Question About Skiving

[TaraMahaffey]

Hi, I am new to leathercraft and I was wondering at what point leather needs to be skived. I am making a corset as part of my Halloween costume. I am using lambskin and some other leather which is about 1-1.5mm thick and I was wondering if either of the leathers needed to be skived or if they are thin enough that they can just be joined together. Any advice would be most appreciated.

[Glendon]

It's mostly personal preference. Obviously if some leather is too thick to fold and you need to fold it, or you need to join to sections and the combined pieces would be too bulky, then you have to skive. However, beyond that it's kind of up to you. If the design works fine with a very slight buldge where the two leahters are joined, why worry about it? Besides, lambskin is usually so soft handed as well as being thin, skiving would be kind of tricky without risking cutting through it.

[WScott]

Welcome to the website. There is a ton of info on here and you may want to spend some time searching and reading the wealth of info on here.

OK I will take a stab at this, it is all just my humble opinion

Lambskin is pretty soft and flexible and will be difficult to skive by hand unless you have a super sharp knife and a steady hand

The good news is your leather is already pretty thin so you may not need to

My suggestion is to take some lamb cut offs and test out your edges to see how bulky they might be and practicing.

I am assuming you are folding over the edges to get clean edges

A good thread is here for that technique

http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=30270&hl=

I hope this helps

Cheers, Scott

[TaraMahaffey]

Thank you so much for the advice. There is no need to fold the edges over as they will end up being the seam allowances. The bulkiness is not going to matter as that will not be showing on the outside and might be better as far as bone casing and comfort are concerned.