what resource was the most help to you when you were new at this?

[waddy]

I received a Tandy Leather kit for Christmas or birthday when I was pretty young. I worked through all the kits, trying to follow the directions, which were a little sparse at the time. The only help I received was a tip on how to case leather for tooling from a neighbor rancher who made chaps and did a little tooling in his spare time. Everything else has been books and lately, videos.I bought an Adler flat top sewing machine when I was still in the Navy, and wehen I got home I made headstalls, saddle bags, chaps, etc. by the trial and error method. Many errors and trials before I was able to make anything really worthwhile. I could work out the basics on my own, but the little tricks that make it easier and more professional escaped me and made things very hard and crude until I learned a few things on my own. When I decided to do this for a living I forked over the money for a bona fide saddle making school with Jesse W. Smith. It was worth 3 times what I paid for it. I would have given anything to have had help like this available earlier. I hope the folks just starting out realize just how valuable this forum actually is.

[Seasoned Warrior]

My Grandfather was my inspiration and my mentor. Both my Father's family and my Mother's were blacksmiths going back many generations: there are tools named after my paternal great-great-grandfather still in use today. As was the tradition in our families the oldest male children learned the "trade" and so did I. One of the first things I learned to do is make knives and axes and of course they all had to have sheaths so leatherwork was just a thing you did in the evenings after you beat iron all day. When I went to college I was going to be an Industrial Arts teacher and took a series of courses entitled craft industries where we learned the various traditional crafts from an historical as well as a practical perspective crafts that were the basic industries that made our great Nation great. I tooled my first piece of leather as a craft industries project and I was hooked. I have held a number of jobs since I left school but everywhere I went I worked steel and leather together. I don't have a son but my daughter can beat steel with the best so I like to think I've kept the family tradition alive. At least for me I don't think I could have had a better mentor than my Grandfather.

[whinewine]

Back in the late '60s, the father of a girl I was dating at the time did leatherwork. He showed me & I was hooked. Later, Tandy opened a store in our town, so I constantly went there to watch other leathercrafters & ask questions. The manager (Barry Yeingst) asked me if I'd like to become his assistant and I tried to absorb as much knowledge as I could while I was there. Eventually I moved on & into half a dozen different (& divergent) careers, but still kept my patterns & tools (even though I didn't touch them again for over 20++ years).

After I retired from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, my older son asked me if I would teach him how to carve leather & so we now make renfaire gear on a limited basis. And I still watch other leathercrafters & still ask questions.

[hiloboy]

well i'm new to leather work.and so far my inspiration is all of you and this web site. like i said before i have worked as a engraver on metal, ivory glass wood and what ever else will stand still i will engrave it..i did this engraving job and got payed with leather tools. so i thought i would try and learn how to work on leather. and then i found this place.. so where am i learning leather work from? RIGHT HERE!! i'm still trying to get my leather and a couple other stuff i need and i will be on my way thanks to all of you.. i do have some stuff i did on my picturetrail site in my signature.. but no leather but soon i hope...i also want to try burning on leather or what i call pyrographic art along with the tooling on leather.. aloha Curt

Edited September 16, 2007 by hiloboy

[Zilla]

I had the pleasure of learning to tool leather in my art class in High School. Most of it came from books but with a lot of encouragement from my teacher. After a few belts, wallets and a few purses I dropped it for the last 20-25 years.

After a move back to Oregon from Dallas TX, I have to drive past the TLF store on my way to work every day. After a few looks at their new catalog I noticed that the nicer starter kits were 50% off SOOO I picked up one.

Come to find out tooling leather is one of those art/craft forms that if you don't use you lose. I am highly embarrassed by the couple items I've done so far but it is getting better the more I do.

I must say I am very, VERY impressed by the work I've seen here and by the works on the links that have been provided.

Kevin

[Pip]

Here!!! Thanks guys!!!! Everyone i ve met who does leather work seems to have been salt of the earth..... Is it something to do with the almost meditative nature of tooling leather.

I have been given tools, some of which I don't know what they do! given leather for practice and great advice at every turn.

I have been really lucky, and try to give it back by introducing it to younguns, learning as i teach.

[Dan Hammons]

Hi All,

I was helping my Dad on his barn one day and ran acrossed a box that said leather tools on it and opened it up and was looking at the lucky seven book when he came in and asked what I had found. I showed them to him and he says I've been packing them around since you were in grade school just set them over there out of the way . Later I ask him if I could give them a try .He says sure but it's not as easy as that guy (Al Stolhman ) makes it sound . So I got right after the job at hand and destroyed evry piece of leather or kit I bought for a while that winter and put them up and dinked with it in the winter months but nothing very serious and I got to where I could make a checkbook look good enough to use but thats about it.After a devorce I found alot of peaceful time that winter to work on it and found it pretty handy not having to put everything away everyday. I got better at the floral but figure carving was what I wanted to do but couldn't get the hang of it so it was off and on in the winter for the most part and even gave it up for a few years and then the State of Utah decided that I didn't need a drivers licence for a year. Well after being moody for a couple of weeks and realizing being pissed off wasn't helping at all ,I was at work one day and thought about the leather tools and figured that if I was ever gonna figure out how to tool now would be the time cuz I'm gonna have alot of that . And that is what I did every night after work and every weekend non stop . I bought every book ever made and got on e-bay and started buying me a good set of older tools and made everything from wallets to purses and gave them to whoever wanted them. I got alot better pretty fast but then for about four months it seemed like I never progressed at all and then one day a friend of mine wanted a horse on a purse and I sat down and carved that horse like it was easy and it was as good as the pattern I was useing. When that purse was done and I saw the look on her face when I gave it to her I knew I would never quit .That was three yrs ago and although I realize that I will never do a perfect carving it gets harder and harder for the average person to see and most never do. As long as I'm better next yr at this time then I am now a guy can't complain to much. So to be honest with all of you . If I wouldn't have got that DUI I honestly believe I wouldn't be writting this today for the simple fact that I wouldn't have put that much time into it and I don't by any means want anyone to think thats the thing to do.lol Believe me It Sucks!!

One more thing I want to say and that is Thank You Johanna !!! This is the best site on the entire internet . Who would have thought a leather worker site would be the best in the world but stranger things have happened and I'm proud to be part of it . Thanks to all of you too.....Dan The Horse Purse I did for my friend.

[Guest]

I'll try this again; but I won't run a spell check this time! LOL

When I started there were no Tandy stores close....I don't consider the one in Columbus, Ohio as close (220 miles) so I learned by doing. Bought a few books but mostly it was trial and error. LOTS of error.

About 3 years ago I had decided to start up an old hobby of mine...that of knife making. I had made about 6-8 of them when I had a brain storm and decided that they all needed sheaths.....That was my start. But about 3 months into my sheath making, my son saw me working and told me that I HAD to make him a seat for the motorcycle that he was building. My first one was as ugly as a mud fence! So I tore it apart and did it again ... and again and again. I was satisfied enough with the fourth one that I gave it to my son.....it was the "king of hearts" seat. You can see it on my photobucket site. He liked it too and took it to work to show his boss....(he worked part time at a custom bike shop at the time). His boss like it enough to call me immediately and ask for a seat for a show bike that was being entered in the Easyriders show in Cincinnati. This was just after Thanksgiving 2005. The bike shop was Sucker Punch Sallys and that was almost 2 years and 200 seats ago. There is something to be said for doing the same thing over and over and over....You are bound to improve. Somehow it isn't boring when someone is paying you for it.....lol

That's my story and I'm stickin to it.

Dave

[pepin1948]

I think "from a teacher/camp counselor/scout" and "in prison" both need to be added...

I learned at Camp Cherith, in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, in 1983. I remember the date because I still have a rose carved coaster I'd made (have since lost the bookmarker). Camp Cherith was run by the Pioneer Girls, and I think is now called Mount Gilead. I wish to this day that I could track down my teacher and offer my sincere gratitude. At the time, she drove me nuts with her nitpicking over my swivel knive cuts (she used to make sure we did what she called "true cuts", and not just denting the surface of the leather.) I don't remember her name, just the year.

I did nothing with leather again 'til I graduated college in 1989, but then I was talked into making a shoulder harness sheath for a broadsword. Because of that camp counselor's detail driven instruction, things came back to me surprisingly quickly. (Thanks also to ALOT of help from Tandy Leather in Allentown, PA) After that, the "itch" got into me and I've not looked back!

[Mike Phelps]

I took up leatherwork because I wanted a nice, clean, tasteful guitar straps but whenever I found something even close to what I wanted the prices were just outrageous [now I know why]. I had a bit of time on my hands and my mother in-law located a box of crusty old tools, hardware and really iffy institutional dyes and finishes for me. The tools cleaned up good enough to be serviceable. But I was still faced with a mountain of ignorance and a lack of raw material. But at the store my wife and I were operating at the time we had a couple of computers hooked to the WWW.

Found suppliers for everything I'd thought I'd ever need. But hey we're talking about a guy trying to keep a small business afloat in a really tiny rural town, money is tight folks, if we have beans on Monday it's refried beans on Tuesday tight. So to keep from wasting money out of ignorance I fired up the search engines for "How To Leather Work" found a whole lot of ghost towns and/or aimless sites. Finally I came across the IILG. Pretty fine bunch of folks there. Wayne Christiansen, Verlane Destrange, gosh those two gave me insights and sent me detailed instructions on how to do things that I would have had to buy volumes of books to get otherwise. There are a lot of folks on this forum that were/are members there. I know Joanna's name was frequently mentioned while I was there.