Always Test

 

One of the most important tips that can be given to any leatherworker, especially beginners, is to TEST EVERYTHING FIRST!! 

 Let me illustrate:  

For most projects I leave some extra leather around the edge - mainly to make sure that after I have tooled and the leather is dry again, I cut it out at the original project size.  

Also for small projects like this, I usually leave two on the same piece of leather so that  I have bigger leather to rest my hand on as I tool. 

 This extra leather affords me the opportunity to test various aspects of the project of the project first.   

The things I test is :

 * whether a tool is appropriate and maybe how hard to strike it; 

* whether it is actually the right tool that will achieve the effect I want;   

* how this leather will react to what I want to do; 

* how will this dye work on this leather and will the eventual color be correct;

* how is a sealer / finish / conditioner going to work with the dye I have; 

* just to get my hand and eye a little practice before I tackle the actual project.  

There are some effects I use that I do not always test, like the woodgrain effect above, because I use it so often.   

But if I wanted to try a new border for it, I might just do a mall piece of it on the side first.

 

Here are a few cut off pieces I saved over the last few days.   

You can see I also test how my boss sewing machine is going to deal with this leather thickness under its current settings.   

And there is a test for setting eyelets - I wanted to know if I had to punch a hole first if I wanted to insert the eyelets in cardboard sandwiched between to thin leathers.    

Even a test for the right slit punch when I had to duplicate a specific lacing pattern.

    

Above the most important testing was to see which gold paint would give the right effect and would look good. 

 I hope this helps!

Published April 2018