How Do You Make Cuts That Look Like Fur?

[dragonwithane]

I have just started tooling leather about 2 weeks ago and I am hooked. I want to start making animals but I am having a hard time making the animal look real because I have not been as detailed to make it look like it has fur. What tool is best to do this?

[TwinOaks]

Look into a "hair tool" or a "hair blade" for your swivel knife. The hair tool is really just a shaft that houses two (one narrow, one wide...or fine/coarse) hair blades. Long sweeps look like long hair, short and choppy strokes look like fur. You can simulate the close lines with a stiff wire brush, but that really only scratches the surface of the leather, where the hair blade actually cuts into the surface.

http://springfieldleather.com/29223/Tool%2CHair-Blade/ Here's a link to one.

[Spinner]

Check out Clay Banyai's web blog for a quite overview he does on a swan carving: http://badlandsleatherart.com/swan%20lesson.html

As for the tool, get a 1/2" dowel and drill a 3/16" hole 1/2" deep in one end. The take some epoxy & fill the hole just shy of full. Next take one of the 5 blade exacto knife packs available at Tandy and put the blades into the dowel (pointy side out of course). Using a piece of soft wood like a cut off from the dowel works well to sink the blades in. Try to keep them sticking out the same amount. Let the epoxy cure for a few hours and you have yourself a 5 blade hairblade tool capable of long, short, angled, choppy or whatever other cuts you might need just by adjusting the presentation of the blades and it only costs about $3. Lasts forever too, still using mine I made 2 years ago and it gets used pretty often. I'll look for a pic of it to share.

Cheers,

Chris

[TwinOaks]

Chris, I totally forgot about Clay's tutorials...thanks for bringing that up!

[lightingale]

There are dozens of ways to tool different kinds of fur and hair, and they're explained very well in the Stohlman "Figure Carving Finesse" book. You can get the ebook instantly on leathercraftlibrary here: https://www.leatherc...-stohlman.aspx?

Not all of them need a hairblade. If you do get a hairblade, don't get the Tandy one... it sucks and can't be sharpened.

The book is the best $20 you'll ever spend if you want to get into figure carving, I find.

Edited September 18, 2012 by lightingale

[J Allen]

If you buy a cheap exacto handle and have a dremel with cut off wheels you can widen the slot in the collet to hold 3 exacto blades. Then you have made your own hair tool.

[toker]

I used the dowel method but I use a smaller diameter. Instead of drilling a hole. I cut a slit. Then after inserting the blades and using a little glue, I put heat shrink around the dowel and slit. It tightens the slit up quite nicely and gives you kind of a cushion grip at the same time.

Edited September 26, 2012 by toker