Questions about finding carving and saddlery books in ebook/PDF format

[alfredleatherworks]

Let me start off by saying, I’m not looking for pirated copies of books. I am willing to pay for legitimate copies of the titles I’m looking for. 

Last February I sold off half of my leather shop and moved to South America for a while to live and work with the gauchos here and learn their style of leatherwork with a focus on their approach to rawhide and leather braiding. While I’m here I’m supporting myself by plying my trade as a leatherworker. I had to leave behind my physical library, and I didn’t think that was going to be an issue. Turns out, not only do I want the books for my own reference but I’m being asked to share my skills with others here by teaching. 

In specific, I’m looking for an ebook copy of Al Stohlman’s Encyclopedia of Saddlemaking and the book Creating Western Floral Designs by Bob Parks. Does anyone know if there are legit PDF ebooks of these titles? I can’t seem to find them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I have digitized copies of all my other Al Stohlman books, as well as many others, but I never got around to digitizing my entire library. FWIW, if anyone knows of other good saddle/tack or general leatherworking books that are available as ebooks, I’d love that info too. Teaching leather and English at the same time is fun, but with books for reference it would be so much easier, lol.

Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read and/or reply. Hope y’all are doing well this week!

—Riley

[fredk]

I recently came across a link placed on this site for a well known German book on saddlery and tack in ebook/PDF form

I'll try to find it again

[alfredleatherworks]

On 6/26/2025 at 3:18 PM, fredk said:

I recently came across a link placed on this site for a well known German book on saddlery and tack in ebook/PDF form

I'll try to find it again

Oh, that would be great!

I keep taking a small chunk of time every day or so to scour the archives here, but so far I haven't found what I'm looking for regarding digital saddlery books. I've found all the other non-copyrighted books, largely on archive.org, but anything with a copyright has been harder to find. I'd consider buying a physical copy and having my girlfriend ship it to me, but the shipping cost is too high and then there's the 60% import tax/tariff on top of it all...too much for me, lol. Also, traveling around the country here with a physical leatherworking library would be super cumbersome. Which is why I'm scouring this forum and the internet at large for ebooks/PDFs, etc. I don't mind paying for a good book, but even in this day and age finding some texts in digital format seems to be difficult.

[TonyV]

Amazon has 'How to Carve Leather' by Al Stohlman and several other leatherworking books available in Kindle format for less than $8. US.