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Hello, I am starting to cover the box in goat leather, but after I cut out one of the sides of leather and start to skive down the edges, it stretches the leather and then I have to cut it down again and re-skive it.

Ok, so I'll admit it. Skiving is not my strong point and I haven't invested a ton of time in getting better at it, but I know I need to. I have invested a little money bouncing between tools/ideas though. So far I have Tandy's Super Skiver and their Saftey Beveler. I also have sandpaper disks for my dremel and a small trimming plane, but nothing's really clicked yet. I watch videos and people make it look easy and I attempt it and I'm either tearing up my project or like barely taking anything off. I was sort of most hopeful that I'd be able to master the Safety Beveler and so I brought it to a tooling class the other week. Well, imagine my surprise when the instructor told me I was using it the wrong way (I was skiving away from myself) and then gasped and said "Oh, you're left-handed!" No one told me the tool was right-handed and I never realized it! I spent the rest of the class trying to use it with my right-hand and cursing Tandy's lack of labeling. I came home determined to find a left-handed Safety Beveler. Needless to say, I've found some lovely metallic colored ones, but no left-handed versions. I did however see more videos of people using knives and other tools to effortlessly and perfectly skive their edges. So, I figured I'd ask you guys. If you were going to invest the time in mastering one skiving tool, what would your go to be?

Hi all, Question about skivving leather. If I were making something like a camera strap where I wanted to fold an end over itself to put in a D ring, do I skive the entire section where the fold is happening or should I only skive the two sections that are going to mate and leave the part where the ring would rest alone? So assuming (based on the attached graphic) that sections A and C are going to be matched up and attached to each other and that section B is where the D ring would rest, would I skive sections A, B, and C or just A and C? Thanks!

Hi all, Question about skivving leather. If I were making something like a camera strap where I wanted to fold an end over itself to put in a D ring, do I skive the entire section where the fold is happening or should I only skive the two sections that are going to mate and leave the part where the ring would rest alone? So assuming (based on the attached graphic) that sections A and C are going to be matched up and attached to each other and that section B is where the D ring would rest, would I skive sections A, B, and C or just A and C? Thanks!

Hi all, I'm totally new to leather working and have been having a little trouble skiving. I just made a veg tan camera strap that I inadvertently cut off a couple of inches from when I was trying to thin out an end that I wanted to wrap around a D-ring. Anyway, I came across this video on the internet and was wondering if anyone had ever tried skiving with a dremel or rotary tool, and if so, how it went, and what they recommended using in terms of tools/grit? Any thoughts or advice are appreciated. Thanks, Courtney

I would like to skive/split and finish some entire sides of Hermann Oak leather. I'd like to get them down to 3 oz (from 8-10oz) with a good, clean looking back. Does anyone know of a place that would offer this service? (I'm aware Wicket & Craig does this in-house for their leathers, but I haven't heard the same for Hermann Oak) Thanks!

I recently bought a splitter off the tandy outlet supply site, req $899 got it for around $250. Every time I got to split leather it carves out the centre of my piece and the outer edges are the thickness i wanted. I have tried in several locations across the 8" blade so I know its flat and not a bent blade. Has anyone had this happen to them, could it be my technique or did I buy a lemmon tool. I have posted some pics of the splitter and what its doing. Thank you for your assistance. James Newbie

This fella John has asked me to make him a three quarter length coat in a few crocodile hides he's prepared (he hunts, taxidermies and tans leather of crocs and smaller animals in Australia and Papua New Guinea and gold prospects in PNG too) but they're about 4-5mm thick (10-12 ounces). I didn't get the ruler flush with the leather in my photo. To make a garment I'd need it to be at last half that or ideally a quarter of that thickness. I've never used a splitter before so I don't know how it would go with the scales of the skin side. I'm going to ask the companies Packer and Maclace in Australia and also thought you guys would have a great idea on how to do it. To do it myself, John suggested I could sand it off, he tried by hand but it's too laborous for him. A mate knows someone with a splitter with the width of 700mm so that should be sufficient so they'll get back to me. I'd cut off the limbs on the hide so it would be flat I reckon. On a side note regarding the job: To make the coat John wants the scales in the centre of the back of the coat and that's the only requirement. The rest of the garment would look better using full belly pieces which are smooth and flat but I reckon he wouldn't have any hides cut down the back so the belly isn't divided down the middle so they'll be a lot of seams in the coat. If it ends up being only split half thickness I'd have to sew the seams on top of each other, without a seam allowance.

Today I was skiving some leather and regrettably ruining more than successfully making I became frustrated and tried to mod my hand skiver... This is the skiver I'm working with... I removed the bottom plate like you would to change out a blade. I realized that the plane that the blade bends on is to slight for my liking and causes me to cut through my edge often times when a thin skive is required. So to improve the curve/plane that the blade bends on I wedged a piece of card stock in-between the blade and the handle. I also put a wedge of card stock on each side of the screws to compensate for wedge in the center of the blade. This helped to create a more drastic curve which I find much easier to control and I don't seem to cut so uncontrolled. Another idea I have for hand skiving would be to get a thin sheet of metal clamp it to my table so that I can have a surface to but the leather up against but have a raised plane from the table, hopefully acting like a guide for skiving. Thought this might be helpful for anyone struggling with skiving... Anthony Loughan http://lousleather.weebly.com http://facebook.com/lousfineleather

Does anyone recognize this splitter? Can anyone tell e who made it? Do they make them still? Looks like it may be a one-off made in a machine shop, but made darn well! If I cannot find a maker nor any patent or licensing info on it, I may start having them reproduced. I have a great machinist here in town who can fabricate all the parts and will grind the blades, and one of the best blade makers/swordsmiths in the country is right here in town too(K.C. Lund) and he can do the heat treat on the 01 steel blades. We can even offer pattern welded (Damascus) blades if anyone wants to pay a ridiculous amount for one Let me know if y'all are interested, so I can look into whether or not it will be worthwhile to have these cranked out.