Leatherworking: it puts the lotion on its skin

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Hobbies, Crafts, & Houses > Leatherworking: it puts the lotion on its skin

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VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

cakesmith handyman posted:

Fieblings standard, not Pro. Googling says that'll still work. If you use wool daubers do they stay with the bottle of dye and get reused or do you treat them as disposable?
When you dip the dye is diluted right? How do you store/dispense the dyes, do you have big sealed trays or pour it into trays then pour back into bottles?

And finally does dip dying interfere with wet moulding? E.g. will you lose the shape you've given it at all?

A few notes here

You can buy a 50 pack of wool daubers (or synthetic whatever). I keep an elastic band around my dyes and I slide the handle of the dauber into that elastic band to keep them with the correct dyes. If I ever like USE UP a dauber I'll just toss it.
I don't really recommend dipping unless you 100% need a perfectly even coat, you'll use a ton of dye, it will absolutely gently caress up your wet forming, the potential for making a massive mess is huge, it can be awkward trying to prevent pooling in areas or getting a container to dip with that is big enough. If you do a few coats with a dauber or similar technique (end of a rag dipped in dye) you'll find it's not super hard to get an even coat. If you look at my posts in this thread all my stuff has been dyed with daubers.
Whatever dye you're using, once it's dry and you're happy with it, take a slightly damp rag and really rub the poo poo out of your piece (uhh). You take the dye particles off the surface this way so when you use oil, tan-kote, etc, you won't end up getting dye on your rag that you use for those products, and you won't distribute that 'extra' dye around. This is less of a big deal with the Pro dyes I've heard.

Just some thoughts from me. None of my ideas are original, I learned everything from youtube so I didn't come up with this stuff.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2021 06:43

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 18:35

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

cakesmith handyman posted:

Made a sheath for my skiving(?) knife, cocked it up. Measured without taking into account the thickness of the knife and didn't allow enough for the edges, sliced the stitching immediately when I put it in. Also didn't think enough about the position and width of the flap with the stud. Remade it and used the edges of the failed go to thicken the edges up. Not happy with the uneven dye coverage, this was with pre-wetting the leather slightly then brushing dye on. Big pack of wool daubers ordered. The edges burnished up nicely though.

Also remade a flap/strap on my daughter's bag as the crappy leatherette it came with cracked almost immediately, nothing to see there but the chocolate dye I bought was a perfect match.

Next I'm going to experiment with 3d printed bucks for wet moulding and order an edge beveler, thought I'd got one but either mistaken or lost it, and a diamond awl. Might also try quilting a small decorative panel in the Macintosh style.

You live you learn! I did the exact same thing when I was making a sheath for my round knife, real dumb moment. If anyone else is reading this and will be sheathing a knife, it's really useful to glue the edges where you're going to be stitching so that the edge of the knife never gets to the stich- this way you don't have to worry about leaving a lot of extra room.

Anyone else use sandpaper to provide a rounded edge prior to burnishing? I find it helps.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2021 12:00

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

simmyb posted:

Leather goons, some advice please

I make my own cycling shoes. They are mostly carbon fibre expoxy with leather uppers that are bonded on the shells. The leather is ~1mm chrome tan kangaroo. I basically know nothing about leather except what I've had to learn to make a few pairs shoes.

I recently crashed my bike for the first time and roughed up the pair I only finished a month or so before. It has not abraded through anywhere. If I had to guess there's still 0.5mm thickness at the thinnest point.

Whats the best way to 'repair'? Current thought is to remove that bit of velcro, try to glue/seal the ends of the ruined stitched. Then gently clip/sand the really rough peeled/up parts, then trying to burnish or polish it.

I could do it by hand I guess, or I have a small dremel type rotary tool too. Is there typical compounds for this kind of thing?

This is a tough one. I'd use fibreglass resin (do you still have any epoxy from the CF?) to seal it after sanding to remove loose bits of fabric. After that you can apply black boot polish until it's built up enough that you can polish it down.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2021 21:16

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

HolHorsejob posted:

How do you go about sharpening/honing a french skiver?

I got one recently from Tandy (stainless blade unfortunately) and it cuts... so-so. The geometry of the cutting edge looks like you would need a purpose-built tool to sharpen it. The bottom face is a polished radius so you can line the bevel at an angle of your choice to choose the depth of cut.

You should return it IMO because you'll never get a good sharpen on it.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2021 06:09

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

Trabant posted:

That's a slick solution, and way better than my "shape some wood" suggestion!

Not as slick, but seems to be working -- babby's first wet moulding (a pen case):

It came together reasonably easily, which makes me think I probably screwed it up and won't find out until I disassemble it all

This photo made me giggle a bit, that's a lot of clamping force for wet leather! It's definitely not going anywhere.

The biggest mistake most people make (I think?) when it comes to wet forming a case for something is making some part of it at the opening smaller than a part further down, which doesn't work because the big diameter section of whatever has to pass through the top to get to the bottom in the first place. I've made this mistake a few times because I'm still a beginner.

That black will be great as a pen case, please keep posting the work!

# ¿ Nov 19, 2021 18:37

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

Trabant posted:

Declaring this one done. It's a bit rough in spots and a learning experience (e.g. forgot to install the keeper while stitching the main body together, had to do it after ), but it's passable:

Wet-formed upper, pigskin-lined backing, a different kind of veg tan for the clip insert, painted edges.

One more project over the next couple of days, and that will probably be it as far as leatherwork this year. Every time I break out the tools I'm reminded I live in a place too small for these shenanigans

Looks fantastic! Love the contrast.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2021 15:57

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

Trabant posted:

A fairly quick one -- slip sheath for my skiving knife:

I only got my lazy rear end to make it because I need to have it sharpened and would've been too embarrassed to take it in wrapped in a towel or something

Hey looks good, but get the king KW65 whetstone set and sharpen your own knives!

# ¿ Jan 31, 2022 20:45

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

For the hanging bits, I would maybe take one of those 3 pronged gardening rakes, the handheld ones, and lay them down on a workbench and sorta attack those pieces by raking them with that tool. Could also use a screwdriver etc. The goal would be not to pierce the material but instead to make it look a bit scarred, if that's what you're going for.

That's a really interesting piece, good work.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2022 17:19

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

Pham Nuwen posted:

I'd kind of like to make a leather satchel, sized for carrying a laptop and/or some notebooks. Simple is good, because I am not very skilled at leather work. Can anyone recommend a pattern or even a kit?

I'd maybe look at https://leatherbagpattern.com/ for patterns, you get to see the object before buying a pattern and they're like :10bux:

I've never made a bag, belt, wallet, etc because that breaks my rule of "if a suitable product exists just buy it" but it would be a fun project I suppose.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2022 20:52

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

Trabant posted:

Meanwhile, I bring dishonour to my house because I wasn't able to finish the bag before having to pack and leave for 12 days

But look at how pretty the stamped patch looks on the front panel!

To be continued, eventually.

That looks fantastic, well done. Like the contrast with the stitching.

e: if you have a flat faced hammer (no markings on the face) might be nice to flatten the stiches out a little! Like a shoe hammer.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2023 01:45

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

It's for something less than $50... Buy a punch from Amazon, mark the piece with pencil in the dead center where you're going to want the hole, and hit the punch with a hammer. It will be fine.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2024 06:25

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

I. M. Gei posted:

Alright, I made six holes spaced about 3 inches apart.

Front

Back

... I mean, I think it looks alright for a first try.

You can still see remnants from some of the pencil marks I made on the bottom, but other than that I don't think it turned out awful.

Looks just fine, good work.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2024 02:36

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 18:35

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

T-Square posted:

Temporarily bringing this thread back to the dead after binging it in it�s entirety. GF wants to make a whole day of the Renaissance Faire this summer and have us and a bunch of friends dress up for it, and I�ve decided I want to make some leather shoulder armor for a kind of barbarian warrior deal.

But this is not that! Because I have never worked with leather before! So I stopped at the Tandy shop down the street to look around and find something basic and simple to start with and learn some things and the lady was very nice and eager to help me get started. I picked out a tri-fold wallet kit, some dye and sealer, and a cool lil stamp. I can see that dyeing definitely takes some practice and patience because mine came out a little splotchy and uneven, the stamp would probably be better served with a bench top press because I only hit it once and still got a rebound bounce and it duplicated the image like a millimeter off. And it took me about half of the project to learn to pay attention to my stitching And I need to practice making my backstitches neater, that�s been difficult for me so far.

Anyway now I have a big double shoulder hunk of cheap veg tan that I�m excited to hack up and practice doing some projects from scratch, and the best part is now I need to go buy some NEW TOOLS

Yeah good work and good stitching definitely. A Cool Tool to pick up is a leatherworking hammer/mallet with a smooth face, then you can hammer the stitching after you're done, this makes a big difference in how it looks and feels (to me). I ended up just making a leather covering over one of my spare hammers so I also have a hammer with a softer face for various tasks. The joy of these kind of trades is how you can fold them back in on themselves to improve your practices.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2024 23:06

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