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Tips from Uncle Dave Most useful wax: Melt Paraffin, beeswax, and neatsfoot oil. Let cool. Very soft wax. Spread on edges to burnish easily, hardly any effort. Spread on top of leather finish for nice feel, and water resistance. Take a chunk and slap it on your sewing machine somewhere the thread passes. Nicely waxed thread. Best working table top: ABS plastic. It's the same stuff your cutting boards are made of. You can get it any size up to 4x8 sheets. Mailed to you. Try places like US. Plastics online. Comes in as little as a sq ft, all the way up to full 4x8 sheets. I think mine are like 1/8" thick. If it gets too many cut marks and stains, you can actually sand it down with an orbital sander. Keep table top cleaner: I buy brown paper rolls at Lowe's Hardware (20 inches or so wide). On my cutoff saw I chop them down to 10 inches. Nailed on the side of my bench is a paper towel roll. Place the cut brown paper in the roll, voyla! Roll out the length you need, tuck the ends under the abs plastic, and you keep leather clean, have a place to draw, daub dye onto...etc, etc Best glue dispensers: Simple, I just punch a hole in the top of a pickle jar lid. My artist paintbrushes stick through.I use different width/thickness brushes for different tasks. Fill the jar with ordinary contact cement, barge, white glue...your preference. Lid screws on and keeps the glue fresher longer. Dye Mix jars and a place for 'em: At your local garden center, they sell 3- 4" pots of plants. Those usually come in a plastic container that holds a dozen or so pots. Get some! When I make mixes of dyes, I use the pickle jars (we eat a lot of pickles it seems!). They fit perfectly in those planter containers. Leather storage: I buy the round cardboard concrete forms at Lowe's. Cut them in half, and then stack 'em. Buy different sizes for different size rolls. Keeps everything organized, and visible. Dye Thinner: I use Feibing's Pro dyes a lot. Instead of a $28 qt. bottle of their dye thinner, I use a $10 gal can of denatured alcohol from the hardware store.Works fine for me. Top finish: A good alternative to Resolene, atom wax, tan kote, etc is a simple Kiwi neutral finish found at every grocery store in a plastic dauber bottle. Easy application, and lasts a long time.Rub it on...done. Anyways, you get the idea. Let's hear some of yours. UPDATE: I found Part 1 of these tips dated 2010!

I figger if someone posts in Show Off, they're looking for a small pat on the back. For crying out loud, give it to them, or move on. They are genuinely proud of the effort, and fully aware there are some worse, and some better out there. We should want to support each other, not tear each other down. If they wanted critiques, they would have said so, or posted in "Critique my work". So many people in this business think they are just the cat's meow, and know everything. They have to tell everyone else what they did wrong. Hey, I got eyes! I can see the things YOU made. And you have the hutzpah to try and instruct ...sheesh. Look, the leather business comes and goes. There can be decades between it's popularity, and disdain. Thirty years from now, the guys you are criticizing could still be around, and you...long gone. Lighten up, Francis! I'm feelin' cranky today, sooo, just a small rant, and didn't want to hijack someone's thread, with this observation. Don't be like me.... Be kind to each other.