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Hello wonderful community! I'm pretty new here and usually browse around as a guest. However I've got a situation on my hands that I can't seem to find a solution to. I'm currently making an Alien Facehugger mask that required some wet formed pieces. There are around 50-60 pieces to this particular mask. I had just finished beveling and sanding all these pieces(it took an ETERNITY). It was finally time to get to wetmolding and alllll was fine and dandy until a dark pattern started to appear.. on the single most important piece of the entire damn project... Just the one. I've found other posts where metal shavings have come into contact with wet projects and caused dark spots or others found mold on their leather. I can say with certainty that this isn't that. I've tried removing this discoloration with alcohol (which seemed to make it worse) and I've tried using odorless mineral spirits. All 50+ pieces were cleaned with minerals spirits prior to this because I was an idiot and used masking tape to hold down my patterns and try to reduce as much leather scrap waste as possible. I quickly found out that the tape leaves behind a residue that could only be removed with the mineral spirits at hand. That being said, I basically deglazed every piece so there shouldn't be any trace or and weird substance on the leather, right??? What caused this? Why did this happen to the ONE piece if they were all cut from the same hide? Thank you so much to anyone who took the time to read this and is willing to help out a fellow maker.

I am having a little problem with my work, and don't know who to ask for help. The project is wet forming leather for a small pouch in a two part form. When I pull my forms apart there is a lot of staining on part of the leather. My forms are maple, with a coat of lacquer. I am soaking the leather in fairly hot water before I put them in the form. Then I am using some very modest heat to help dry them in the form. I will attach photos so you can see the problem. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, Thanks.

A customer of mine recently bought a POS holster on Amazon. The thing was still wet and transferred dye to his hands when he pulled it out of the box! So now he wants me to make him a new one. Problem is, I have NO clue how to make this holster he wants. He offered to send the POS to me to reverse engineer a new holster, but would rather return it and get his money back. So my question is this: Is there a pattern for this holster?

A customer of mine recently bought a POS holster on Amazon. The thing was still wet and transferred dye to his hands when he pulled it out of the box! So now he wants me to make him a new one. Problem is, I have NO clue how to make this holster he wants. He offered to send the POS to me to reverse engineer a new holster, but would rather return it and get his money back. So my question is this: Is there a pattern for this holster?

For those of you that oven dry your holsters after you've wet molded them, what do you place them on in the oven? Cedar plank, baking sheets, etc? I'm just curious how others are doing it because every now and then I get a line from the edge of the plank or whatever I have it on. I want to perfect that process and clean up the finished look. Thanks!