DG Leather Report post Posted March 22, 2009 hello, A question to you all.... How do you, as individuals, avoid leaving bevel marks when bevelling? Also when you are tooling or beveling....do you hold the leather down with the heel of your hand or clamp the leather down? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ClayB Report post Posted March 23, 2009 Lots of things come into play when you want smooth beveling. Your leather should have proper moisture content, not too wet or dry. That's something that is really hard to explain, but the more you tool, you'll figure it out. When it's just right, you'll get a nice burnish (darker brown color) to your stamping. For beveling, you only want to move your tool 1/3 to 1/2 of it's length between strikes with the mallet. It's called a "walking" tool which means you keep moving it and tapping it at the same time. With practice, you'll figure out how to get even force with each strike of the mallet. If you are using a smooth beveler, you can follow up with a modeling tool to "erase" tool marks by gently rubbing them over with the modeler. You can do this with the beveling tool also. Just hold it in your hand kind of like a pencil and drag it over your beveled line to try and smooth out the tool marks. If you use a checkered beveler, there will be less chance of leaving as many marks, but you'll probably still get some. There are some really good free online lessons at Paul Burnett's Painting Cow website He goes into detail on proper moisture content, how to walk tools, and a whole lot more. It's worth spending some time studying his lessons. I just hold my leather down by resting the hand I hold my tools with on it, but some people use weights. Some of them are made by sewing bags out of chap leather or deer skin or similar soft leather and filling them with lead shot or other heavy material. Just be careful not to use metal objects directly on leather as they react to damp leather and leave black stains that can be hard to remove. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
curmudgeon Report post Posted May 11, 2009 Almost every stock beveler has sharp side edges that tend to leave marks no matter how you overlap them, etc. I take every size beveler and very carefully remove this sharp edge using a dremel wheel. Then i fully buff the face smooth again. I have found that every tool can be improved upon and this helps keep beveling marks from starting in the first place. regards, curmudgeon Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DG Leather Report post Posted May 12, 2009 Almost every stock beveler has sharp side edges that tend to leave marks no matter how you overlap them, etc. I take every size beveler and very carefully remove this sharp edge using a dremel wheel. Then i fully buff the face smooth again. I have found that every tool can be improved upon and this helps keep beveling marks from starting in the first place. regards, curmudgeon thank you greatly!!!!! Respectfully, Daniel Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
