Notebook Cover (WIP)

[Mablung]

I am making a cover for my church sermon notebook, with a few different motifs on the cover. The tooling needs work simply because I need more practice (and some parts look atrocious). But, I’m kinda proud of it, so here it goes in the Show Off section. Even so, critiques and suggestions are always welcome, as I’m not very good with my hands and looking to improve this skill. 

[DieselTech]

Looks great to me Mablung. Nice work! 

What significant does the thorn reef play? What does it mean or stand for? 

Thanks.

[bladegrinder]

Jesus was wearing a crown of thorns when he was crucified, the spikes in the middle were used to nail him to the cross.

[Mablung]

 Bladegrinder's got it. I found that design online and traced it. Beveling the profile of the crown of thorns was substantially harder than I thought it would be, but at least you recognized the shape for what it is, @DieselTech.

[Mablung]

I’ll ask for suggestions on this part: I’m trying to decide whether to dye this thing. On the one hand, I kinda like the natural look, but on the other hand, a nice brown sounds nice, with some antiquing. I’ll use dark brown Ritza 25 0.8 mm thread to stitch the notebook cover sleeve panels and the perimeter. Maybe that will contrast nicely with the natural veg tan conditioned with Obenauf’s Heavy LP, which will darken the leather a bit anyway. 

[bladegrinder]

Yep, a light brown dye with medium brown antique would look good.

[DieselTech]

Yep I agree! Light brown dye with a medium to dark brown antique applied to it would look sharp. 

[Mablung]

Well, I dyed it light brown but didn’t dilute the dye enough and then ran out before I could get the dye job even. I used a dauber, since I don’t have a tub big enough or enough dye to dip-dye it. It’s a bit blotchy as a result and a coat of NFO didn’t even it out. I’ll probably have to make the overall dye job a bit darker before I resist and antique it. 

[Mablung]

Well, it is too bloody narrow for the notebook originally intended to go in it. 1/16” of an inch or so too narrow. I have another, smaller notebook that ought to fit and some margin around the edges that I could cut off to adjust for the smaller dimensions (and clean up my edging and stitching, which are a mess). I’ll probably have to do that for now. 

[DieselTech]

24 minutes ago, Mablung said:

Well, it is too bloody narrow for the notebook originally intended to go in it. 1/16” of an inch or so too narrow. I have another, smaller notebook that ought to fit and some margin around the edges that I could cut off to adjust for the smaller dimensions (and clean up my edging and stitching, which are a mess). I’ll probably have to do that for now. 

I have only used the fiebings pro dye a few times, but I noticed that the dyed piece/project seemed to be a slight narrower than originally cut after it dried. 

I'm wondering if the leather shrinks a bit from dying? I was dip dying. 

[Mablung]

6 hours ago, DieselTech said:

I have only used the fiebings pro dye a few times, but I noticed that the dyed piece/project seemed to be a slight narrower than originally cut after it dried. 

I'm wondering if the leather shrinks a bit from dying? I was dip dying. 

I think this was just a result of my not measuring generously enough and then taking it down too far when trimming before stitching. I think sometimes times do shrink just a bit after dying, but not enough to create quite this issue, at least in my experience. 

[Mablung]

All but final trimming and edge work done. The stitching is atrocious, as I experimented with using my chisels as a pricking iron and finishing the holes in the cover flaps with my awl. My goodness the stitching process was tedious and time-consuming, absurdly so. But I learned a bunch of valuable lessons in making this thing. Looking forward to finishing it and putting it to use. Color is wrong in the photo, but I’m too tired to fiddle with the pic. It’s more of a medium brown and not nearly as yellow as it appears.

Edited March 6, 2024 by Mablung

[dikman]

I'm assuming you handstitched it and with the stitches being so small I'm not surprised you found it tedious! Hard to tell from the photo but if it is "splotchy" it still doesn't look too bad and it should help it get the used look a bit quicker. What I've found is if the leather is just given a coat of NFO and then left in strong sunlight for a couple of days it turns a lovely light brown that is hard to get using dye, it seems to have a lustre that you don't get with dying.

As for it not being the right size, yep, been there done that! Just think how much you've learned doing this, the next one will be much better - but this one still looks good, it has that old hand-crafted look about it.

[MarshalWill]

Looks good. I agree, larger stitches would make it a lot less tedious. I would probably do something like 5 stitches per inch. Certainly no smaller than 6 on this piece. To get an even dye job on light colors, I give the leather a coat of alcohol first. Then I apply the dye. Alternatively, I dip the whole piece in a diluted batch of dye, but that takes a lot of dye to do. I use solvent based dyes, generally Fiebings or occasionally Lincoln. That said, sometimes I purposely make a piece blotchy to give it visual texture. When there's a lot of un-decorated space like yours, that can be nice. I look forward to seeing your next one.

Edited March 6, 2024 by MarshalWill

[Mablung]

Yeah, hand stitched. I didn’t fully appreciate just how small the stitches are until I looked at the first major line on this thing. Good grief. I used a set of Craftool Pro Fine stitching chisels I have, I think the 3mm ones. I like the narrow holes because they close up well, compared to my regular Craftool chisels. But man do the holes make it difficult to pull a large-eye needle threaded with 0.8mm Ritza thread through. I learned the benefit of using a stitching awl to stretch the holes. (After I made a real pudding of my stitch lines along the long seams of the cover flaps, but that’s a different set of photos.)

Anyway, because I’m a glutton for punishment, I’ll make another soon that will fit my larger notebook. I’ll post that one, too. 

[Mablung]

Couple shots of the vertical edge stitching and finishing. At a couple points it’s truly atrocious. But the rest actually looks halfway decent on the exterior.

[dikman]

I see what you mean! Just a thought, do you have a domestic sewing machine? I started off with an old Singer hand-crank and used it without thread to pre-punch the holes in things like notebook covers, then went over them with an awl and handstitched. This gave me nice evenly-spaced straight stitch lines.

Just think how good your next one will be.

[Mablung]

12 hours ago, dikman said:

I see what you mean! Just a thought, do you have a domestic sewing machine? I started off with an old Singer hand-crank and used it without thread to pre-punch the holes in things like notebook covers, then went over them with an awl and handstitched. This gave me nice evenly-spaced straight stitch lines.

Just think how good your next one will be.

I do not, though I have been considering getting a machine. Not in the budget for a a bit yet, but it sure would make things easier. 

[Mablung]

Finished product. Antiquing isn’t great, partly because I started applying the SuperSheen topcoat too soon and smeared the antique paste a bit. But it still turned out pretty sharp, I think. Left the closure tab raw because I’ll rebuild this thing eventually. It’s been put on a smaller notebook than the one I carry for sermons on Sundays. 

[MarshalWill]

I like the subtle antiquing you ended up with. It came out fine. Congrats.

You say you'll rebuild it. In what manner? Why not just dye the tab and be done with it?

[Mablung]

1 hour ago, MarshalWill said:

I like the subtle antiquing you ended up with. It came out fine. Congrats.

You say you'll rebuild it. In what manner? Why not just dye the tab and be done with it?

Just make the dimensions a bit bigger. I made it slightly too small for my sermon notebook, so I cut it down for this other notebook and still made it a bit small. So for the notebook I carry to church every Sunday, I need a bigger cover anyway. This one will mainly live on my side table at home, so I don’t feel like trying to match the dye. I’ll just mix a new batch for the next cover and dye every component all at once. 

[MarshalWill]

4 hours ago, Mablung said:

Just make the dimensions a bit bigger. I made it slightly too small for my sermon notebook, so I cut it down for this other notebook and still made it a bit small. So for the notebook I carry to church every Sunday, I need a bigger cover anyway. This one will mainly live on my side table at home, so I don’t feel like trying to match the dye. I’ll just mix a new batch for the next cover and dye every component all at once. 

Good plan. I look forward to seeing the next one.

[Frodo]

On 2/24/2024 at 9:16 AM, Mablung said:

I’ll ask for suggestions on this part: I’m trying to decide whether to dye this thing. On the one hand, I kinda like the natural look, but on the other hand, a nice brown sounds nice, with some antiquing. I’ll use dark brown Ritza 25 0.8 mm thread to stitch the notebook cover sleeve panels and the perimeter. Maybe that will contrast nicely with the natural veg tan conditioned with Obenauf’s Heavy LP, which will darken the leather a bit anyway. 

I see you dyed it

if you want a more natural  on your next project. Do not dye it. Seal the undyed leather with tan kote 

 

[Mablung]

3 hours ago, Frodo said:

I see you dyed it

if you want a more natural  on your next project. Do not dye it. Seal the undyed leather with tan kote 

 

Snazzy; I like that look. I’ll try that on the next one. Thanks for the suggestion. 

[Frodo]

As you can see,   I am letter straight challenged.