What type of leather for a pad folio?

[jkittle99]

I want to make a leather portfolio to hold a legal pad , your typical pad-folio type of design.  My natural tendency is to gravitate towards tooling leather for something like this, because of it's stiffness, but I really love the look and feel of much of the other stuff I come across, but even thicker leathers seem to be very flimsy and I"m afraid the final product wouldnt want to hold form very well.  Am I stuck with tooling leather and dye for a project like this, or are there ways to make other types of leather that tend to be less rigid do the job?  Super newbie here, open to thoughts and suggestions.

[kiwican]

glue and stitch the leather you like to the veg tan?

[Halitech]

depends on if you want to do anything on the front or you are leaving it plain. If you plan on leaving it plain, you could use the veg tanned as a liner like kiwi said and glue the other leather to the flesh side of the veg tanned. Just turn it so the grain side will be facing the legal pad

[byggyns]

If you wanted rigidity but not the look of veg-tan, you can use a bag stiffener material to give the folio more stiffness. You just have to glue it between the inner an outer layers.

[Colt W Knight]

Commercial padfolios are made with thin vinyl and cardboard as a stiffenervous. There is no reason you can not use chrome tanned leather. 

 

 

[chapper]

I buy the cheap plastic place mats or the thin plastic (2 oz thickness) they call cutting boards at Walmart to use as stiffners.  Glue between the liner leather and the outside.  Works good.

[kiwican]

i like that idea too

[jkittle99]

Thanks for all the tips!  I'll post pictures once it's complete!

[wlg190861]

I just finished the first one I made, Thank god it was for me because it was to narrow for the legal pad { Live-N-learn }. I used 5/6 oz veg-tan an sewed deer skin to it as the cover, looks nice though. #1 tip make sure you have the right width.

Edited February 13, 2017 by wlg190861