How Can I Harden And Form But Not Loose My Tooling ?

[BlackRaven]

Hi Everyone

I'm new to the forum and new to tooling but I've worked with armour & leather a while.

I'm a noob to hand tooling as have always engraved and have just discovered (the hard way) that when you hot water harden and form a piece during the drying (natural not bake) many of the bevelling raises back up and leaves the carved lines open!!!!

I always harden pieces so really need a solution if anyone's got any suggestions :-)

Thanks Alex

[BondoBobCustomSaddles]

Not sure if it helps, but; to keep from losing the tooling depth and definition on my saddles, I always tool those pieces that are formed (like the fork cover) after it is formed, dried, and stuck down on the tree. It is a pain, but; it gets the results I am looking for.

Bob

[Demuthsen]

If you are using a form hard enough, try tooling on the form while still wet

[Squirrelly66]

I make a form (usually out of a hard wood or a hard resin cast)then hot water dip (not frikken boiling)leather and put it on the form. I get it all formed up and let it dry on the form for a couple 3 days. Then I leave it on the form and case it with a sponge, then scribe on my patern (even over the edges and curves) with a stylis and then do my swivel knife work and then tooling. Chriscraft does fly cases this way by doing the tooling on the forming block. He has a thread in the figure carving section.<br /><br />It works for doing tooling on armor also. You can do forearm gauntlets real well this way as well as getting better looking tooling when doing pauldron's also.<br /><br />Squirrel