Leatherwork and your Perception

Have you ever finished a project and thought to yourself :  "This is not too well done - shoot!     So many mistakes...."? 

Don't beat yourself up! Your work is beautiful! Even if you are a beginner!

It is just a fact that before you start a project, you have an idea and image in your mind as to how it will turn out, a VERY idealistic idea.   

Then you see the finished project and it differs from that image in your mind - your mind turns that into mistakes / short-falls.

YES, there is ALWAYS room to learn and improve - after 42 years I still learn to do things better / different / in new ways.   

Don't be phased by criticism by leatherworking veterans - they are probably only trying to help.   

More important is that you do not get phased by your own criticism!

Almost all leatherwork looks good to non-leatherworkers.  Keep that in mind.

Many years ago, when I was still a beginner, I made my cousin a handbag  -  I thought the work was mediocre.  

After about four years I saw the bag again for the first time, and my words were:  "Wow!  who made that for you - it is beautiful!"

She looked at me funny and said "You did!"   Then I realized, your work is better than you think.

While you work on your project, you notice every small little imperfection in your work.   In your mind these grow very big, because you are busy with the project close-up.

Teach yourself to put the project down at the end of the day and clear your brain.  Then the next morning, look at it as if someone else did it.   You will slowly develop the ability to look at your work more subjectively.

I hope that helps!

[Updated October 2020]

Dyeing Leather Grey

GREY????

I have always said:  "White is not a leather color - and that goes for all the colors that contain white (grey, pink, sky blue).

One nice way to get a grey color on leather is very old, or very newly made, vinagroon (ferrous metal dissolved in vinegar). 

 I have a separate Blog Entry all about that.

Here is a video where I play with vinagroon that is more than ten months old and three day old vinagroon:

After the leather dried and I applied NeatLac to each piece:

You will notice not all the pieces ended up deep black even after the new vinagroon was applied. This is due to two factors: 1. The leather can have different levels of tannins that react with the vinagroon. 2. I simply needed to get more vinagroon onto the leather to give a more completer reaction.

Warning again: DO NOT NEUTRALIZE the vinagroon - the leather has to stay acidic (about pH of 4).

Cable Organizers

I have been having a lot of fun making these cable organizers - they are used to keep your earphone or charger cables tied together and untangled. 

 They allowed me to play with tools I have not used in a long time and coloring techniques I want to test on something small.   And they make great gifts!  

 This video describes how to make a few rows of hearts with the meander tool:

 

 Then there are basketweave squares:  

 And spiraling basketweave:

 

 A simple woodgrain effect:  

 And coloring the wood: [To see how this one eventually turned out,  it is the bottom left-most one on the second photo above.]  

 Have Fun!!!!

CenterLine Border Fun

The main idea here is to have a center raised/beveled line and then stamp some pattern on one or both sides. 

It starts with drawing the two parallel lines with a compass, cutting them with a swivel knife and then choosing between a smooth, textured or figure carving beveler. 

 Here is the video (in two parts):     

 And here are still photos of the samples that were made or shown in the video:

        In the following small journal cover, the border stamp was also used against a beveled edge, but it was not a center line design.  (The design was drawn on a phone using the Sketcher App by Valentin Myamsin)    

Frogskin Background

I updated this blog post from long ago to include a new video and some photos.

Tommy McLintic of South Africa first showed me this very effective background. He is also author of the "Let's Make a Gadget" postings on this blog.

This method might look very laborious and tedious, but a surprisingly large area can be covered without too much effort if you enjoy the craft and want something special. I use it mainly for small projects.

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1. I first draw a feint guide line about 5mm from the edge of the surface I want to decorate - this line will later be the guide for a border stamp I will use around the background effect.
2. Next I start with the cased leather and the largest smooth seed stamp I have - a Craftool #S864. It must have a round a dome as possible. In the example below you will see little dimples in the 'mounds' - my leather is fairly thin and I do not want to punch them in too hard or deep.


3. I follow no rule when I place these first dots - as soon as you think a pattern might evolve, break away. I like to group some of the largest dots together as you see above, and then when those are all done, I look for any large open spaces and either place a few smaller groups or single dots.
4. With the following size of seeder down (Craftool #S631), I surround all the large 'mounds' with smaller ones. You could also just work randomly and that would give a different effect.


5. Be careful as you use smaller seeders - they need considerably less striking force on your mallet to make an impression and you will be used to a harder tap with the larger punch. Remember also that it takes many small dots to fill even a small area, so you do not want to leave too much space open for the smallest seeder.


6. The smallest seeder, a Craftool #S931, is then used to fill in the gaps.
If you want to, you can take the largest seeder again and just 'redo' one or two of the larger dots that have lost its shape.

7. An example of the coloring done with an airbrush - difficult to stay within the border tool used around the background.

  I recently did a Facebook Live video to show this technique.   That means that it is quite long winded (I did edit some spots out), so if you want to you can skip ahead. I tried to keep most of my talking in the video to preserve most of the tips I was passing along - forgive the many "Hhhmmmm ...... Eeeehhh" in the video when my mind is on the action of my hands and not of what I am talking about:
 Here are some examples where I have used this on projects.  First my wife's handbag:
 The rest of the bag was airbrushed - you can see it was spirit based dye - it did not penetrate all that well.   Now, after more than twenty years,  it looks antique, but I would have liked it to be more solid in color.  Waterbased dye penetrate better when used in an airbrush.
  A very simple example of the frog skin pattern being used for a covered buckle:
 This is a bag I made about ten years ago and I use it to carry tools and what-not to leather shows and guild meetings.  It also shows some other arrangements of the seeder tools:
  Here is a video that shows some ideas about backgrounds:

First published June 2017

Making a KnifeSheath

This post shows some basic steps in producing a simple project.

..and here is the second video - it is long but shows the full basket weave stamping and border stamping.

The first basket weave shows Chan Geer's method of getting the basketweave perfect every time!

If you want to see this method of doing basket weave in print, contact the 

Leather Crafters and Saddler's Journal.   

They can help you with back issues that the articles about basketweave was printed.

Video number five shows the saddle stitch by hand, using two needles and an awl in hand.

Basic Beveling Tips

Forgive the light in the video, but I did want to show you up close what the beveler does and how it should be handled:

This video is a bit longer and shows a few more refinements.  The design is not ideal - I was helping somebody with it - but it helps explain quite a few good points about beveling:

And here is a 2020 update.  I did this vodeo specifically for another post in the blog that showed most of tooling steps.

Updated May 2020