This Art Form Is Going Straight To Hell

[TomMeyers]

I see that I am not much concerned about what other people and companies are doing. I am interested in what I am doing. If more people are not interested in leather working ----- I don't care. If companies dont promote products for leather working ----- I dont care.

Other people don"t influence what I do or how I feel about my activities.

The state of lratherwork and leather supplies and leather products are not my problem.

I study quantum computing, bee behaviour in my back yard, sewing, leather. My education, my motivation, my experiences ... define me and are what make me happy.

[fredk]

On 6/22/2020 at 7:50 AM, Handstitched said:

. . . Its sad to see so many leather outlets, cobblers etc. closing down.  I hear of old saddlers , cobblers,  leather workers  etc.  retiring or passing away, but no-one in their families are interested in continuing the trade. . . . 

All the ' olde'  traditional trades' are disappearing  . Sad . . . . 

Another tale from me. 

For many years I made and repaired leather items for the members of my historical presentation group. Amongst the items frequently needing repairs were their shoes and boots. I reckon I did a pretty good job on those even though 'I don't do shoes!'

One time I came across an elderly cobbler in a town near me. In short, we arranged that he would teach me some rudiments of cobbling. We set a date for when to start. Come start date the shop was closed up. I was told the cobbler had died about a week previous. Try as I could I could not find the cobbler's family as I wanted to purchase as much of the old equipment from the shop as I could afford. This shop went back to the 1860s or so and had all sorts of very old, but still working, sewing machines etc as well as loads of hand tools as the cobbler repaired horse tack as well.

Over the next couple of months I kept an eye on the shop for signs of life. Then one day there was a builders skip outside it. It had building rubble. I asked one of the builders about the shop contents. They had smashed everything up with sledge hammers and sent it to landfill. I left them with the idea that the contents of that shop, which they had destroyed, was worth about £10,000 ( a conservative estimate, I had counted 12 large sewing machines and other machines, most from the 1880s to 1930s)

There's more

When I was in a plastic model shop some months later I mentioned this to the owner. She told me there was an old cobbler's shop just across the street, which was all blocked up. She gave me some contact details. I went to the contact who was an agent for the owners. He got me a list of what was still in the shop. Again sewing machines and tools by the score. Mostly from the 1910s to 1930s. I offered to buy the lot. I offered a low price as the machines had been sitting rusting for 20 years, unlike the other shop where they had still been in daily use. Word came back, the owners didn't want to sell to me. That was OK. What happened next wasn't OK. A few months later the owners decided to 'redevelop' the shop and the all the old shop contents were either sent to land fill or sold to a metal reclaiming company for a pittance.This I found out, eg, a 1910s treadle Singer they got for 25p, being the scrap metal price.

This I'm not 100% sure of as these tales are passed on to me. We have, as you readers no doubt have, those shoe repair places in shopping malls, the 'Heel Bars'. These are operated as paid-up franchises, ie the shop person buys their equipment. I've been told, from time to time, that this one or that one has closed. What about the equipment I ask. Enquiries I've been bothered to make of the mall has informed me that if the Heel Bar unit closed with the equipment still in it either the mall or the new unit renter has dumped the nearly new sewing machines.

These machines could have been given to schools or colleges or voluntary groups. I do know that a certain place called a 'Mens Shed' got 3 leather sewing machines, source unknown but they look like 'Heel Bar' ones.  They asked me to come along to teach some of the men of the 'Shed' how to use them, but 'Shed' rules disallowed that plus, I had to admit to them, I don't how to use them myself. So there they sit.

[Spyros]

Fred i get what you're saying, but to me at least one of the main attractions of leatherworking is that machines are nice to have, and necessary if you're turning pro, but you don't actually need them.  You know how I work?  I have this wooden caddy, about the size of a shoebox, and it usually fits everything I need to finish a project.  Typically I don't have to go back to my stash until I get to the hardware stage.  And by stash I mean another 3 drawers in the kitchen area for hardware, threads and some more specialised tools that rarely see the light of day.  That's all I have, and if I'm honest it's already more than I need.

 

When I start a project I take this box to my desk and get to work.  In the morning I pack it all up in 2 minutes, open my laptop on the same desk and start my morning job.  That's all.  There's really no excuses with leatherworking, it's just so easy to start and so rewarding from day 1.  To me that's the biggest selling point and how I try to get people interested.  You don't have to invest a huge dedicated space, get out of the house, breathe dust, deal with chemicals or dangerous machines, apologise to your neighbour for the noise, buy a crazy number of tools and equipment.   Compare this to woodworking, metal working, blacksmithing, machining etc and you'll see what I mean.  It really is a superior and elegant craft in so many ways, all it needs is love and time really.  

I think what puts people off it is that most of us make it sound a lot more complicated than it really is.  i mean don't get me wrong it can be as deep and complex as you want it to be, if you get into tooling, shoes, saddles, business adventures, production lines, whatever.  But for the stuff that most people want to make?  A wallet, a belt and a tote?   All you need is that box, a flat surface and an internet connection.   The rest is all on youtube.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Northmount
Uploaded photos

[Handstitched]

@fredk Geez Freddy, that almost had me in tears . How could anyone in their right mind do that???? A sewing machine for ' scrap value' ???  

And I agree , they could have been given away  to schools etc. 

We have ' Mens Sheds' here in Oz too, one in my town,  seems to be quite phenomenon across the globe . I've never had anything to with them ...yet , as there were   mumblings in the past  of me teaching them ' how to do leather work' .  Teaching some sweaty smelly  old men with  endless " back in my day stories"  leather work is not my idea of fun .

I've had my share of committees .....no more!!!!!!!!!!  

Ahem ....

Is  ' Tom Meyers' a troll ? 

2 hours ago, fredk said:

but no-one in their families are interested in continuing the trade. . . . 

Thats in  reference to a saddler  a few hours north west-ish of me. He was well known in his town, , well liked, highly skilled in saddle making, harness making etc. . When he was brought to my attention,  I thought, ' this is one person I'd  like to know ,  to teach me a thing or two about saddle making'  etc.  But  he passed away. And his two sons weren't interested in carrying on the trade so  they sold off all his tools machinery etc.  at a 'clearing sale' . A life time's trade, a life time of learning  ......gone....in one day!!  Probably end up at a ' quaint little antique' shop '  somewhere . 

That sucks !!

HS

[Handstitched]

@Spyros  I have a full time business,  and the fact its a ' hobby turned business' doesn't take away the joy of the craft, turning a blank piece of leather onto something beautiful and practical   , and I don't call myself a 'pro' , not by any stretch, but the machines do come in handy . They help speed things up...and help achieve the picture in my head .......that I've seen somewhere on the web no doubt. But I still practice the traditional way of doing things. Molding leather by  hand, cutting , crafting, shaping,  assembling and stitching all by hand .  Al Stohlman taught me that    

HS

 

[Northmount]

@Spyros Please upload your photos here in the future.  3rd party hosting results in photos disappearing due to people changing permissions, moving files, deleting files, 3rd party hosts changing their rules, 3rd party hosts going out of business, etc.  If you look through a number of the older threads here, you will find the pictures missing, and the thread may become useless to all future readers since they won't be able to see what it was all about.  If your photo files are too large, reduce their file size to fit.  800 x 600 pixels in most cases is adequate.  Smaller files helps people on the fringes of the internet as well, as they don't take so long to download.  Occasionally I'm at a location where my download speed is so slow I have to walk away and wait 5 to 10 minutes for the page to load.

Tom

 

[Spyros]

6 minutes ago, Northmount said:

@Spyros Please upload your photos here in the future.  3rd party hosting results in photos disappearing due to people changing permissions, moving files, deleting files, 3rd party hosts changing their rules, 3rd party hosts going out of business, etc.  If you look through a number of the older threads here, you will find the pictures missing, and the thread may become useless to all future readers since they won't be able to see what it was all about.  If your photo files are too large, reduce their file size to fit.  800 x 600 pixels in most cases is adequate.  Smaller files helps people on the fringes of the internet as well, as they don't take so long to download.  Occasionally I'm at a location where my download speed is so slow I have to walk away and wait 5 to 10 minutes for the page to load.

Tom

 

It's a paid image host service I've had for 15 years, it's not going anywhere.  I have thousands of photos (parallel hobby) and the only place they're somewhat organised is that online host, half the time I don't even know where my photos are on my drive.   But I'll try.  Might have to download from there and reupload here.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Spyros

[fredk]

25 minutes ago, Spyros said:

It's a paid image host service I've had for 15 years, it's not going anywhere.  I have thousands of photos (parallel hobby) and the only place they're somewhat organised is that online host, half the time I don't even know where my photos are on my drive.   But I'll try.  Might have to download from there and reupload here.

I originally did as you did, then my paid-up host blocked putting photos anywhere and demanded an increased fee. But before that I had already started to put photos on here as requested by Northmount / aka Tom

I use a simple photo processing programme. I edit my original photo slightly and save it to a file on my computer dedicated to 'Share' on leatherworker.net. I take that original photo and down size it to between about 300  to 450 pixels across in the photo programme, save it in that 'Share' file and from there post it on here using the  'Drag files here to attach or choose files . . . ' at the bottom of the reply box

[Spyros]

Yeah I know how to upload a photo.  What I don't know is how to find the one i want in 30 years worth of photos on my drives LOL

The leatherworking ones are all recent though so I'll give it a try.

[Northmount]

11 hours ago, Spyros said:

Might have to download from there and reupload here.

That would be a good way to do it.  There are several reputable 3rd party hosts that have gone out of business or changed their policies.  PhotoBucket doesn't allow 3rd party hosting, and you will see that in several posts here.

Tom