying to guess at a reason...and it's probably the same reason UPS or USPS gave them "weather issues around the country have caused delays" (without even looking at the route). I will say as someone who ships, we do get a lot of customers mad at us for things that happen after the item has left our control; they think we can somehow on our end push a huge carrier to find one little package when it a couple days off the delivery estimate. I once had a person who ordered "standard shipping" get really insistent that I ship out a replacement order Next-day Air ($50+) because the post office had apparently lost their item.

That's crazy...such waste but with pennies for material I guess it doesn't matter.