Tools Of The Trade

[Murf]

As far as hand tooling work goes i dont care for my tandy tools at all except i did alot of work with the black rubberized ergo for a long time before i dropped the cash on an SK-3. I love my Barry King stamping tools. I use alot of tandy bought tools such as thronging chisels, al stohlman maul, french beveler, my awl with swapable bits, Over stitch wheel, stitching pony and alot of small hardware rivets etc. Alot of it is location IMO tandy is closest to me and i can have something here in a day. The tools i use from tandy do what i require them to do but i wont hinge the appearance of my tooling work on tandys products anymore, even though im still new to tooling i could tell a major difference when i bought nicer stampers

[WyomingSlick]

My recomendation is to buy used Craftools on ebay. Look for the older tools made before the early 60's. They will not have a letter prefix before the stamp number. This was before Tandy bought Craftool and moved the toolmaking operation from California ( Los Angelos ) to Texas. The original Craftool company had their tools made by various machinists in the L.A. area and were much more picky about how the tools were made, and the standard of quality they would accept. The very best examples of Craftools were some of those made in the late 40's and early 50's before the rising popularity of leathercraft took off.

Now is a very good time to buy used Craftools made in those early years on eBay. A lot of people took up the hobby then as this was also the Golden Years of Western Movies and TV shows. And now here it is 50 some years later and a lot of those tools do show up on eBay from estate sales, and just people inheriting them from their folks, and not being into leathercraft themselves. In fact, that is how my collection started - from some Craftools my Dad picked up when he was in the Army and stationed in San Diego, Caliornia, around the year 1950.

You should be able to pick up a good starter set with a selection of the more common stamping tools like bevelers, shaders, veiners, cams, seeders, etc for under 5 bucks a tool. Don't get in a hurry, watch some auctions, and get a feel or the prices tools are bringing. There are new sets showing up every week and right now, its a buyers market. Don't settle for some set that looks like it has been stored in the barn and is rusty. For instance.....I picked up a rack of 37 plus swivel knife from Hawaii a while back that looked as good as they did the day they came from the store. Really minty ! And for under 160 dollars !

[WScott]

Great advice Slick

Just be careful on E-Bay.....look carefully at what the items are, know what you want to spend

and don't get sucked into a bidding war. It's and auction remember you get some good stuff and

some not so hot. You can re-sell what you don't need.

Edited August 12, 2013 by WScott