Help A Beginner

[Crispy]

Ok I’ve been playing with my tools and the only tutorials I’ve had are the YouTube videos or Tandy videos.

I’ve made a pattern for a belt (or part of one) inspired by thistles. I’ve started a sample piece from the side of leather (7-8 oz.) and need some pointers if anyone would be so kind.

The leather is misshaping while I tool it, should I glue it to anything and if so to what with what. (The leather is thick enough to be a belt so the back will be the finished side, unless anyone can tell me of a better technique)

Is my pattern to fine? I don’t know if I’m attempting to mush to soon.

The back-grounding doesn’t want to stay level after tooling.

Any other observational tips would be great.

Cheers

[Dwight]

I am not an expert on tooling, . . . many others here are far better, . . . but my first observation is that you are making a couple of typical mistakes that are more or less universal with all of us as beginners.

1. You were working your leather while it was wet, . . . not when it was properly cased. "Wet" leather will spread out when tooled, like pouring pancake batter on a hot griddle.

2. From the looks of the backgrounding, . . . it looks like you are whacking it pretty hard. The tooling, truthfully, is more "sleight of hand" magic, . . . than truthful depictions. You give the appearance of an effect of depth, . . . or shading, . . . or rounding, . . . and you really do not have to pound it to get it there.

You also need to have a very hard tooling surface, . . . a piece of marble, a piece of 6mm or thicker steel, . . . something that is both heavy and not yielding.

Table tops and counter tops are simply too bouncy, . . . will not give you the desired end product.

Take another piece of leather, . . . 150mm or so long, . . . make a piece as wide as your belt, . . . lightly dampen it on the hair side only with a wet paper towel, . . . and trace out your design.

Let it dry.

Lay it on the tooling surface, . . . go over the face of the leather with a wet but not sopping or dripping paper towel, . . . ONCE. You want the "dark" color of wet leather to be uniform all across it.

Go find something else to do, . . . peeking back at it from time to time, . . . watch it until it comes back to almost dry color. Lay a piece of dry leather near it so you can see for sure. Test it, especially with your backgrounding tool, . . . it should make finely defined peaks and valleys, . . . and they should not collapse in your properly cased leather, . . . but will only make an indentation in the dry leather piece.

It is very unpredictable how long this will take, . . . temperature & humidity of your house, . . . how wet you originally get the leather, . . . etc. But you will only be able to determine when it is proper to tool (that is called being properly "cased") by experience and trial.

Goodl luck, . . . hopefully others will chime in with some other suggestions, . . . this works for me though.

May God bless,

Dwight

[Chief31794]

I think Dwight hit it on the nail, leather was too wet. The mallet or maul strikes should be taps, not pounds. Properly cased leather will tool very well with light taps. To case the leather there is a great tutorial by Bob Park (Hidepounder) pinned to the top of the How do I do that forum page. Basically, you wet the leather well but not soggy, then let it dry a little, no moisture standing on the leather for sure, most then put it in a zip loc or other type of sealable plastic bag and leave it over night so that the moisture works it's way into the core of the leather, then remove it from the bag, let it dry some more until the color is almost natural and you'll have several hours on average to carve and detail your piece, if you have to add any water at all, do it very lightly do not re-wet the leather thoroughly once you've started carving. Properly cased leather will give a great deal of detail with very little pressure from the tools.

I noticed you didn't bevel all of the lines, even your border lines should be beveled, there are books a plenty on this topic, but basically if you cut a line with your swivel knife it should be beveled. I would also practice cuts with the swivel knife and never close two lines in a point like on the end of a leaf, leave a small (very small) space between the lines then "close" them with the beveler. Look at some of the carvings on here from the great carvers, and look closely at how they use their tools. If you have a Tandy close by, I would recommend getting into a carving class when they're offered. If not, the videos and books are the 2nd best way to learn.

Hope this helps, it's not meant to be critical. The best thing you can do is practice, then practice some more, then finally practice some more.

Chief

[electrathon]

Also, packing tape on the backside really helps with the stretching.

Aaron

[Crispy]

Cool, this all sounds very helpful. I do think I’m guilty of a few if not most of the things mentioned (enthusiasm and all that).

I’ll give it another bash (or light tap) and see where it takes me.

Thanks all for the tips and pointers.