How to Walk a Bevel

[Leather20]

I'm having a tough time walking my bevel while keeping the edge clean, it tend to "jump" and hit in the wrong places and sometimes "smush" the craved line. I've tried lossening my grip, hitting softer, hitting harder, tightening my grip, etc but no luck. Any tips?

[DustinSmith]

What helped me when I started was make sure your swivel cuts are smooth and deep and I switched to a Barry King steep angle beveler, it stays in the cut better with the sharper edge

[Leather20]

Thanks, Dustin. I'm not sure what brand I have for a beveler but it is pretty steep (which I love!), it is probably a craft tool though.

[chuck123wapati]

I hold my beveller so its a bit above the work just a hair or lightly on then the force of the mallet drives it down then i move and tap move and tap. Then i go back over it by just sliding the beveller along with some  force to smooth it out. But I'm not the best at it either lol. Just takes practice. Do you have your leather held down so it cant move? 

Edited August 26, 2020 by chuck123wapati

[AndrewChung]

Once advice I've seen and seems to work for me is, assuming you have the beveller on the far side of the carved line, you tip it slightly towards you, so that the thin side seats more into the carved line. 

[BDub77]

Lots of good advice here from someone who has been tooling leather for decades. Jim Linnell. One of the secrets is to walk the beveller just a little bit at a time. Jim says he overlaps about 4/5 of the tool each time he taps it. So, lots of little taps and lots of tiny moves of the tool. Good luck.

[Rahere]

Part of the issue may be the knife blade. Ivan's catalogue got me thinking, yes, their choice of blades is good, but is it excellent? We invariably start with the duh option, a 1cm slanted centre-ground blade, but is it actually the bees-knees?

The options are:

Material - metal or ceramic
Angle - flat , slope or v-point
Width
Tip - single or multi.

However, I realised something was missing. As a rifleman, I'm very aware of how linked and precise our pointing finger is - to the point where I swapped my trigger finger to the middle finger, far better at squeezing. And this is what the swivel knife works off, but do we really need the v-profile or would grinding one side away to give a vertical face  and a slope \| be better? In which case, we'd either need one with a left-handed angle and one with a right-handed one, or start from a V-point.

Any ideas on this?

[Leather20]

19 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

I hold my beveller so its a bit above the work just a hair or lightly on then the force of the mallet drives it down then i move and tap move and tap. Then i go back over it by just sliding the beveller along with some  force to smooth it out. But I'm not the best at it either lol. Just takes practice. Do you have your leather held down so it cant move? 

I don't have it held down because I have a tendency to move my leather a lot so I can see where I'm going. I wonder if part of my issue is also lighting? I have a hard time seeing what I'm doing sometimes because my light come directly down so my hand and tools as shadows.

[Hildebrand]

@leather20 I have started using one of the circular light/magnifier combos when I tool.  It is on a movable arm andI can position it so I am looking through it or it is above just lighting the project.  It makes it much easier to get the tool exactly where you want it.  Also makes the swivel knife cuts easier.

Todd

[chuck123wapati]

21 minutes ago, Leather20 said:

I don't have it held down because I have a tendency to move my leather a lot so I can see where I'm going. I wonder if part of my issue is also lighting? I have a hard time seeing what I'm doing sometimes because my light come directly down so my hand and tools as shadows.

Lighting is very important as well as seeing  i use a pair of reading magnifiers under a magnifier headset lol. Your leather shifting is also a consideration.