Illustrated leather carving instruction

[rayne100]

Anyone know where I can find a good instructional video or book with lots of pictures regarding leather carving?

[Tom Katzke]

Hide Crafter in Denver or Fort Worth.

They have a web site at www.hidecrafter.com .

One thing to consider is to take the Home Study Course. It gives a great basic grounding on leather work. The course is offered different ways from complete with tools and supplies to just the course. I am not sure if it is mentioned on the site. You may need to call or email and ask about it.

I recommend it from my wife's personal experience. Saves time and $ over just reading and watching videos because you send in your work. Your work is returned with comments and suggestions.

Tom Katzke

Central Oregon

[rayne100]

Hide Crafter in Denver or Fort Worth.

They have a web site at www.hidecrafter.com .

One thing to consider is to take the Home Study Course. It gives a great basic grounding on leather work. The course is offered different ways from complete with tools and supplies to just the course. I am not sure if it is mentioned on the site. You may need to call or email and ask about it.

I recommend it from my wife's personal experience. Saves time and $ over just reading and watching videos because you send in your work. Your work is returned with comments and suggestions.

Tom Katzke

Central Oregon

Thanks Tom, I will check it out and let you know how it goes

[joet]

You might also try the home study course put out by Paul Burnett. You can look at his lessons at his website located at http://stores.ebay.com/Painting-Cow and as you will see there are three different lessons to buy. This is not a bidding site. Just purchase the item and the service is really fast. I bought the first lesson and found out that I have been doing a lot of things wrong. Now I have to break 30 years of bad habits to improve my work.

[pepin1948]

I also recommend HideCrafters. George Hurst puts out a wonderful series for beginners. We have them as I'm a 4H volunteer - he sent them to our club FREE! He is an amazing person!

[Johanna]

Try to come to the IFoLG show in Pittsburgh in October if you can. You will see outstanding work, meet amazing people and have an opportunity to browse through the wares of lots of vendors, including George Hurst, president of Hidecrafters. The Saturday all night carving tradition is a fun way to see different people "doing their thing", too. You just have to pick and choose what works for you from, oh, dozens of "masters". Hope to see you there!

Johanna

(and welcome to leatherworker.net!)

[Grace]

Jessica ? your post says you are in NY.

since you are stateside consider Tandy. Try searching Tandy Leather or American Handicrafts. I am not sure of their new name.

Yes, I know these are the people who make the little kid projects but they used to have some very good books on floral and figure carving.

The holster set I saw on another post here used to be available as a kit from them. The same belt was featured in a floral carving book.

These books lay the work out in steps so that one tool is not "stepping on" another tool. It has been too long, i do not recall the order.

For figure carving the books covered a good many projects and the aim was to achieve a carver who could take a photo and make leather art.

Many excellent carvers were trained with these books.

They are not bound books but rather more like "How to draw" books.

If they no longer sell these books you might check ebay or Amazon.

I have quite a few but do not have access to them for a few months as I am working out of country.

Just a thought

Grace

[MatthewD]

Hey I was just looking around and found this video..

http://www.westernfolklife.org/site/batr/a...le_Maker.HI.wmv

It has some carving in it and also some beveling shown...

[Don101]

very good find and very interesting... how he made it look so easy and boy he works fast

[MatthewD]

I was thinking the same thing Don. But I rewatched it a couple time to actually see him working and I figured out that I really need to sharpen my swivel knife some more :D

[Kani]

Thank you for posting this. I now know that I also need to sharpen my swivel knife some more. I also noticed the way he was holding it. That helps alot.

[Mike Craw]

Hey Jessica!

First, welcome to Leatherworker.net. I haven't seen a question asked yet that somebody on here can't answer. The only problem you may have is getting multiple (different) answers, since some of us are a little set in our ways...

If you can find a Tandy near you, or can shop online, any book by Al Stohlman will have line drawings and "photo-carve" pictures of how things should look. I'd venture a guess that if anybody took a poll, over 90% of us on this site started with, or at some time referrred to, Stolhman's books.

If you stamp for a while and decide this is for you, you might want to go on a site called ranch2arena and check out a carving video by Jeremiah Watt. He's a fantastic saddle maker and has put out as good, complete, and understandable a teaching video on leather carving, layout and design as I have ever seen. It ain't cheap, but it's worth the money in my opinion.

Have fun, and don't be hesitant to ask questions.

Mike

[LNLeather]

Posted 16 June 2007 - 06:55 PM

Hey I was just looking around and found this video..

http://www.westernfo...le_Maker.HI.wmv

It has some carving in it and also some beveling shown...

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I was wondering if anyone has a link to this video that works?

I can't seem to get it to work, and have spent quite a bit of time trying to find it on the web.

Any help will be muchly appreciated.

[JLSleather]

book with lots of pictures regarding leather carving?

Al Stohlman's book "Tech Tips" is one of the clearest I've seen. That one must be 50 years old, and is still available for less than $10. Saw it at a Tandy store a couple days ago, same book I bought back in the 80's. A hundred people have "written" books since then, each "borrowing" and duplicating his "tech tips". While I'm not promoting any one guy's work, I will say that this book is very clear and detailed and the information is still valid. That said, I have TWO recommendations:

1.) Don't waste alot of time and money buying books (or videos) by people who want to get paid for telling you what was already said in other books. Save your money for the leather. Experience is THE best teacher.

2.) I'm with Johanna on this ... there's no substitute for seeing it done, if that's possible.

Just a thought ... you didn't say what type of projects you were wanting to make. but for $150 you could buy half a dozen books OR you could buy a side of leather large enough to practice carving a wallet - about 75 times.

[hivemind]

She's in New York, but she's still 4-5 hours from the only Tandy in New York, up in Syracuse. Leather resources in NYC/Long Island are pretty hard to come by...