full names or inscriptions put on leather?

[SojournerLeather]

So, we've been doing a bunch of custom work at our leathershop (leather book covers mostly, like sketchbooks, journals, and photoalbums), and we've been asked about doing engravings. Now, we've agreed to do small things like initials since we have one of those craftool abc stamp sets, but now we've been asked a couple times about bigger inscriptions, like short quotes. Now, I really don't want to stamp out short quotes.

What are some of the things ya'll do when someone wants full names or inscriptions put on their leather? And if you end up stenciling it on with ink, how do you go about doing short quotes with that?

Thanks ahead of time. I've been really racking my brain, but I'm not coming up with much on my own here.

[Randy Cornelius]

I have not tried it yet but I have been considering lazer engraving on leather. There is another thread that deals with that.

[Brandon]

Am thinking of an old typewriter without the ribbon?

[candyleather]

The typography for an old printing press, hundreds of letters engraved in plumb or steel. You can read a back issue of Leathercrafters&Saddlers Journal showing this technique, I remember a bible cover writed with this method. Any years ago there was a toy's plastic printing works in the market.

[Guest]

As far as I know there is only one way if you want a really "tooled" look to your lettering. Carve the letters one letter at a time VERY CAREFULLY. I know that's not what you wanted to hear but it is the only way. Maybe layout the quote on a computer in the desired typeface....transfer it to your leather....by usual methods....that means by hand.... then cut and bevel slowly and carefully....with a 1/4" filligree knife. And oh yeah practice on scrap first.

Dave

[abn]

This is perhaps my super-cheapo, find-the-easy-way persona talking , but how about purchasing the nicest stencil you can find from a craft shop or online (usually $5 or so) and then using a black Sharpie marker to put those letters on? Now, this won't work so well with really dark dyes, nor will there be any relief to the letters, but it might be worth a try just to see how it looks...

-Alex

[Johanna]

Carving quotes takes up a lot of space. Maybe some gold foil leafing would satisfy the customers? This leather business card is 15? years old, and the letters aren't showing any signs of wear.

Johanna

[Pip]

i use artists masking fluid when dying, it dries like rubber on the surface opf the leather so dye won't take, then dye and peel it off.... you can they redye the area with a light dye or better still wax the project before you peel of the masking then redye with a lighter colour dye after peeling it absorbs into the unwaxed previously waxed areas. You do need to redye as there is always a small amount of colouration through cross fibre contamination but once you redye iit looks great. the great thing is you can paint it thriough a stencil dead easy.

Care has to be taken not to remove the mask while waxing.... give it a try on some waste, artists maste costs £2 or so and is used in water colours.

[ClayB]

Candyleather mentioned the lettering from an old printing press done on a Bible cover. Deb Starr wrote that article in the LCSJ and had a really long Bible verse on the cover. She went into detail on how to make a holder for the printers type in the article. It really did seem to work well and if I was ever going to consider doing a lot of lettering on something, I would look into getting some type. Back when the article apeared in the Journal, you could find a lot of old type on Ebay. Deb is a member here on the forum, but she is busy with life and other things these days and hasn't had time to do any leatherwork for a long time. If you have questions about how she used printers type, I could pass on her email address. I'll also see if she has a picture of the Bible cover she made using the type. I had it saved but lost it in one of my computer crashes.

[skipj]

I remember that article, I thought the results looked quite professional. The Journal may have a back issue containing the article available.

SkipJ

[bruce johnson]

Randy mentioned lasering on quotes, and for vegtan leather I think it works well. I am attaching a pic of an item we bought last year. If you are doing very many of these, looks like lasering is the way to go for me. I recently did a planner with pretty small lettering and a logo. It was too small and detailed for knife work. My neighbor has a laser and it worked out well.

Johanna mentioned foil leaf, and I have a bit of experience with that too. Several years ago I had an order for some report covers, and "souvenir" coasters for a meeting. They wanted dark chrome tan leather, a logo, and each director's name on them. A local printing shop had the equipment and did it for me. They have since moved out of state, but I did have a local Christian bookstore do some foil names on a couple things since. They have a lettering foil press set up for doing names on Bible covers. That might be a suggestion too. I think their press handled up to a little bigger than business card size. If a person knows what they are doing, and looks around, there are several models and price ranges of foil stamping setups, I just don't have the demand.

[Ross]

one thing i've done in the past when there were many letters and very small is to compose it exactly the way i wanted it on the computer in the font i wanted, transfered it to the leather and then used the knife to cut only one line for each letter. after finishing the leather i went back with water proof ink and filled in the knife cut. if my pen slipped it erased easily since i had finished the project before filling in the letters. then one more finish to lock the ink in.

i'm not explaining this very well, so here's a picture demonstrating that i did several years ago on the flap of a book cover for a lady. the picture is not too good i realize. i've gotten better at pictures since then i hope.

[fishguy]

Actually, if you don't need really fancy, large letters you can do surprisingly well just embossing. Of course this also requires good penmanship too.

[SojournerLeather]

Wow! Twelve replies in less than 24 hours!

What we'll be doing first, I think, is calling up a couple print shops in town that may be able to do the printing for us, getting an estimate. But there's an aweful lot of good ideas here I think. I'm gonna scour the web for a bit tonight to try to find that article as well on the old printing type!

Thanks all!

[gtwister09]

We have done just about every method that has been mentioned (gold foil, computer fonts, pyrography, lasers, etc). Here's some insight that might help.

Foil Press & Typesets

We have the Foil Press that can handle about 18" X 18". We have used it some but not lately. You can spend a TON on sets of type for these. We use the foil press even for non foil related embossing. We have had good results all the way down to 6 point text (1/12"). Depending upon what you can find these types for they can run from around $30 for the smaller sets for one font size up to $200 or more for a display typeface that is larger than 1". So you can see that the cost can add up quite quickly because you only get one size in one typeface. Using the foil press to hold these makes it quite nice and easy to perform the task but you can easily make a holder for your type with little effort. In fact Deb showed that in her article. The only thing to watch for is some of the type is quite soft and will deform with a small amount of pressure so you have to watch out for those sets of type. The foil press of this size can run you a good amount of money as well. If you aren't planning on foil then make your own holders.

Lasers

I have messed with lasers on and off for more than 15 years for cutting various metal products to embossing wood, acrylic, stone and leather. Started out programming these to cut large amounts of aluminum plates for gaskets (if memory serves me right they made between 10-12 million of these a year on the industrial lasers). We've used them even to cut out large (4 ft X 6 ft) silhouettes for ranch signs and so forth.

These desktop machines are quite expensive in the smaller sizes. You can do a google search for laser engravers and see what comes up. One of the better brands is Epilog (http://www.epiloglaser.com). They generally run $10K plus even for the small #18. The prices go up quickly after that for larger sizes. Another more affordable laser is put out by A4Dable Woodworking (http://www.a4dableww.com). Last time I checked they were running between $2500-$4500. Both of these companies offer good support and generally are very willing to help with any questions that may arise like maintenance, replacement costs, software and so on.

One of the things to consider is consumables (if gas is used), replacement lasers and software to run these. Check the hours to mean time to failure and so forth. A cheaper laser engraver may have a lower number of hours that it can run before failing and the same cost for laser replacement. Several that we have looked at would have been a lot more costly when replacement lasers were figured into the total cost of ownership. Some of the products can be performed on vector based graphics and some on bit-mapped graphics. Different programs are generally required for each. With the vector programs it follows a vector cut while the bit-mapped ones are swept like a dot-matrix printer.

Would suggest that if you want to do lasers to check if there is someone locally that has one before you dive into purchasing one of these. (even industrial lasers will perform some of the work for you). We have used the same set of vendors that cut steel plate to do embossing with letters on acrylic, stone and leather. Finding someone who specializes would be better because we do get charged quite a bit extra for pre-cleaning the laser bed when we have a piece of leather shot.

Pyrography

Equipment here varies greatly but there is beautiful work that can be done here. Google searches will give you tons of tools to choose from. Then you could use computer fonts, freehand or anything else to complete the lettering/embossing.

Hope that provides some insight.

Regards,

Ben

[K-Man]

I vote for laser engraving. I've used it on a number of different types of leather, a number of different designs, and you cannot beat it for providing clarity.

Unless you're going to add laser engraving to your "options" available to a customer, I wouldn't even consider buying one. You can usually find one of the trophy/award shops in your local area who have one and most would welcome the opportunity to do something on leather. Just give them a warning about the smell and that there needs to be good ventilation. IMO it's much more efficient (time and money) to let someone else do it.

[ClayB]

Here are some pictures of Deb's work using the printer type for lettering.

[Kani]

What do you mean by printer type for lettering? This is beautiful work.

[gtwister09]

Here's a picture of some type.

Regards,

Ben