Strap Cutter

Here is a neat trick shown to me by Larry Moskiewicz.  

The purpose is to make sure that the wooden strap cutter does not wander off too easily when you cut straps for horse tack or belts or any other strapping. 

By gluing a 1/4" wide strip of cardboard into the tool, the bar holding the blade is swung slightly, which gives the blade a very slight angle to the cutting direction so that it ever so slightly forces the leather strap being cut, against the guide handle.

   

 I think the photos explain themselves well, but I will show you a close-up or two: Here you can see the edge of the piece of card board - it is just about 1/16" thick and 1/4" wide.  

 From another angle you can see the piece of cardboard just about showing behind the bar holding the blade.  

 The next photo shows the same angle, but the bar holding the blade has been drawn back into the handle to expose the piece of cardboard.  

 This small modification makes one of the simplest tools to use, even more effective than it already is.

Braiding a Foundation Knot

Thanks to my friend Mark Sampson, my capcam works excellent so that you can see on the videos exactly what I see! 

 

You will have to practice this knot quite a few times, one after the other, then go have coffee and come tie five more knots!

Once you know the "story" I teach you by heart, try to tie at least one knot a day for a week.   It will help a lot to be able to do these without referring to any reference material. 

(The whole channel can be seen by clicking on the little icon in the top right hand corner:)

After tying the knot, you can roll it the same way you roll a round braid between two blocks of wood:

Updated 04/15/2021

Quick Effective Belt

Need a fast gift? 

This is a pre-embossed belt.  That's why I put it under small projects - there is very little work involved in making this belt.

I used water and spirit based dye to roughly add the red and green and purple to the belt design.  I worked fast to get a more organic look.  I did not want a detailed dye job.

So after that was done the belt did not look so hot at all.    

Then I sprayed the belt with two layers of Supersheen to create an even, partial resist and coated it with Chestnut Tan Hi-lite stain.   It outlined the tooling and gave the belt, even with the red and green, a very well made look!