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Okay you seasoned leather workers I need some help!

I am a newer worker and just have been tracing patterns, but I am ready to start drawing my own but let me tell you, I am having a heck of a time!

I need some tips and tricks to help me. I understand the general idea, but I have such a hard time making everything flow together. I would love a computer program, but would love to see books or illustrations and hear what everyone has to say!

Thanks!

Hannah

I use Corel Draw X3 (I think it's up to X6 or something now).

It's a vector drawing program (also comes with a bitmap editor, among other tools). The nice thing about it is that you can pretty much endlessly modify, combine and break apart shapes, as well as scale them.

When designing, I create the separate parts of my patterns, then put them together. This shows me how things are going to fit together (more or less) when assembled. I print the components on card stock, cut them out and trace them onto leather. If necessary, I'll glue or paper clip parts of a pattern together to see how they [should] fit together.

In fact, I'm picking up a 13"x19" Canon inkjet printer today to replace the one that died on me last week. The larger than 8.5"x11" will make it much easier for me to do larger holsters, like the OWB for my 4" S&W 29-2 that I wanted to develop.

The nice thing about Corel draw is that while it's not free, OEM versions are VERY reasonably priced (I paid around $99 for mine). It's also a very well known program with a large user community.

"When I was young, I looked like Al Capone but I lacked his compassion." - Oscar Levant.

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If you are going to try and go anywhere in this business with tooled items you need to learn layout and hand drawing. There will be many times that you will have a unique size or shape to fill. The computer help is useful but cuts into profit with the amount of time involved..... Its just cool to do your own and if I can learn it then most everybody can. Start with Bob Parks book and go on from there, is book will make the rest of the books make sense. Learning to draw your own will also give you a better understanding of the layout and flow improving your tooling outcome.

I'm a lousy freehand artist. What Corel Draw does for me is give me the ability to copy and modify existing patterns. I can break apart an existing pattern and modify parts as necessary to fit a different need. It's easy to redimension, change radiuses, and even to modify the entire outline.

I let technology compensate for my lack of artistic skill.

"When I was young, I looked like Al Capone but I lacked his compassion." - Oscar Levant.

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My only sage piece of advice is to remember to allow for the thickness of the leather. Especially, any time you fold it over. As the leather gets thicker, the radius of the fold gets bigger and the greater the allowance you will need. Skiving an edge helps, but you still need to make sure you have suffecient material to start with. You can always trim it if it is too long\big, Many a time I have drawn up a design and then had it come out just short of the mark when realized in leather because I forgot to allow for the thickness of the leather....LOL

Doing a cardboard mockup really helps with this. I suspect that using pliable foam cut with the pattern would help even more.

$99 for coral draw. U got a good deal considering it's $500.

That's the boxed version. You can usually get a good deal on an OEM disk(s) only version. I'll probably be shopping for a newer version in the coming year.

"When I was young, I looked like Al Capone but I lacked his compassion." - Oscar Levant.

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Posted (edited)

Joe Its not the first time I have been all wet behind the ears! I know that it has taken me over 40 years to just get to the point I am now with work and study. I do know that I have studied work of the masters in leather crafting and have had the pleasure to work with some of these guys.and have never seen a computer used and most were well before computers were around. I have to wonder what computer mother nature uses when she does layouts. I guess I had better get off my butt and look more into this with using computers thanks for pointing out how wrong I am.

If you have native artistic skills, good for you.

Unfortunately, some of us don't. I'm not going to let that stand in the way of me making a decent holster.

By the way, I've got a friend who's a mechanical engineer and a brilliant manual draftsman. He designed part of the wiring harness for the B-1. He has almost no computer drafting skills. He can't BUY a mechanical engineering job.

Times change.

Edited by Deanimator

"When I was young, I looked like Al Capone but I lacked his compassion." - Oscar Levant.

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Posted

I do both, and i'm no artist. When I'm doing something with a lot of small features I'll do it by hand first. Scan it and trace over it on the computer. When I have a set of measurements it takes less time to smack it together on the computer and hit print than it does with pencil and paper. I don't knock one over the other. They both have their place.

IMHO - pencil and paper first. its cheaper than a image editor. Unless you use free software (I use illustrator which is not cheap). Then move it to a computer if you feel the need to digitize a pattern for consistency .

Remember, we all started off with crayons.

http://www.cgleathercraft.com

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Posted

i downloaded inkscape last night, haven't really had a chance to play with it yet. can you add leaves and stumps and so on to lay out in a pattern? would it be possible to see some pics of the layouts you made, just so i can get an idea of what can be done with the program

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Posted

I recently purchased a book entitled "Floral Pattern Drawing for the Artistically Impaired". The book not only teaches you how to layout a balanced drawing, it also gives you tips and instructions for flowers, scrolls, stems, and leaves. I think that this is what you're looking for on the art side of leather work. I bought my copy through Leather Wranglers Inc (www.leatherwranglers.com). Good luck, let me know what you think about it.

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