Cutting Questions

[zuludog]

There are loads of videos on YouTube about leatherwork. Watch as many as you have the stamina for to see how they do their cutting

'Making a Leather Knife Sheath' by Jacklore uses a Stanley knife

'Making a Leather Knife Sheath' by Ian Atkinson uses (admittedly briefly) a Stanley knife, a clicker knife, and a round knife

Cutting inside curves is difficult, which is why one of them uses a strap end cutter, but that's not necessary, and is quite expensive

A round knife is the traditional leather knife, but they're also expensive, and need practice & experience to use well

Sharpen your replaceable blades, practice, learn how to use it, and take your time. If you're still not happy think about a clicker knife, Tandy sell them as Industrial knife #3595-00. Or look at videos of a kiridashi

[Lakejumper]

Rob,

if you're located in the U.S. and need a cutting mat, Joann's Fabrics has them for a good price with their coupons. Check out their website for coupons.

[RobC01]

On 12/11/2017 at 5:30 PM, zuludog said:

Sandpaper - about 80 grit, that's fairly coarse

But before that you can trim the edge just by running the knife almost flat along the eddge

Do you wet your edges before sanding? I was thinking about using a Dremel, but it seemed to rough up the dry edge and throw a lot of 'dust'.

[zuludog]

Hello RobCO1, We're looking at two similar, but still different things here - Cutting and Edge Finishing

CUTTING

In theory, if your knives are razor sharp and you follow the outline or pattern  you want, the cut edges of the leather will be clean, neat, smooth, and exactly how you want them to be, and mate up perfectly.

Coarse sandpaper is only used to remove the occasional bump, slip, protrusion,  misalignment, ragged edge or other mistake resulting from cutting out your pieces. If you get your cutting right, there's no need to sand.

 

EDGE FINISHING

Once two pieces of leather have been mated together by clamping or tack - glueing, and tidied up as described above, the resulting edge should be level, with no overlap between the pieces. Then the procedure I use is to sew,  bevel; a light sand sometimes with a slightly finer grade of paper, say 100 or 120 grit; then burnishing with gum tragacanth, Edge Kote, and so on. Search YouTube for leather edge finishing, burnishing, and so on, there are lots of variations

I have only used sandpaper dry and only occasionally; any dust is minimal and I can cope with it; I've never considered using it wet on leather. I've only used it by hand, I can definitely see that dry sanding with any sort of power tool would produce a lot of dust

You can use power tool for burnishing, that's different to sanding, but I've heard that sanding with a Dremel can burn out the motor; to be sure you need something more powerful like an attachment on a bench grinder

Cheap edge bevellers produce a flat or straight cut, essentially taking 45 degrees of the corner; that's why I usually follow up with sandpaper to produce a more rounded corner. No problem with that, as long as you're aware of it, but they do have their place

More expensive edge bevellers have a concave underside which leads the tool onto the corners and produces a more rounded corner, hence less need for sanding.

Search YouTube for videos on sheathmaking, which often show sanding, bevelling, and burnishing leather edges, as the edges on sheaths tend to be noticeable, so a lot of attention is paid to that. The videos by Jacklore  and Ian Atkinson are in any case, first class tutorials on leatherwork. They use power sanders, but you can obtain similar results by hand, it just takes longer.

Edited December 16, 2017 by zuludog

[ChasCS]

On December 12, 2017 at 2:39 PM, Lakejumper said:

Rob,

if you're located in the U.S. and need a cutting mat, Joann's Fabrics has them for a good price with their coupons. Check out their website for coupons.

That's quite the collection of cutting mats. ;-)

http://www.joann.com/search?q=Cutting+board

Chas

[RobC01]

5 hours ago, zuludog said:

Hello RobCO1, We're looking at two similar, but still different things here - Cutting and Edge Finishing

CUTTING

In theory, if your knives are razor sharp and you follow the outline or pattern  you want, the cut edges of the leather will be clean, neat, smooth, and exactly how you want them to be, and mate up perfectly. [•••] If you get your cutting right, there's no need to sand.

EDGE FINISHING

 

You can use power tool for burnishing, ...

More expensive edge bevellers have a concave underside which leads the tool onto the corners and produces a more rounded corner, hence less need for sanding.

 

I think for future projects, I need to just start with a quality knife. Wetting the edge did help when using a Dremel to clean up cutting errors. I used  a #3 edge beveler, and I've got a set of Cocobolo burnishing wheels that I'm getting ready to try using instructions I found pinned on here by Bob Park. I'll also be checking out the YouTube sources you mentioned, I'm trying to soak up as much info as possible!

Thanks!

[Grumpymann]

I got a cheep round knife on  amazon I practice sharpening an edge and cutting with it. And after a few projects it and a Japanese skiving knife for long runs they are the things I most use. I have a few craft knives I use for fine detail but they are rarely in use as of late.