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So well, I guess there is no need for two threads, so I´ll reduce it to one I had a work mate some time ago I came along with really nice and who teached me a lot for my daily job. So as we are both craftsmen and therefore like well (hand)made stuff I decided to make him a belt which turned out to be the best I made yet. For those of you who mention the different colour of the edge all along and the edge where the keeper sits (might be hard to see on the pictures... didn´t do a nice job on the pciture stuff this time): I started with the buckle using edge kote. But after that I visited my father who owns one of my belts and recognized, that the edge of hos belt - which I finished with some edge kote, too - was just fuzzy all along.... so I cried a little for help here, got some fingers pointed again on the thread "how to finish edges" and did it (nearly) as descriebed there... finally I got a nice (even nicer!) edge the with edge kote which hopefully should hold up much longer, as the only substance sitting on top is a really thin coat of Tan Kote finished with some parraffin. Thanks for that already guys! Acutally I never saw him since I gave it to him, but he was full of joy, so I assume the hours put into this piece were worth it. The belt itself is some 3,5mm belt croupon lined with some 0,8mm ... neck (I guess... ordered that seperately), hand dyed as always and handstitched with 8 SPI all around. The bucke is made of solid brass and the width is just about 38mm. As this is the second lined belt I made, I tried out some things like skiving the loop where the buckle sits down to the lining plus tapering the tip of the belt for a better sliding into the belt keeper. work worked just fine. The second piece is a sheath for a... "fancy" knife of a customer. He just wanted a simple sheath but made a lot more sturdier than his last one where the knife is hold by friction at least a little as is came out sometime before... The sheath is dyed with a light brown. After that I applied one coat of oil, let it dry and applied some heavy coat of my leatherbalm. The plan was to fit the handle colour of the knife which turned out quite good. I guess those are the moments where it´s good to know how the individual hide darkens when you use your "stuff (the balm) on it!! So always do a sample guys.... really! I guess If I didn´t know and wanted to be it light brown I´d have stuck in this head->table->head->table motion.... XD So here you see the difference between the old one the ne sheath As the blade got a little curve near the tip, it even cut a little hole into the old sheat... that was made poor and a little tight, so everytime the customer pushed the knif back into the sheath he unwillingly forced the tip into the leather.... poor little thing ^^

So I made a belt again. This time as part of a gift for my fathers 60ths birthday. As I am getting used to making this sort of belts I think I improved a lot from my very first one to this one, even if I made two little mistakes (happily I was able to remove them in an invisible way). I might finish of the belt-keepers edge a bit better, but besides that I am quite happy with the result. And actually his reaction just showed me that he likes it a lot, too. Made from cowhide (croupon), dyed and stitched bye hand using 8 SPI all around. The buckle is made of solid brass.

So as the birthdays of my girlfriends parents were right before eastern and we planed to visit them. I had to make them a nice present . I decided to make a handstitched belt for each of them, but sadly I forgot to take a picture of the other one ;( This one is about 20mm wide with a nickel-plated brass buckle and 8 SPI handstitched all around. The second one was a black one, 35mm wide, plated brass buckle and 8 SPI, stitched with a beige/white thread as a nice contrast. But as mentioned above, I just forgot to take pictures. The stitching took some time, but I think it paid off, as the new owner is just happy with it