Skiving Leather With A Bandsaw? Crazy, Or No?

[hivemind]

I've wondered about cutting pieces out with a scroll saw - haven't tried it yet. I bet someone here has though.

I cut a lot of 14-16oz stuff for armor on my bench mounted scroll saw, and all the sole bend I work with gets cut on it. I also use it to cut out small curvy things, like round eyeholes in masks. Works great. I'm using a cheap $50 Harbor Freight one.

[Don Ayres]

In carpentry we call it resawing, thats when you take lets say a 1" board stand it on edge and rip it down with a bandsaw to say 1/2" thickness, I have some thick leather and wil try this method at work tomorrow, I definitly think this will work.

[Neillo]

Interesting concept! I'm slowly amassing tools for a workshop and would love to be able to cut leather

that quickly, a friend of mine uses a jigsaw to cut all of his buffalo shoulder for armoring with good results.

Using a bandsaw with a reasonably fine blade, like 14tpi and up could get a reasonably clean cut. but to

make less work for myself; i'd probably get a 22tpi or similar blade just for leather.

Probably the biggest issue would be the bottom guide for the blade being too big and trying to pull the leather

through it, resulting in a cut that isn't 90 degrees, you could solve this by making a zero tolerance insert for

that specific blade.

If you felt lazy or didn't have the cash, you could always sharpen the spine of an existing blade into a knife

edge, but i'm not sure how well it'd work. I've thought of a few jigs to cut leather, but a bandsaw would be

the cheapest and most low maintenance solution of you already have a bandsaw, but you'd want to make

sure you have dust collection!

[capnmeow]

here if ur the desperate home made