How To Make A Wallet?

[electrathon]

Add the rear to the wallet and you are done. The tooled piece I usually use is 3-4 oz. The thinner the better. I always keep my inserts minimal, if you use thicker leather or more layers you end up feeling like you are sitting on a 2x4 even before you add cards. If you want more slots leave out the ID window and duplicate the right side in reverse for the left. If you want two bill compartments then add a second layer of leather behind the insert. Always leave the insert at least 1/8" shorter than the back, this allows for the bend in the center.

[electrathon]

You can either sew or lace this wallet. Lacing looks more classy (when done right) but it does add slightly to the overall size. The reason the wallet needs to be bigger than money is because of the card slots. If you make it money size you will have no card size storage in it. I usually cut the outside edges over sized (by about 1/4") and trim them to size when I assemble it. Otherwise it is almost impossible o get the edges completely straight. Glue the pieces together with rubber cement to hold it when you sew or lace it.

[TwinOaks]

6-7 for the wallet back is too thick. That's 3/16ths of an inch of leather when it's folded......and that's before figuring in everything else.

[Dwight]

I just took a pair of calipers and measured my 12 -15 year old, . . . $8 wallet I bought in a dime store.

The back measures .033 thick, . . . which would translate to 2 oz leather. The pockets inside are in the .04 range which is about 3 oz.

Use what you want, . . . but there is no way I could make and use a wallet that was thicker than 4 oz on any of it's pieces, . . . unless I wanted to do some "serious" stamping and tooling.

May God bless,

Dwight

[TexasLady]

7/8/11

Electron, you've gone 'above and beyond'. Thanks for your explanation. I've got some pigskin for my (soon to be) wallet's interior, and I haven't worked with leather enough to have learned the 'weights' jargon yet, anyway. I pulled out that Tandy Premier Wallet kit that I bought to copy. I wanted to 'make sure' before saying anything. The 'already assembled' interior on the Tandy model has fabric glued to the leather, replacing part of the leather, and making it lighter weight. The lower interior card holder is leather. But the next one behind it is different. Rather than being all leather, it has about 3/4" of leather showing, but then has a light brown taffeta glued to the back of that top edge of leather. It's the taffeta that goes all the way down to the bottom, not the leather. The third slot is the same, in it's front,... a strip of leather at the top edge, but taffeta continuing to the bottom. The front three slots continue on down to the bottom. But the back one (the third,... the 'tallest' one), has a fold of fabric on it's back side, and that fold does not go to the bottom. Rather, it dips down into a fold, and loops back up, being then attached to the 'straight', and final, bottom edge of leather behind it. Each strip of leather folds it's top edge backwards over the taffeta, making a nice finished, rolled, edge. The overall effect is to 'look like' it's all made out of leather, but really, about half of the leather is replaced with taffeta fabric. Also, there is an extra, length-wise divider in the bill compartment, made of taffeta, but with a leather strip on its upper edge. Tandy probably uses some special fabric which is heavy-duty, or more longer lasting than what I'm describing as 'taffeta'. I just wanted to add this to the Thread as a 'possibility' for others to look into, for making a lighter-weight, thinner, wallet. Disclaimer: I've never made a wallet. <smiles> - TexasLady

Edited July 8, 2011 by TexasLady

[stanly]

my 3 chioces would be

copy Tandy or just use the measurments

this thread-Pattern wanted for Wallet and Billfoldsinserts-

http://leatherworker...?showtopic=3368

measure old wallet and copy

u will discover that it's the interiors that make the wallet (and make u crazy), not the craving on the back

PS to Texas L: the piece of whatever fabric helps keep the wallet thinner I'm sure, think that when u can't see it anything that holds up is ok. As far as linings - look at KK and some of the fancier ones in the wallets&.... subforum.

Think Tandy has some kind of poly fabric for this purpose.

PPS: just remember people (maybe even u) may have to sit on their wallet for hours, so thinner is better.

Edited July 8, 2011 by stanly

[electrathon]

TaxasLady,

The taffeta or whatever the fabric is that Tandy uses is what will fail first. It will unravel on the edge and pull out of the stitching. I have made a lot of wallets and all of the original ones were made with tandy kit inserts. 100% of them failed in the first year. I have since switched to making my own interiors (almost 2 years ago now) and have yet to have a failure. One of the guys I work with told me he would go through a store wallet every 1-2 months. I made him one and 18 months later it is still going strong.

You are correct that you can "step" the cards up higher and higher for each slot. I personally do not like to do this because if just makes the wallet thicker. You can use leather and sew across each level as you stack up the slots.Or you can use fabric similar to Tandy kits, just use something of better quality. Another option is to use Tyvek (the white paper used on house exteriors). The stuff is very thin and almost indestructible. I have not used it yet, but likely will on the next one I make that the person wants staggered slots.

Aaron

[TexasLady]

6/22/12

Thanks for the input on what 'thin' fabric to use for the interior, stanly and electrathon. There will always be 'trade-offs', won't there? Brown taffeta would be for something cheap when giving a 'kids class', then. But Tyvek sounds very interesting for my own future projects. I found this site. http://www.materialconcepts.com/store/categories/0100 4" x 200 yard tyvek 10G Price: $28.00 I've also got some black pigskin and some (almost ) orange pigskin, very thin. I wonder though if it may not stretch out too quickly in the card holder spots. And I'm only a year late in gettng back to you to thank you. Sorry. - TexasLady

[Eve]

Hi

I'm very new to leather working as well, my first wallet was made by reading Tandy leatherwork Crafting Instruction Manual by Stohlman, but I find the inner compartment is not what I wanted (also I ruined it by putting the leather lacing around), so I made a second wallet by copy my old one.

The inner part where the card goes in are made of water proof PVC or Nylon fabric (the fabric make umbrella from), the original wallet which I copy from is made of PVC (since when LV is not made of PVC), but think about goat hide or sheep hide, they are thin! My next wallet will try on goat hide, wish me luck!

I also brought a wallet inner compartment kit (long wallet type) but haven't started it.

Cheers!

Edited July 17, 2012 by Eve