Glossary Of Terms & Uses

[Deraj828]

I've been around a little while, made a few projects, learned a ton from all the folks on this site. I know a great deal more about leather and tools than I did not so long ago.

But there are still a ton of things I don't know, many of which are pretty basic; the types of things that one assumes are common knowledge, so they don't come up in conversation much. A lot of these things are also tricky to phrase efficiently in the search bar, but so simple that it seems silly to start a thread for each one.

So I was thinking maybe there could be some sort of glossary somewhere on this site that covers the basics. The questions that every beginner asks when he first comes to the site: what's leather, where to buy it, what tools are there, which ones do I need for which job, what's the difference between A and B, all that stuff. For instance, after a while I figured out several of the big differences between antique and dye, but for a long time I thought they were interchangeable. And I still can't figure out if everybody treats antique/stain/hi-lighter as the same thing or if they're different. I've seen several people asking about block dying lately, there could be an entry for that, which would allow a quick link with lots of info rather than re-explaining every time or digging up that one conversation from 'the other day.' Posts differentiating floral vs sheridan carving, the additional uses of tools, you get the idea.

Whether this would be better as one enormous post with everything a beginner/intermediate level worker would need to know, or it's own section with main topics {Leather Types} pinned and more precise topics {one each for Veg Tan, Chrome Tan, Latigo, whatever else} simply linked to in the main posts. Who would head this and whether it could be edited are also considerations... heck, maybe we could start our own wiki and just put a blaring link to it somewhere here.

Just brainstorming. I think something like this could be wonderful. Anybody else?