Rough-Out purses with silhoutte carvings

[Dan Hammons]

Here is a couple of Rough-Out purses with silhoutte carvings that I made recently. The ladies seem to like these better than my other purses and they are not hard to make.

[candyleather]

Fine work! Can you explain to me a little how to carving that kind of leather? Thanks

[Dan Hammons]

Candy, Carving these is just the same as carving anything else except that you are carving on the fleash side. You will need to push harder while transferring your pattern and with your swivel knife as the fleash side is alot harder. A sharp knife is a must! A silhouette pattern is the only type of pattern I have used when carving a ROUGH-OUT . After the leather as dried I dye the silhouette as usual and then use coarse sandpaper and sand it in a circular motion . This takes some elbow grease but you will see the effect right away . Sand it untill you get a nice even suede effect and then blow and or brush out the loose particals and your done. It doesn't take very long to get it sanded but some leathers are harder than others. One nice thing about a Rough-Out is that even though your leather is a light color and will show dirt fairly easy all you have to do to clean it is to sand it and it will be like new. That alone is a very good selling point plus the only dye or finish needed is on the silhouette. I should mention that it does make a bit of leather dust when sanding that will need to be cleaned up . I hope this helps .............Dan

You can find some information on this type of carving on the last two pages of Inverted Leather Carving by Al Stohlman

[abn]

Really nice work, Dan! Very unique!

-Alex

[candyleather]

Dan, thanks for your how-to tutorial. It can be possible use a pyrograph with that kind of leather?

[Roger]

very nice! and very interesting! i have never thought about making anything rough out

[whinewine]

Dan, thanks for your how-to tutorial. It can be possible use a pyrograph with that kind of leather?

CL:

It is possible. I did a banner (on chrome tanned suede, however) using pyrography on part of it. You just need to take reasonable care so as not to burn through if the leather is very thin. There is another post somewhere here on LW.net on pyrography. On it, I did a post of a picture of dragons using pyrography.

[candyleather]

WW, fine dragons! Thanks. Do you know if with a hard laser, with more time burning the leather, the finish would be the same?

[whinewine]

WW, fine dragons! Thanks. Do you know if with a hard laser, with more time burning the leather, the finish would be the same?

CL, I don't have a clue- I used a woodburning pen with several tips.

Take a scrap & try with the laser. Good luck!

russ