Tote Bag

[Tim Schroeder]

Finished just in time. Christmas present for my daughter. She's been carrying my wife's old one but has since gotten married. She needed one with the correct initials. 

[chuck123wapati]

Tim you are really good that is some exquisite tooling. How many years have you been working leather? i will never live long enough to get that good.

[Tim Schroeder]

Thanks Chuck. Started tooling in the 7th grade. The teacher let me make him a belt and we entered it in the State fair, and it got second. My dad and his friends always had tooled wallets from kits from Tandy. My daughter walked in with this the other day. One of the first things I made not from a kit. I thought that tooling was good at that time. When I found Leatherworker.net I saw some of Hidepounders work and new I wanted my tooling to look like his. I tooled the same pattern every day for 6 days until it started to look something like his. Carl Chappell, may he rest in peace, gave me a lot of pointers. He said he judged a lot of competitions. He would always look at a piece for 5 or 10 minutes and then find some fingernail mark somewhere and ask me what tool I used to make that mark. He gave me the tip about rounding over every edge with a modeling tool. He said with out that everything looked flat.  I do have 40 or 50 Barry King stamps and 2 Leatherwrangler swivel knifes. IMHO Paul makes the best blades. 

[Bawarrior]

Great looking bag. Awesome tooling 

[rleather]

The pattern is spot on for that project. I must say , your tooling is magnificent! I too was introduced in the 7th grade shop class. I am so grateful that they taught  trades in school back in the day. IMO they need to go back to it again. I did not keep up with tooling over the years, but I am now finding myself being drawn back to it lately, thanks for the inspiration and have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. P.S. Your daughter is going to be doing some BIG TIME bragging on her Dad!

[DwightT]

That is a truly gorgeous bag, and as mentioned the tooling is exquisite.  I am in awe of the work.

Side note: when my first wife passed away our daughter took her bag.  She won't let me do one with the correct initials because she wants to keep that one for her mother.

    /dwight

 

[Chipster99]

Absolutely beautiful.  Phenomenal tooling!

[GrampaJoel]

As said by everyone before me. Excellent work!

you attention to detail is good too, and I like the handle  snake  ‘D’ rings.

Joel

[doubleh]

Beautiful work. I made my wife a tooled purse long ago and she carried it for a time and then put it up. I asked why and was told it was too heavy. "No, Honey, it's all that stuff you put in that makes it heavy". To this day she continues to buy purses that become too heavy with all her junk and fall apart. I offer to make her one that will last every time the new purse hunt subject comes up and still get that "too heavy" answer.