A Question Of Time

[Talltales08]

Hi, I was wondering if anyones sole income came from their leather work? Do you make a select few items that you know you can produce fairly quickly? How much time in a 24 hour day do you spend working on your items?

Thanks

[immiketoo]

It's not my sole income. I'm glad because I'd starve. However, I spend a lot of time at my bench when I work on a project. Considering I'm learning, I expect the time it takes will go down with more experience.

[TwinOaks]

I think it would be difficult to for leather to be the ONLY source of income unless you were in a full time shop....like Lobo's holster business, or perhaps a saddle shop.

Since I'm not an actual business, I don't have any production lines....several 'standard models', but 85-90% of my work is custom orders (including the one I should be working on right now). I have variable times at the work bench, depending on how many orders I have.

[Chief31794]

I do it pretty much full time, at least 40-50 hours a week. However, it is not my sole income, I am Retired from the Army, Retired from Industry, Disabled Veteran and on Social Security so I don't have to do it and I don't have to make money at it. I sell items to pay for the hobby, I use the profits to buy more leather, tools, materials, etc.

If I depended on leather as my only source of income I would be on welfare. There isn't that much call for leather work in the east (southwest Georgia), no saddle making, harness or tack repair, etc.

Chief

[Talltales08]

I have my first class in leather working in the morning, bought a starter kit last week but still haven't done anything other than look it over. Like most, I'm interested in the craft/art first. If somewhere down the line I can make a buck off of it, so much the better.

Some time ago, I got into Pyrograpghy, or woodburning. I had a pretty good thing going with it on Ebay till I just got tired of it. It was very time consuming and hard on my hands to hold that hot burning tool for hours at a time. The results were well worth the time invested. Sorry to say, that was several computers ago and no pictures servived.

I do have some pictures of a part of a table I was burning that was never completed...hope to have those posted soon.

[TwinOaks]

If you happen to want to 'feel the burn' again, pyrography on leather can be quite stunning....especially if you've got the skill to vary the darkness/deepness of the burn.

[Talltales08]

I get the itch from time to time to get back into it. It's a fairly cheap craft to get into if you have a good craft shop near by. I think even at today's prices you can get started for around $50 bucks. The burners rarely go bad and you don't need all the tips they have. In fact, I used the shader tip for everything, and found that the thinner the the "blade" the better I liked it.

The only thing I hated about it was transfering the pattern onto the wood.

I've posted a few of the pics of the pyro work I did on wood in the gallery. The thing I did on Ebay was Tarot boxs which at the time (around 2000) did very well.