Basket Weave Problems

[HFTH]

Hey guys

I'm still pretty new at this, but I'm getting frustrated with my projects turning out mediocre. Right now I'm working on a roper wallet for my brothers birthday so I want it to look really good. Most of the outer part is basket weave stamped and I got about halfway through before I got fed up with the leather warping and the stamping seemingly fading away. I'm hitting the stamp about 4 or 5 times with a mallet on a concrete floor. The flesh side of the leather is bumpy where the stamp hits and I think that these bumps being pushed in is what is making the stamping lose definition. It's an almost brand new stamp from Tandy. I can't think of what I could be doing wrong besides not casing my leather correctly (I followed Bob's method from this website). Did I not let the leather dry out enough before stamping? Or am I just not capable of making something look professional?

Any help is highly appreciated, I've learned everything I knowfrom you guys! Thanks in advance!

[Northmount]

Too wet. Needs to dry until it is very near the same colour as it was before you wet it. Wet leather won't hold or give good impressions. Also when you fold leather, it will lose some definition as the surface is stretched. And folded wet will do worse. Your tooling should leave nice burnished marks, nice medium to dark brown.

For thin leather, glue it down to hard board, plastic or something similar to keep it from stretching. Rubber cement works well. It will peel off. If you do a search here, you'll also find that some use shelf liner with a sticky backing. Peel and press it on.

Shouldn't need to hit it more than once. Sometimes the stamp bounces and doesn't stay exactly in the impression, so loses definition. Professional stamps leave a cleaner impression, but the lower cost tandy stamps should still look reasonably good, and are good for beginners ... until you decide to get really serious about leather.

Tom

Edit: Rather than too wet, I think it is too dry. Do some test on a piece of scrap so you can see how it behaves versus the moisture content. Test stamp it every 15 minutes. When it is getting close to the correct moisture content, try every 5 minutes.

If it won't take impressions, it is too dry. If the stamp just about cuts through or does cut through, too wet and maybe too heavy a hand on the mallet.

Edited September 27, 2015 by northmount
correction

[Chief31794]

If the leather is cased properly (see Hidepounder's pinned post on casing leather), then you shouldn't have to pound the stamp, basically a medium tap with a mallet or maul and the impression should be deep and beautiful. I suspect that the leather is too dry and that the pounding is misshaping the leather. I would also invest in a marble or granite slab (12X12") or so, you can find them in many places, a poundo board of the same size to fit under it and that should improve your tooling and your back pain if you're bending over and tooling on a concrete floor.

The basket weave in this picture wasn't hit very hard at all, proper moisture content is the key to deep impressions not hitting it harder.

Hope that helps,

Chief