What is up with my bevelling?

[Doubleojedi]

Hello

I'm after some help.  Carving and tooling leather terrifies me. Every time I try, it just doesn't go right. 

Deciding to practice I did a flower on a holster. If you look at the picture I've uploaded you can see my attempts at bevelling.  I seem to have a small line of unfinished leather in all of the lines realise that this isn't good

 But I don't know what has gone wrong to produce this fault and can't for the life of me find anything similar online. 

Can anyone tell me what I did wrong? 

Is my cut too shallow or too deep, is my knife not straight or too blunt? Is it my tooling? 

I really am stumped any help or advice is truly welcome. 

 

Thanks in advance. 

[garypl]

My guess is your cuts are too deep.  Have you tried practicing with the same leather and bevel shallower cuts?  I see lighter leather at the bottom of cuts when they are too deep.

Gary

[Mattsbagger]

I’d say cut to deep. Immiketoo has a video titled. Cut shallower bevel deeper or something along that line.

 

 

Edited May 27, 2019 by Mattsbagger
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[TargetRockLeather]

I agree with garypl. I had the exact same problem. I learned that I was cutting too deep with the swivel knife and I wasn't beveling deep enough. I did the tooling while the item was flat, then when I folded the tooled section slightly my cuts opened wider and exposed the "core" of the leather. From your picture it looks like the same thing happened to you. I found the solution on learnleather.com. The concept is "Cut Less, Bevel More". I can't find the article now, but they have an excellent youtube video that explains the whole thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZp_ZI2XnzM

After watching that I practiced cutting less deep and that solved my problem. Take a look and practice on some scrap to see if that helps.

Edited May 27, 2019 by TargetRockLeather
mistake

[Doubleojedi]

Thanks very much for the advice. 

Much appreciated. 

[robs456]

Cuts too deep?
Leather too wet?
Pounding too hard?
Holding tool tilted?

 

 

[oltoot]

In addition, leather too wet

[johnv474]

Skip the cuts.  Improve your work by setting down your swivel knife.

 

[DV8DUG]

Good advice...

[Doubleojedi]

  On 5/31/2019 at 4:45 AM, johnv474 said:

Skip the cuts.  Improve your work by setting down your swivel knife.

 

Expand  

I'm sorry but I'm not sure I understand. 

Do you mean, Don't use a swivel knife?

 

[johnv474]

Yes.  Give it a try, using your swivel knife only for decorative cuts.  You may like the results.