Pre Stretching Leather

[Aulus]

Hi Folks,

I have a question: Somtimes I´ve read about pre streching leather for Belts, Fenders ect.. Is this useful? Do you pre strech your leather? And when you do, at what stage of your project you will do (I think after carving?)?.

Have a good Time!

[genewshipp]

I would also like to learn about when and how to pre-stretch.

My first project was a holster. It was lined so I'm not sure that it needed stretching before or after bonding the liner or not.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[Colt W Knight]

The process is extremely useful on saddle stirrups. If the leather isn't pretty stretched, the left stirrup ends up being a lot longer than the rightraditional pretty quickly.

Sometimes, if I am tooling an item the is being stitched together in a complex pattern, I stretch the leather from the back with a glass slicker so I can cut it to the proper size and it won't stretch out from tooling.

Belts made from vegtan leather can stretch a lot, several inches when wet. And as it stretches, tooling looses definition.