Gussets - Advice Needed

[McJeep]

Recently finished a project for a customer - at least I hope it's finished ;0) Disregard the damned colour please - she does a lot of breast cancer rides

I'm having problems with doing gussets in general - you can see the compound curve in the design. My problem is this - I want to use upwards of 8oz leather on the gussets to alleviate the need for any stiffeners inside the bags (these are small - they go on the face of saddle bag guards). The bottom edge is actually stitched inside the bag and then the sides are stitched on the face. When trying to man handle the leather to conform to the shape, it's pretty much impossible with 8oz so I went down to 4oz. While it makes things more shape'able, it's not as substantial as I'd like and as you can see, the leather likes to wrinkle as in the bottom corner.

Even with trying to skive down the thickness near the stitch line, the 8oz was too stiff to manipulate on this project (gusset is only 4" deep).

I'm thinking that in order to use better leather I'm going to have to build molds so that I can wet and preform all of the stitching areas prior to gluing up?

I see people making tool bags with heavy leather and they're usually even smaller than this - please share the tricks???

Using an Artisan 3200 for stitching duties - getting the back of the stitches to look like the front is a wholllllle nuther question LMAO

Thanks in advance

Rob

[NoName]

You might run an adjustable stitching groover 3 to 4 passes deep on the flesh side of the gusset, about 3/8 inch from the edge. Then skive the edge with a french skiver to step the edge down.

[Cyberthrasher]

I'm thinking that in order to use better leather I'm going to have to build molds so that I can wet and preform all of the stitching areas prior to gluing up?

I see people making tool bags with heavy leather and they're usually even smaller than this - please share the tricks???

I know I've seen people do it by molding them, so that may be the easiest and cleanest way to go. I was actually just discussing using that weight with Chancey the other night and he assured me that it's the best to use for a small solo bag, but also brought up this exact problem. Said it's a pain to work the gussets with such heavy leather, but doable and worth it.

[McJeep]

Hmmmmm, I think that a woodworking buddy (who just the other day got a smokin deal on a vinyl seat re&re) may be coming up to payback time ;0) He'll be the one making the molds I think - should be worth the time as I'm hoping to make a fair amount of these - IF I can get the time/ignorant factor down!

[Cyberthrasher]

yeah, if you're going to be doing a lot of them that are the same shape and size, definitely get some molds going. Think of the time you'd save that way, which directly translates to dollars in my book.