Swivel knife borders

[Alexis1234]

I am not happy with my cut borders- is there a way to soften/round them?  They need fixing( they look jagged, uneven, unacceptable). I'm not sure if there is a tool? What am I doing wrong? Is this the way the are supposed to look? I am struggling with tooling. Thank you for any help.

[TSes]

Try running a large, shallow, smooth beveler down each cut line where the border stamp will go. Don't go too deep. Then carefully run a modeling spoon down the cut line to knock off the sharp corner that's left. Then do the border stamp.

[fredk]

you can get a plastic beveler tool which fits into the swivel knife instead of a blade. That might help

PS. I made my own versions

Edited May 10, 2020 by fredk

[Alexis1234]

Thank you both. Frekd how did you make your own if I might ask?

 

[terrymac]

Easiest way I know is to use a back beveler.   It rounds off the "back" side of your cut.  Barry King sells them

Terry

Edited May 10, 2020 by terrymac

[fredk]

28 minutes ago, Alexis1234 said:

. . .. Frekd how did you make your own if I might ask?

Dead simple; I bought two bars of certain plastics. 1 is delrin and 1 is nylon. The delrin is the diameter to go into the knife. The nylon is smaller in diameter. It slips into a hole drilled in the delrin part. I used a modelling knife to pare away one end of the nylon bar to get the bevel shape I wanted. It can all be done on one bar but I had to be awkward. The cost of the two bars was about $3 and there's plenty to do other profiles

I first saw this thing on here but found a. they were/are very costly and b (were) very hard to get. So I made one.

If I find it amongst the mess on my desk I'll photo it and put it up.

[buzzardbait]

I cut my lines, then I bevel with a push beveler. after that I round over the edges with a back bevel blade in a swivel knife. My push beveler and my back bevel blade for the swivel knife are both from Barry King.

[Alexis1234]

Thank you! I'll have to put in an order with him

[Retswerb]

@fredk I’d love to see a pic of that. I’ve been swivel-beveling for a while now per @immiketoo but my hand gets awfully sore running the regular beveler tool along.

[Scootch]

Your geometric lay out looks great.  I find it much easier to carve something than lay out geometric patterns.  It's much easier to hide the mistakes with carving.  

Barry King also sells a push beader like I used here.   You could use this tool between your wishbone border stamps.  I cut two parallel swivel knife cuts then push the beader down the cuts.  

Nice job,

Scootch

 

[Alexis1234]

Thank you all for the help. I looked at the Barry King site. I've been slowly buying tools since December and can see I need to add a few. An update on this project(saddlebags): I tried correcting the cut lines this morning and some of them were soo wavy there was no way I could acceptably blend them in/ soften. The closer I looked, the worse they were,lol. I need to learn to cut straight!  So, it's back to square one. 

[Scootch]

One thing that can help with straightness is to buy a really wide blade for your swivel knife.  A wider blade is easier to keep straight for those long borders.  It also helps me to cut toward me so that I can see the sharpened edge that is not in the leather.  Making sure the exposed sharp point is on top of your scribe line will ensure your not fish tailing the cutting portion in the leather.  

Scootch

[Vikefan]

Alexis1234

 

Have you tried the the double Line push creasers that Osborne used to make.  brucejohnsonleather.com might have some used ones for sale?   I use a double lined one for the belts I make.

Hope that helps.

Vikefan

[Arturomex]

And there's always this from Tandy:  https://tandyleather.ca/collections/tools/products/craftool-hand-border-tool

Wouldn't load a photo but the link will show you a border tool much like an adjustable stitching groover except this holds a swivel knife blade. Cuts nice, straight lines. Handles curves quite well.

Regards,

Arturo

 

[fredk]

On 5/12/2020 at 8:57 AM, Retswerb said:

@fredk I’d love to see a pic of that. I’ve been swivel-beveling for a while now per @immiketoo but my hand gets awfully sore running the regular beveler tool along.

I got my materials mixed up. The nylon goes into the knife and into a hole in the delrin. The delrin is carved to the profile.

tbh I've only used these a couple of times as I don't do hardly any tooling or swivel knife work

1. this has one straight cliff edge and a slope to bevel

2. this has a centre bar, about 1 mm high by 1.5 mm wide and a slope on each side to bevel both sides of a line

B. The two together so you can see how I made them. Others could make them far better using a lathe and power tools but I don't have those things so I need to do it by hand

With these materials I can make any profile which suits me

[Retswerb]

Thanks @fredk! I’ll definitely have to try that, would be a huge improvement over gripping the regular beveler and running it along.

[Arturomex]

11 minutes ago, Retswerb said:

Thanks @fredk! I’ll definitely have to try that, would be a huge improvement over gripping the regular beveler and running it along.

Thanks indeed, Fred.

Regards,

Arturo

[immiketoo]

Seems like this is pretty will covered, but I’ll add this.  Part of your problem is that you’re cutting too deeply.  These line borders don’t have a lot of support once you cut both sides, and the grain can start to “peel” up on the cut edges.

for the most part, I don’t cut these borders anymore, rather I use a wing divider to score a deep line and leave it at that.

those push bevelers and beader blades are really difficult to control and it’s easy to mess up a piece of leather in a hurry.  The wing dividers afford a lot more control, and if you do need to cut them in, there’s a sweet channel to guide your swivel knife.

[immiketoo]

In these images, the border lines were cut after the dividers, then smoothed with a modeling spoon to round them off.