How To Get Super Clean Lines Like This.

[J W Craftsman]

I'm new new leather working. Did a few small projects with the goal of eventually tooling a seat for my bobber I am working on. I like smooth crisp lines such as the pictures below. It doesn't look, to me anyways, that the lines are beveled. What would be my best way to get smooth lines like this?

Thanks for any input that can help this noobie out.

[Havamal]

I'm new to leatherwork myself. But at first glance I would guess that these are machined, made by a press rather than carved.

[Bob Blea]

My guess is embossing with a press like Havamal said.

Bob

[camano ridge]

Those are definately embossed look at the edges were the design over runns the edge of the item.

[Cyberthrasher]

Those look like they're from Anvil. I'm pretty sure he has a lot of custom embossing stamps that he uses, but I could be wrong. I know I've seen a few of his items pop up with the same design. Heck, he could just make the stamps himself. I really don't know.

It would also be possible to modify a tool to stamp down like that instead of cutting. First thing that pops into my mind would be a flat blade screwdriver with the tip ground down to a flat surface. You could also modify a beveler to do the same thing. I have one that's really thin and long like that which could be modified by eliminating the angle so it no longer bevels and just makes a straight line.

Check out his facebook page for some more awesome examples.

[King's X]

These are embossed using a plate and press. These designs & products belong to Anvil Custom Leather. Welcome to the forum!

[immiketoo]

Truthfully, I think those lack the artistry of a hand tooled piece. Clean lines can be obtained through the use of traditional methods, but it takes a LOT more time than just stamping them. I'm sure Anvil does it as a time/cost saving measure as that takes seconds to do as opposed to hours to carve.

[dirtclod]

I just went and looked at the things he makes and he has little pictures of the stuff he makes. It makes me wonder when i see sites like that with little pictures if their ashamed of what they make or how good the quality it is. Personally if i was going to pay the price of his things i want a picture that's big enough to see what i'm buying.

[Cyberthrasher]

Really? Are you looking at his site or just his facebook page?

He really does do top-notch work. Yeah, he has some cookie cutter designs, but he has a lot of really cool one-off stuff too. Is it possible that you're just looking at the thumbnails that have to be clicked to open up the larger pictures?

http://anvilcustoms.com/store.php

[billymac814]

You guys ever check out Christians work from Xian leather. His stuff kinda resembles that but its all done by hand. His though is followed up with some fantastic dye work that makes it all come alive.

If Anvil is doing that with embossing plates I completely understand why, he's doing it for a living and needs to feed his family. Its hard getting money out of people to spend the required time to actually tool leather, sure some people can do it but most people are practically giving their time away. If you want to survive you got to be able to sell to as many people as possible, his way may be to offer a lower cost solution that to most people is perfectly acceptable. Not everyone can drop 600 bucks for a wallet or 800 on a seat, it really narrows your market down, if you can survive doing that then great but its a small percentage that can. I almost never tool anything anymore because no one wants to pay for it and i barely do really custom work either. I survive because I can reproduce my holster patterns over and over and am able to turn out a quality product in a reasonable amount of time which keeps my hourly rate high.

My opinions changed on a lot of things now that I depend on this to pay bills and be able to eat.

Its fun taking on the occasional custom item but its hard to get paid for all the time that goes into them. If I spend 25 hours on a seat there's no way I'm getting 80 bucks an hour, I'd be lucky to get 20 after materials and those people still think you're getting rich from a 700 dollar seat. I couldn't pay my rent on that.

[dirtclod]

Really? Are you looking at his site or just his facebook page?

He really does do top-notch work. Yeah, he has some cookie cutter designs, but he has a lot of really cool one-off stuff too. Is it possible that you're just looking at the thumbnails that have to be clicked to open up the larger pictures?

http://anvilcustoms.com/store.php

I looked at his web page and yes i clicked on the tumbnails.

You guys ever check out Christians work from Xian leather. His stuff kinda resembles that but its all done by hand. His though is followed up with some fantastic dye work that makes it all come alive.

If Anvil is doing that with embossing plates I completely understand why, he's doing it for a living and needs to feed his family. Its hard getting money out of people to spend the required time to actually tool leather, sure some people can do it but most people are practically giving their time away. If you want to survive you got to be able to sell to as many people as possible, his way may be to offer a lower cost solution that to most people is perfectly acceptable. Not everyone can drop 600 bucks for a wallet or 800 on a seat, it really narrows your market down, if you can survive doing that then great but its a small percentage that can. I almost never tool anything anymore because no one wants to pay for it and i barely do really custom work either. I survive because I can reproduce my holster patterns over and over and am able to turn out a quality product in a reasonable amount of time which keeps my hourly rate high.

My opinions changed on a lot of things now that I depend on this to pay bills and be able to eat.

Its fun taking on the occasional custom item but its hard to get paid for all the time that goes into them. If I spend 25 hours on a seat there's no way I'm getting 80 bucks an hour, I'd be lucky to get 20 after materials and those people still think you're getting rich from a 700 dollar seat. I couldn't pay my rent on that.

95.00 for a key fob that's a piece 1 x 7 or 8 inch piece of leather with a snap and a brass panic snap. I'd say he's hitting the 80 plus dollars a hour. More power to him if he can get it. But it's like i said before if enough people say your or your stuff is the best then you become the best weither you or not. I see happen all the time and it doesn't matter what field their in.

I do leather work for a living and have done it for most of the last 30 years.

[billymac814]

I'd say Christian is getting 80 bucks or so an hour, I don't know, I was just saying that his work kind of resembles that, he basically bevels everything and that's it but its super clean.

My point was that most of us can't sell a key chain for 80 bucks, he is in the minority, so we need to do things that may keep the cost down. A lot of us is sewing machines because its a whole lot cheaper than hand sewing even though some would say that hand stitching is superior. I'd have to sell my holsters for double if I hand stitched them and i'd probably sell 1/4 of what I do now. Its the same deal with anvil using embossing plates, he's able to keep the cost down a bit and therefore sell more stuff and make more money. There is a definite l"line in the sand" though to where you cut too much and you're turning out junk.

My only point was I understand why he would use the embossing plates, it doesn't mean that he puts out shoddy work(I don't know, never seen it). He may be able to do really nice hand tooled stuff but if it ends up that he makes more by using the embossing plates I can't really fault him for that. The OP obviously liked it enough that he wants to copy it, he didn't post my hand tooled work asking how to duplicate it!

[dirtclod]

I don't know about Christan never heard of him till now and have never seen any of his work. The Anvil guy is getting the big bucks for the key fob. I'm not saying that either one does shoddy work. I'm saying that if enough people say your the best then you get to be the best weiither you are or not. Look around in magazines and on the TV theirs quite a bit of not so hot work. But their on the TV or got in a magazine so people think they must be the best or they wouldn't be there.

I travel quite a bit selling my stuff at different events around the south east and mid west. I watch and listen to people and a lot of the time i hear oh his or her stuff is so nice and i go look they have stitches that are a 1/2 long and it looks like they held a rat by it's tail and let it naw out the piece nothing edged and nothing burnished. Now if they have something real nice i tell em they made something that's really nice. If it looks like junk i try not to say anything.

Edited February 5, 2013 by dirtclod

[Cyberthrasher]

I'm trying not to steer this conversation even further away from the original question, but Anvil has lots of closeup large pictures of beautiful hand tooled work on his website, as well as closeup pictures of the stuff that's done with embossing plates. I don't see him trying to hide anything in his pictures. In fact, there are a couple pictures in his gallery that I would call less then premium work and look like they're from the beginning of his career.

And, in regards to that keyfob, read the description. It's made with an "Anvil Original solid brass Quick Snap". Yeah, it's a little bit of marketing. But, Anvil Customs is named based on the fact that he's a metal worker. All of the metal chains and snaps you see are built in house by him. So, can we please get this conversation away from the man's pricing and judgement of his quality? He does work, he charges his price, and he's successful at it. The OP admired his work and asked "How do I do that" not "Why does he charge that".

[billymac814]

Oh, I thought you meant Christian was getting 80 bucks for a key chain.

I think Anvil advertises a lot too, I see his add in a lot of biker mags. That's really all I know about the dude but I'm glad he's getting paid, the people that undercharge bother me more.

The people that get into magazines and tv get there usually because they either send their stuff to everyone they can hoping someone will feature it somewhere, or they pay to be there or they happen to be in the right place at the right time. I fell into the later category and was in about 5 magazines in the past few months. A woman came into my shop to have her shoe fixed and seen my holsters on display and turned out to be Dennis Adlers wife, he wrote John Bianchi's biography and a number of other books and writes for a few magazines, he liked my stuff and I just so happened to make exactly what he was looking for. I get much more business from customers posting good experiences on forums than I did with the magazines though.

Here is one of Christians seats. He is an amazing artist, I don't even like looking at his work because it makes me feel like my stuff is crap. This is a small example of his work, aside from the tooling he does some fantastic molding on some other things. I'd definitely recommend checking out his work.

I'd say with a good steep beveler and lotsa practice and you can make a tooling look like that. Or use embossing plates:-)

[dirtclod]

You wrote.....So, can we please get this conversation away from the man's pricing and judgement of his quality? He does work, he charges his price, and he's successful at it.

Other person asked about how to do it. I went and looked at his stuff.

And i wrote..... I just went and looked at the things he makes and he has little pictures of the stuff he makes. It makes me wonder when i see sites like that with little pictures if their ashamed of what they make or how good the quality it is. Personally if i was going to pay the price of his things i want a picture that's big enough to see what i'm buying.

It does make me wonder if people have something to hide when they put little pictures up.... That goes for anybody selling anything. I mean they have a site and if i'm buying i want a picture that's big enough to see detail no matter what their selling and i don't mean a 4 by 4 inch picture. I want a 5 by 7 picture or close to it even bigger is better. I see quite a bit of chain mail when i go to sell and some of it is really nice !!! Some of it's pretty rough to !!!

[Cyberthrasher]

Well, this one takes up my full screen once I open up the thumbnail from his gallery

http://anvilcustoms.com/perch/resources/img_7582-w960h640-w960h640.jpg

How about a full size wallet

http://anvilcustoms.com/perch/resources/img_2689-w960h640.jpg

[dirtclod]

I didn't click on ever picture on the site. But the ones i did click on and they were several were the small ones.

[billymac814]

Not to take us back off topic but I'm not really diggin those. I finally had to go check out the key fob too.

Now back on topic; a steep smooth beveler would produce results similar to the original picture, Tandy has a new line of bevelers that are steeper than their regular ones as does Barry King. I will take a lot of practice to get a nice smooth line without tool marks.

[Cyberthrasher]

a steep smooth beveler would produce results similar to the original picture, Tandy has a new line of bevelers that are steeper than their regular ones as does Barry King. I will take a lot of practice to get a nice smooth line without tool marks.

Do you think they'd be able to get the flat look like that, or would they still need something to mat down the interior? I just hit buy on some small BK smooth beveler's (unrelated to this topic), so I guess I'll be able to see for myself soon

[billymac814]

Its hard to say really, it almost looks like if you'd bevel both sides it would look similar to that or follow it up with the tip of a large modeling spoon to widen the bevel at the bottom. It may not look identical to that but it should look pretty close.

[Cyberthrasher]

Yeah, that's why I was leaning toward a flattened screwdriver as a matter. I obviously don't know how well the BK's would get there, but I know a problem I have right now is the dang ridge showing its face in the middle of my work like that. So, if I were to do it now I would definitely need something to mat things down.

[J W Craftsman]

Thanks for the info fellas. I guess I never really thought of Anvil embossing the leather. Christian does some crazy work as well and both styles are more along the lines of what I would like to get to. Smooth clean detailed lines. I also thought about the screwdriver as a matter and will start playing around with that and check out the new bevlers as well and see what I can do.

[billymac814]

I don't think you'll need to use a screwdriver. Those super clean lines that Christian does comes from lots of practice and in my opinion they look similar but way better than the Anvil embossed look because of the wider lines created with the embossing plates.

The new Tandy stamps are a huge step up from their regular line and while they are twice as much or more than a regular Tandy stamp they are about half the cost of a BK one so they are a good choice for someone who wants decent tools but can't or don't want to spend the loot on the custom tools. Also I believe Christian once said he doesn't use any modeling spoons or anything like that. He claims to mainly use a beveler that is of an unknow manufacturer for just about everything.

[J W Craftsman]

Billymac, thanks for the info man. I'm not too far away from you I'm in Bloomsburg. You ever travel up this way doing any of the gun shows? I checked out your page, you do some awesome work.