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smonaco694

Question on edge grooving and measuring/cutting

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Hey guys im about to get into leather crafting. I am waiting for all my supplies in the mail!

My first question is what is the usual distance you use from the edge for your edge groover?

My second question, which im sure will probably sound ridiculous to some of you, is when measuring the leather to cut for a project, how much extra leather do you sually cut on the sides to account for the space taken up by the stitching. For example, say i want to make a slipcover for a 5 in by 5 in square with a negligible thickness and my edge groover is set to 1/8 inch...would i just add 1/8 inch to each side of my measurement so that im cutting a piece that is 5.25 x 5.25 in ? 

Now say the thickness of the object is 1 inch, would i now add that to each side measurement as well to allow it to fit? i.e 7.25 x 7.25 

Sorry Im sure i made this way more complicated than it should be, I tend to overthing things. 

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Firstly let's agree that the distance from the edge of the leather to the -- groove

...............................................................................................................--tiny blade on the edge groover

..............................................................................................................--line of stitching

Are all the same thing

Generally you should set that distance to be the same as the thickness of the leather. For example I make knife sheaths from 3mm veg tan leather. The sheaths have a front, a back, and a welt, so the total thickness is 9mm; but the stitching line is still 3mm from the edge

But at first you could be a bit cautious and make it slightly bigger till you get the hang of it, on the grounds that it is a lot easier to remove material than to put it back on!

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When I make a pattern, I first decide the total size I want, the leather thickness I want, then I just make a stitching line where it needs to be. I tend to almost always stay around 3mm, but that's a personal preference. Unless the total thickness is more than 6mm I might change the stitch line to be 4mm. And if it's really thin, I might decrease one mm. While traditionally you're supposed to roughly have the same distance as the total thickness, I think it looks bad when the stitch line is wide. However, I do not make Horse saddles, where I can believe that this things are slightly more important than from just an esthetical point of view.

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