Carving lettering

[Tkleather1]

Hey everyone I have a silly question, What is the best Blade used for carving letters ( in your experience)? I mainly just use a 3/8 hollow ground blade for the vast majority of my carving. I have not done alot of carving of letters but I am finding that they look so much better than the stamped letters. So any suggestions will be listened to with perked up ears.

Thanks to all of you experts out there

[Kevinjohnson]

Smaller angle blades seem to work the best for me depending on the scale and font. The larger the letter and the straighter the lines, the more I like a regular blade. The smaller and more curvations the letter, the more I like an angle blade. Remember not to cut through intersecting lines or under cut the letters w/ your knife.

[CitizenKate]

Small, thin, angled blades for me, too, on the small letters. I also have a very tiny beveler for beveling around all the very tight curves you get with small letters.

Kate

[TomSwede]

I use the angled ceramic blade. Leather should be very dry when carving and I avoid to use too much pressure on the blade and go slow when carving. Good lighting, small lamps from different angles so I can see the tracing line at all times.

Lettering on big leathers that I can't twist and turn as I carve is one of the hardest things i now.

After tooling I will go over the letters thoroughly with the modelling spoon again with very dry leather.

Tom

[McJeep]

Lettering and general knife usage pointers are a huge interest for me right now as well. Good hints on dry'ish leather Tom - just starting to clue in on that now as I watch the surface of wetter leather twist along with the knife blade in tight turns :/

I'm also verrrrry interested in just how you folks get such clean starts/stops to your cuts - by that I mean they all meet up perfectly at corners or pointy tips of things and are oh so square at the meeting point. I've been doing a lot of very close inspection of people's works to try and surmise ways of accomplishing this better. Yesterday I saved one of David's latest seat pics, blew it up to 400% of it's size and still couldn't find any signs of start/stop!

I know it's called practice practice practice ... but there have to be some tricks involved too ... right? I'm right aren't I? LOL

Hope ya don't see this as a thread hijack TK - just trying to get even more info on lettering in general.

This newbie thanks y'awl

Rob

[Rawhide]

Hands down for me is the Peter Main blade. I like it, because the blade has a wide angle and I can cut shallow, ( a must for curves or lines close together) and still have a decent cut.

Perfect blade for letters and accent cuts and light weight leather.

[McJeep]

Hands down for me is the Peter Main blade. I like it, because the blade has a wide angle and I can cut shallow, ( a must for curves or lines close together) and still have a decent cut.

Perfect blade for letters and accent cuts and light weight leather.

I just spent half an hour trying to find a supplier for these and cannot - only a couple threads with you commenting on the blades and some mythical bulk purchase.

If I can't find it on the interweb, it does not exist and you sir are a charlatan <-- kidding! LOL

but seriously, I take it that they are a smallish manufacturer? Can't find a web page er nuthin.

[Rawhide]

I just spent half an hour trying to find a supplier for these and cannot - only a couple threads with you commenting on the blades and some mythical bulk purchase.

If I can't find it on the interweb, it does not exist and you sir are a charlatan <-- kidding! LOL

but seriously, I take it that they are a smallish manufacturer? Can't find a web page er nuthin.

Not quite. Henley makes the blade to Peter Main's standards. You'll have to get the blade through Peter himself. Go to his website, and send him an email. That's the best way to catch up to him. He's going to London soon, so If you need it soon, I'd suggest contacting quickly.

Peter Main's Website.

[TomSwede]

Lettering and general knife usage pointers are a huge interest for me right now as well. Good hints on dry'ish leather Tom - just starting to clue in on that now as I watch the surface of wetter leather twist along with the knife blade in tight turns :/

I'm also verrrrry interested in just how you folks get such clean starts/stops to your cuts - by that I mean they all meet up perfectly at corners or pointy tips of things and are oh so square at the meeting point. I've been doing a lot of very close inspection of people's works to try and surmise ways of accomplishing this better. Yesterday I saved one of David's latest seat pics, blew it up to 400% of it's size and still couldn't find any signs of start/stop!

I know it's called practice practice practice ... but there have to be some tricks involved too ... right? I'm right aren't I? LOL

Hope ya don't see this as a thread hijack TK - just trying to get even more info on lettering in general.

This newbie thanks y'awl

Rob

Exactly what I was thinking of. With letters you often get carving lines very close to each other and that twisting will distort letters easily. For really small stuff I don't carve very deep but I bevel the letters with the same depth anyways after carving. If you look under my topics you may find 2 black and white bracer for REV 16:8 wich have some really tiny letters.

A shortcut to avoid starts and stops showing is to not carve all the way to the point where carving lines meet. A corner for example when you return to the starting point after carving all the corners you can stop right before the cutting lines meet and just bevel the corner and it will look smooth and natural.

For the three foregoing corners I will just twist the knife and not lift it from the leather to make the corner nice.

There's alot of small tricks to carving I think and this how I believe I do this;-) I never think about it when I do it and was never taught carving so my techniques for carving is in my backbone and as with everything else there is always room for improvement.

Tom

[McJeep]

You'll have to get the blade through Peter himself.

Aaaaaah, that 'splains it - Thanks guy, I'll be looking into that fo sho

There's alot of small tricks to carving I think

So I'm finding out in rather short order LOL

Thanks for sharing guy

[David]

I recently posted this on another thread, but here goes again.

I do all of my carving with the Tandy 3/16" angle blade.

I think they call it the filagree blade.... could be wrong on the name

but not the size.

David Theobald