New to leather work, my first practice piece :)

[edwardmorris]

Hello, I recently joined the forum and this was my intro post 

 

 

I got some good advice and pointers and will be getting a few more tools to try and accomplish my goal. In the meantime, I have been practicing with the basic tools I have from Tandy on some scraps. This was the best piece among the scraps and I attempted to turn it into a coaster. I'm a big fan of Resident Evil so naturally, Umbrella Corp Logo  . I didn't have a swivel knife (on its way) when I did this so its all just beveler, no cuts. I tried to leave a bead between the sectors and it is obviously all over the place, but hey, I'm practicing!

[tsunkasapa]

That is quite nice. Well done.

[rleather]

Nice use of scrap, that no long can be called scrap! Good job.

[edwardmorris]

Thank you gents! I have bit the bullet and ordered some mighty expensive Barry King tools, will have some more to share once they get here.

[PastorBob]

Also, check out one of our sponsors.  Leatherstamptools.com.  Sergey makes some really classy stamps.  I am not affiliated, other than buying a few from him.  You can also order them from Springfield Leather.

[AzShooter]

Great work for your first piece and a good use of some discarded leather.

[JayEhl]

Very impressive for a first time.   And when you start to use your BK tools, you'll understand why they're top notch.

[edwardmorris]

So a quick update, I had emailed BK this picture

 

along with the type of leather I'm working with (Tandy's Superior Oak 8-9oz) and they recommended #2 Edge Beader and #2 Push Beader for the beads and rounded border. The tools arrived today and I tried them out on a small piece, and now I'm worried #2 might be too narrow  Thoughts? If I need the next size up, I hope I'll be able to exchange them....

 

[Klara]

I lnow nothing about tooling leather, but out of curiosity: Why do you want to make an exact copy down to the thickness of individual lines? Unless you are trying to start a career in forgery I would have thought some variation desirable...

[edwardmorris]

8 hours ago, Klara said:

I lnow nothing about tooling leather, but out of curiosity: Why do you want to make an exact copy down to the thickness of individual lines? Unless you are trying to start a career in forgery I would have thought some variation desirable...

The variation I'm after is to make the belt TV accurate :) . When bought, it didn't even come with a leather strap, and when looking at options to buy one pre-made, I just got inspired and excited about making one myself. Same thing happened to me a few years ago with my motorcycle :D, went looking for a vintage, ended up restoring one from the frame up myself and learned a lot in the process.

[edwardmorris]

So I managed to get the beaders exchanged for the next size up and also purchased Barry King 30 and 40 degree bevelers. These are certainly top notch. I've been practicing cutting as well and starting to get the hang of it. I'm getting pretty comfortable making long straight cuts using a ruler but still need a ton of practice for free hand stuff like curves. Same for the beaders. Couple lessons learned when making this belt hanger from a pretty good piece I salvaged from more scraps.

1. Simply cutting with the swivel knife isn't enough to get a nice deep bead and actually have the leather round on top.
2. Cutting deep with the swivel knife makes the bead come out good but the cut looks hideous.
3. Cutting with swivel knife first, beading to establish a groove, then cutting deeper with a box cutter knife works much better as it allows the beader to go deep without making the cut look bad.
4. There must be something I'm missing when pressing on the snaps with my goldstar press, or I punched out the holes off center as they seem to be ever so slightly off (may 1/32 to 1/16).

Made several other mistakes as I kept working away at this piece, and am happy to have those out of my system. I will be trying a modest *real* small project next where I'll do my best to avoid mistakes and keep getting better.

[PastorBob]

practice, practice, practice.  Even after a few years, i am still making rookie mistakes.  I would rather try and learn from it, then not try at all.  Keep up the work, you WILL continue to get better.  Thanks for sharing your progress.

[edwardmorris]

On 6/29/2021 at 6:01 AM, PastorBob said:

practice, practice, practice.  Even after a few years, i am still making rookie mistakes.  I would rather try and learn from it, then not try at all.  Keep up the work, you WILL continue to get better.  Thanks for sharing your progress.

Thank you Pastor, for the encouragement :) For my day job I feel the same way, years of experience and I still make the silliest of mistakes.

I have been making time to get more practice in and I'm starting to get comfortable with BK bevelers and beaders. Someone on my other thread had suggested using tape on the back to prevent stretching, and that helped quite a bit especially with the edge beading! I still need more practice with the backgrounders, even with the tape (shelf paper to be exact) on the back, towards the end the leather did stretch and warp a little. I am also getting much better with casing for the leather I'm working with. I believe I need to practice backgrounding some more with the leather less wet to prevent the stretch. I also rigged up a makeshift press using a toggle clamp I had (not my original idea, pretty sure I saw someone else do it a while ago). This is working out great for logo stamps, as well as cutting out holes for snaps. Another lesson learnt was that eventhough I didn't cut the holes until after the backgrounding, they still don't line up even after correcting the original plan lines. Next piece I shall experiment using a template that I can use the cut the holes once all the tooling is finished and the leather has had time to warp (I know 0 warp is unlikely) and settle. I also took a stab at using the double beveler from Tandy for another part of the project. The tool has too sharp an edge at the rear and as hard as I tried I couldn't avoid it leaving teeth marks. I need to check with BK if they make a steep version of it, knowing their quality the end result will likely be better than this. I have more  pictures but restricted on how many I can share at a time, so I will add some more later.

As always, feedback is much appreciated.

[edwardmorris]

Goal with learning how to use the double beveler is to eventually be able to do this

 

Couple more pix

Edited July 10, 2021 by edwardmorris
last pic

[edwardmorris]

I've been away for a while but I've been busy practicing :). I have a bunch of pix to share but the camera on the new phone takes images in large size, how do I post pix that are more than 1.46M?

[johnnydb]

28 minutes ago, edwardmorris said:

I've been away for a while but I've been busy practicing :). I have a bunch of pix to share but the camera on the new phone takes images in large size, how do I post pix that are more than 1.46M?

http://www.shrinkpictures.com/resize.php

[Klara]

Does your phone not allow to resize pictures? Even my entry-level Samsung tablet has the function. 

[Northmount]

13 hours ago, edwardmorris said:

I've been away for a while but I've been busy practicing :). I have a bunch of pix to share but the camera on the new phone takes images in large size, how do I post pix that are more than 1.46M?

Take a look at some helps and options in this thread.  https://leatherworker.net/forum/topic/15122-how-to-post-pictures-on-lw/?do=findComment&comment=551171

 

[edwardmorris]

Thanks! Trying with resized pix. Made some coasters/place mats to get some practice with beading and basic tooling (backgrounding is terrible but not needed for the title belts ;)).

Have to do these one at a time

[edwardmorris]

Above two are gaming, next two are wrestling

Not very good at detail painting, most certainly need a LOT of work with the swivel knife on circles/tight curves

[edwardmorris]

Made some belts as well! Added a backing to all of these by the way, then ended up just making the layers blend with a burnishing wheel followed by a slicker both mounted on a drill press. Probably the worst thing to do to leather but hey, I like the end result

Of course, Made in USA stamps for some pride :D

[Northmount]

@edwardmorris Great start on resizing your photos. And good photo techniques too.  If you reduce the file size to 1024x768 pixels, you can post towards a 100 or more photos in one post.

[edwardmorris]

Thanks! Resized ones don't seem to have lost much detail, here is my first attempt using a (relatively) light/8oz tandy leather.

Satisfactory with room for improvement, perhaps time to look into thicker leather and longer studded snaps etc.

[edwardmorris]

One bad tap of the hammer very visible

[edwardmorris]

I need to figure out a better angle to get the whole length into the frame properly