Leathercraft Wiki

[Cjrademaker]

Hey everybody. I have been a leathercraftsman for several years now and a professional for a little under a year now. Outside of crafting, leathercraft education has always been something I am very interested in and it is always wonderful to find places like this online where there are good folks like yourselves sharing in a common interest.

I am almost entirely self taught and the internet was always the first resource I looked to. As I am sure we have all noticed, the free resources available are surprisingly sparse and of entirely variable quality. Tutorials are all over the board in terms of quality, forums like this one are great if you have a specific question but searching them can be like finding a needle in a hay stack at times and most leather forums lack the traffic necessary to get quick answers.

I want to create the resource that I wanted when I was first learning and a wiki seems like a fantastic way to do that. I am getting a wikispace set up now and if it turns into more than a disparate handful of articles I will purchase a professional account and with the help of folks like yourself, turn it into something that anyone starting out can use and learn from from the most basic, to the most advanced.

If any of you think this is worth doing I would love to get your input. Click the link below to join the wiki and start contributing. The first thing I will be doing it writing articles about every tool that I can think of. https://wikispaces.com/join/49F79CP

If anyone is particularly interested and wants to start getting organized about it or needs some information about how to create pages, send me a message. I look forward to working with you.

[Thor]

Very nice idea. The only thing that puts me off right from the start is that one has to register to even read and I will never do this.

[Cjrademaker]

I did not realize it was still set to private, that has been updated now.

Like wikipedia it is now available for anyone to view and update.

If you are intimidated by the formatting h3, h4, anchor links, all of that, do not worry about it. I have roped the reddit leatherworking comminity to do some editing for us. If you want to contribute, write whatever you feel you want to share. Just click on the "Pages and Files" button on the right sidebar and hit "New Page," Give it a name, and just write down everything you know about it.

Right now I am getting started by writing articles about the basic tools. If anyone wants to join in on that it would be an easy place to start.

[DavidL]

Is the wikispace only for info and tutorials. Is there any way to comment or discuss a subject?

[AndyL1]

I did not realize it was still set to private, that has been updated now.

Like wikipedia it is now available for anyone to view and update.

If you are intimidated by the formatting h3, h4, anchor links, all of that, do not worry about it. I have roped the reddit leatherworking comminity to do some editing for us. If you want to contribute, write whatever you feel you want to share. Just click on the "Pages and Files" button on the right sidebar and hit "New Page," Give it a name, and just write down everything you know about it.

Right now I am getting started by writing articles about the basic tools. If anyone wants to join in on that it would be an easy place to start.

Perhaps a new link is needed? It is still requesting login information and signup.

[camano ridge]

AndyL is correct it coming up with a login page.

[Thor]

If it's based on Wikipedia's software it has a discussion page for each article as well.

[LoneWolf1973]

I went on and joined even though I had to register. From what I see this is a good project for people to learn the craft or, like me, have a bad memory and need a refresher on something.

[Cjrademaker]

https://leathercraft.wikispaces.com/

I figured this would end up being a learning experience. You are right, a new link was needed. The link in this post goes to the wiki, the link in my first post will take you to the members sign up page.

Each article page has a discusson page as Thor mentioned, traditionally those pages are used for discussions about proposed revisions to the page rather than a place to ask questions and get answers. Forums like this one are much better set up for that purpose and already have the community to back them up.

[Thor]

Looks good and it's a good start. Actually I think this would fit in well with this thread http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=63332 and believe you should post it there as well.

You may have to connect some dots as you seem to have issues with the display of pictures.

[MonicaJacobson]

Ha, Thor, I was just thinking the same thing. This might be a better way of doing what we were thinking. That way, it wouldn't all be down to one or two people.

[TwinOaks]

It seems a little redundant....essentially, you're looking to make a wiki version of THIS site? Leatherworker.net already IS the single largest compendium of leather working knowledge.

[Cjrademaker]

I do not believe they are redundant, both methods have distinct advantage and disadvantages.

While it is true that this site is a wonderful source, there are lots of things that this, or any forum is simply no good at. Search in forums is always choppy at best, there are some terms that become so commonly used in discussion that they become useless to use as search terms. A forum is ideal for things like critiques, feedback, opinion and advice questions, and of course sharing your work with the community. The strength of a forum as a medium is conversation.

There are some things however that it is quite bad at. There is some information that is just really hard to find though a forum search. Yes, the information is already here, but it buried between lots of back and fourth and conversation to dig though. It might be that the information you needed was on the fourth page of a thread and you gave up on the third page. Perhaps the thread which had the information you needed was under a title like "Need Help," which would give you no indication that this was a place where you would find what you need.

The advantage of the wiki is organziation of the information and the repeated reviewing and revising of information. A wiki is easy to search for exactly what you need, whenever you need it. Because these are articles, not conversations, the information is presented in a much more complete and organzied way. Wikis are great for exploring though topics, clicking through from linked article to linked article with each step being a series of complete and distinct thoughts.

Vinegaroon is great example of this. If you search leatherworker.net for the term "vinegaroon," you will find threads about people using vinegaroon, people suggesting others use vinegaroon, people asking if their batch looks okay, threads of people picking up in the middle of the vinegaroon process and asking about how the rinsing works, threads for questions that never got answerd and finally (not on the first page of the search results by the way) you will find threads about how to make the stuff.

On a leather wiki that has been developed by the community for a sufficiently long time if you search vinegaroon, without fail the first article will be the "vinegaroon" article which will have all the information in one, well organized place with links to related topics to explore such as other natural dyes.

[DavidL]

Leatherworker.net has the most information on leather by far. Its a great site for information and sharing.

Like any other thing there are always ways to improve on it. The thing that keeps occurring is new members asking about how to dye leather, or what tools to buy. Often there are times where I have to repeat the same answer multiple times to different people. In the leathercraft wiki its 100 percent tutorials and FAQs.

There aren't:

many pinned threads for FAQ or

a small subsection where members can post tutorials. There is no section devoted just for tutorials (from time to time there are tutorials posted but are hard to find again) :

tutorials section:

Measuring

Glueing

Hand stitching

Dyeing

Cutting

Tooling

Saddle making

Bag making

Wallet making

accessory making

Edge burnishing

Most viewed section

Most liked section

FAQs

This way when someone is looking for help on dyeing they can look through the dyeing tutorial thread for common issues or just to look for different techniques. Even a new section where members can like an article and those with the most view and likes will be in the most viewed section or most liked section.

I think it would make it easier (having a tutorial only section) for good tutorials to be easily found as there are usually more questions than there are tutorials. When needing to look up about stitching leathers I can look at a section where there will be 20 different tutorials instead of taking 2 hours trying to find them.

basically separating the questions from the tutorials. Create a new subsection for tutorials only and there will likely be more tutorials being posted because there is now a place for them to be posted in.

Leatherworker is a great community, I wouldn't have as much knowledge doing this by myself when there is over hundreds of people's knowledge and experience. It is a huge lifesaver when you can't find a solution to a problem and can find others who had the same issues.

Edited May 2, 2015 by DavidL

[Cjrademaker]

After doing all that talking about vinegaroon, I thought I would start a page about it.

https://leathercraft.wikispaces.com/Vinegaroon

Take a look at it, correct me where I am wrong, add your two cents.

[JLSleather]

I would agree that a site where anyone can post any opinion about a given subject would be redundant. You need not search many posts to see that a simple question can result in 20 answers ... 2 right, 5 not even ballpark, 5 that have basically nothing to do with the original question, and 10 of those that basically conclude "yeah, what he said" Oh, and dont' forget 1.5 that are outright BS, by someone who wants to appear to know "topic x".

Now, that's a light-hearted look at it, but the underlying idea is true. I knew leather BEFORE I found this site. But I could certainly see where the true "newby" could be genuinely confused by conflicting opinions, misinformation, with some outright BS mixed in. Yes, I know it's not politically correct to say... but fact is there are many people who are more interested in APPEARING right than actually BEING right.

I'll be adding free informational downloads to my site as I'm able to get them up. There won't be any "discussion" pages, burying the information. Anyone who cares to can view or save these files - free of charge. Anyone else is welcome not to -- each his own.

The only purpose for - and difference in - these files is 1). No charge - they aren't designed to sell you anything, and 2.) see #1

[Sporq]

Well, for better or for worse, I like this wiki idea, and have already started to contribute to it. Hopefully it will become a valuable resource for someone.

[johnv474]

When I visit, I see this:

"

Subscription Expired

This wiki's subscription has expired. The wiki will be reactivated once one of the wiki organizers renews the wiki's subscription. For more information, please visit this blog post."