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The method I described is to make 'Chicken oil' which is used as a flavoring agent in far-Eastern cuisine. There are several ways to make it but this seemed to me to be the most suitable for our purpose. Cleaned chicken skin heated in a clean pan until the fats are rendered. Only fried skin remains so I presume the oil will be pure.

Just watched a YouTube video about using just the skin, gently cooked in a pan until the fat is rendered and then straining it out. Nothing else added to it, so the final liquid is pure oil. I will probably try that.

A big witch's hat (leather, of course) and grubby black robes. Surrounded by mounds of chicken meat and feathers. Think how many I will need to slaughter to get a CAULDRON of fat! All the area cats and dogs and rats surrounding me as well. Hmm... Halloween comes to mind. What an idea.😆 I will probably try to render some chicken fat sometime soon. The next batch of dog food is nearly due. Hope it does not smell too much. The dog food is bad enough.

@dikman you're right. Plain chicken fat is not purified and has things other than fats in it. So putrefaction and the accompanying stink happens. But what about absolutely purified chicken fat? Although I have no idea how I can do that, unless I cook the fat until all the non-fat components get fried and turned to coal and I strain the oil and use that.

I wonder whether that (the smell) happens because the chicken grease is not purified? Everything else that we have used is purified with no proteins remaining. It is, after all the proteins that putrefy and cause that awful smell. I wonder if there is a way to purify chicken fat. I think I will put off that experiment until I learn more about it.

That is clear as that is what you seem to be pushing, under the guise of 'teaching'. Essentially, to purchase your machines and use them - i.e. operating your machines. Instead of pretending to 'teach' a 19 week course (So long to learn to use your machines? That puts one off right away) you would be better off advertising openly on this site instead. You did start several threads earlier talking about the same thing in different ways, only it did not talk about 'teaching'. If you truly want to 'teach' people how to use hot stamping machines, discuss your competitors' products as well, honestly at that. Teach how to use those too. Then, it might become a teaching course. Else it is just an advertisement pretending to be a course. People here are not fools, as I am sure you have realized by now.

Thank you @DieselTech I'll do that.

Would that be the needle file set or the precision needle file set?

They come in all sorts of different shapes too. Charming. And practical as well - the shape can be selected depending on the thickness of the leathers. It sucks that they are cheaper on Amazon than on Temu for us now. So corporations win while the common man loses with those tariffs.

That's interesting. The plastic will not scratch the leather either. Although they probably cost a lot more for us now, with these stupid tariffs. On an aside, @fredk I discovered that if you call and ask Temu to remove the minimum limit for purchases, they remove it for your account and you can order even individual items for less than a dollar and it arrives, free shipping et al.

Absolutely.

These items are beautiful; even more so when you consider the limited number of ordinary tools that you had at hand, It's always the talent in the hands doing the work that matters the most, is, I think, what is clear here. 🙂

I guess it is just a matter of what we were taught in school. Like 'among' and amongst' or 'smelled' and 'smelt' Anyway, do describe your experience here if you do wax some leather for a punching mat.

Your wallet looks fine to me. It is leather, after all and once was on a living creature. It cannot possibly look like factory manufactured smooth plastic. 🙂 Therein lies the charm of leather though.

3-4 mm at least. I got 2 huge sides of splits during a Black Friday sale but they are of different thicknesses. I just cut them up from one side, and make usable pieces. The current one is one of the thinner pieces, because the split has a very variable thickness all through. Without the wax, they gradually get floppy. Let's see what happens with the waxed one.

I only use wax on pieces of splits that I use as pounding boards. I do not stain or dye those pieces. But when using wax to harden leather, certainly. As @fredk has explained in another thread, 'This was one of the ways that leather armour was made, from the early Roman times up to the 19th century. see cuir bouilli' So a new use for an old technique. New to me, anyway. Isn't that nice? 🙂 😄Certainly more illustrative of the result than boring old 'smoothen'.

Oh! Nice. New use for old techniques. I have a little, flavoured with pumpkin and carrots, asafoetida and turmeric, and garlic. So I cannot use it. I forgot and added all the ingredients to the chicken when cooking it. Next time, I'll try to remember.

I'm sorry for the delayed response. I just made a batch of dog food and I do not have sufficient fat to 'sparge' it. I'll probably put it off until winter. It is hot here so I do not want to keep it indoors. Outdoors, in the heat, it will really stink. On an aside, I discovered that wax really darkens leather, even more than any of the oils. In another thread, I have explained how I dipped a piece of split that I normally use as a pounding board, into melted wax and dried it. I use this as a pounding board now - hard enough but does not damage the tips of my tools and the wax constantly lubricates it. The leather is hard and so much darker, it is now a dark medium brown. it started off the light color of veg tanned leathers.

There are brass stamping sets on Amazon. Amazon.com: WUTA Brass Stamping Tools Flexible Letters Numbers Alphabets Symbols Characters Molds Leather Jewelry Metal Stamping Tools for Hot Foil Stamping Machine (Copper Mold Set 83pcs) Can be used on cased leather. Expensive though!

😄 What word do you use in its place?

Others have probably tried this already but since I discovered it new for myself, I thought of putting it up here. I use thick leather splits as punching mats. I often also use a block of wax. I sometimes place the split piece on the wax block so that even if the punch goes through, it just gets lubricated with wax. When I was last melting the wax block to smoothen it, I dipped the leather split piece in the melted wax. I let it absorb for a minute or two on both sides and then kept it aside to dry. It dried hard, harder than the original split and it works well as a punching mat. For the wax, I used a mix of paraffin wax and beeswax. Plain paraffin is too brittle and pure beeswax is too sticky. Together, they work well for me, both in block form as well as in the punching mat.

Okay. I'll try that. Thank you.

Yes, that is what I am looking for. Yes. You could start a new thread. With other people adding their knowledge to it, the thread could become informative enough for the moderator to pin it. Otherwise search terms do not always give what one needs. This information might be present in the forum elsewhere but it did not come up with my searches. For some reason, no matter what I do, the searches only show results pertaining to each word, not phrases. And I know how to do searches online but this forum gives me a whole lot of trouble there.

Oh! Then everything I have is sharp enough. I have things going half way through my fingers all the time! Planning to buy share in a band aid company.😄 Seriously, That means really sharp. I will work on my awls.

Just checked and noticed that my pliers are all grooved! Another stop in my shopping today. @zuludogthat is a lot of very good, detailed information. I do many of the things there, other things, not. I have not sharpened my awl. I will need to do that, a least a little. Now that I think of it, it feels a little blunt and needs to be forced. About having the needles etc. all absolutely straight, I just discovered that recently when I realised that a needle was bent and going somewhere else from where I was directing it. Changed it in a hurry. About piercing the thread, I'm going to try that. I keep the thread long anyway and do not try to have one long thread for the entire side. So I can change the thread more frequently. I work with a stitching pony too, a clam actually. But when the leather is very thick, it has been difficult. I'm hoping with the right needles, thread, sharpened awl and pliers, it will become easier. I plan to get all the items mentioned here that I could use, including the smooth jawed pliers. @zuludogMaybe you could put this information up in a different thread so that other newbies can benefit from it.