Antelope

[sprtjnke]

Here is an antelope that I did based on the lesson sold by Clay Banyai and Jan Schoonover. I think it went fairly well I certainly learned a lot from doing it and will probably make another in which I can correct some of my mistakes. What I still haven't gotten down for sure is the mixing of the putty to the right consistency. My mixtures would take forever to dry and I could not seem to get in any tooling marks to help the background to blend with the leather. Overall though I am very happy. Thanks for having a look and thank you Clay and Jan.

Dave

[ClayB]

Hi Dave,

For your first embossing project, I think you did great!

One of the most frustrating things about trying to write these lessons is that several of the products Jan has been using in his leather work are being changed or discontinued. In one of the classes I taught, I picked up a can of Tandy's new version of rubber cement to mix putty with. I found out that the new formulation Tandy is selling took forever to dry when mixed with putty. Jan and I both had heard that a different brand of rubber cement (Petronio's) was supposed to be great stuff. Several saddle makers and boot makers had been using it and were very happy with it. We made the mistake of suggesting it as a product to use in our first lessons before we had actually tried it. If that is what you used on your project, we owe you an apology. We tried using it when we did a later lesson and found that while it does dry very quickly on the surface, when mixed with leather dust and used as putty, it also didn't set up well. After waiting several hours for it to dry enough to work on, we had to scrape it off the back of our project and start over. The only rubber cement we have found to work right so far is Barge Brand rubber cement. Other brands "might" work if the putty is put on in very thin layers, say 1/8th in thick and letting them dry, but that would drastically increase the time it takes to finish a project like this.

Getting the putty part of your project to blend in with the leather takes some practice. It takes a sharp scalpel blade to cut into the putty. It works best to kind of roll your knife blade from the leather into the putty, if that makes sense. If you drag the blade from the leather into the putty, or from the putty onto the leather, it can drag out portions of the putty.

Please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions. By knowing if there are things we haven't covered well enough in the lessons, we can try to make the future lessons better. We really appreciate your support of our project and hope that they make learning these techniques a bit easier.

[sprtjnke]

Clay thanks for taking a look and for the kind words. It was in fact Barge brand *Tanner's Bond* that I used. Actually the hair on the face didn't go to bad although I should have started earlier in the dry time in order to get a little more detail from it. It was mostly slow to dry in the body cavity itself and considering the low humidity here in Nevada I think it may have been mixed with to much cement. My greatest issue was with the putty for filling in the area the head and horns came from, well actually the problem was with getting a backgrounder tool to leave an impression. But you can't get it all right the first time out, eh? Otherwise we would all be turning out work of you quality. Someday though huh! Well I am looking forward to the next lesson. Happy holiday's

Dave.

[ClayB]

Hi Dave,

The Tanner's Bond rubber cement made by Barge for Tandy is the stuff that I had problems with in my class. If you can find it, Barge makes their own version of rubber cement and it works a lot differently when mixed as putty. I'm not sure who all sells it, but I've been getting it at Montana Leather in Billings, MT.

I'll print out your pictures and take them to Jan the next time I head out that way. He's really interested in seeing how everyone does with these lessons. I'll be looking forward to seeing pictures of your next project too.