Okay, you couldn’t really tell considering how I somehow neglected to post anything for an entire year.

Well, better late than never, right? Right? Okay, here are a few things I worked on in 2011, in no particular order:

Napkin Rings:

My daughter’s school held a fundraising auction, and I donated these. Apparently, they were the highest-bid item on the list. :)

Belt Holster:

Not one of my best works, but not bad for my first prototype of a formed-leather project. For this, I soaked the leather in water and then pinned it over a wooden form I had made approximating the shape of the multi-tool I always carry. Several months of daily wear has smoothed it out a bit and it actually looks better now.

Archery Armguard:

The prototype that never got finished. I got this far on it and realized that I had made a mistake in the knotwork. (Gah!) It’s also the last piece of that particular black leather I had, and I don’t think it will hold up well to having the stitches ripped and a replacement carving sewn back on, so I’m waiting to replenish my supplies before I get on with this one. I never did figure out how I was going to strap it to my forearm either…

Leather Valet:

This was the Girlfriend’s Xmas present for 2010. She was forever forgetting where she had emptied her pockets after coming home, so I made a memorable place for her. You can’t tell from the photo, but the area around the rose is a deep blue, while the outer ring is a forest green. This project proved how invaluable a stitching horse can be.

Upcoming projects, if I ever manage to get around to them:

Sword frog, a cover for my new e-book reader, a harness for my own sword (shoulder-style)…

The materials:

3/4″ plywood – I found that my local Home Depot carries several grades of plywood in 23″x23″ squares at a reasonable price. The downside is that these are usually prone to having more knots than the fine-grade full sheets. One of these was enough to complete the seat, arms and the lateral supports for the legs.

2″x2″ square stock – if you aren’t familiar with wood sizes, you’ll discover that they always exaggerate the dimensions by 1/4″ in each direction, which means a 2″x2″ is really only 1-1/2″x1-1/2″ – but that’s all you really needed anyway. Usually comes in 10-foot lengths which is plenty. My original plan called for the longitudinal leg braces to be the same material as the legs, but I messed up a couple of cuts and went with some pine out of my scrap bins.

Hardware -

• a good hinge (Al used a piano hinge; I was going to use a door hinge until I realized I didn’t have room to mount it so I went with a cabinet “T” hinge – it wobbles just a touch),
• several lag bolts with nuts and washers from 1-1/2″ to 3″,
• a box of 2″ wood screws,
• a 1″ D-ring,
• a pair of compression springs
• some mild steel, about 12″. (Home Depot only sells 3-foot lengths)
• a small bit of steel strapping,
• a handful of 1″ screws to mount the Footman’s loops and the saw teeth.
• 3  Footman’s loops and the Conway buckle (purchased at my local leather supply store.)
• Lastly, there will be a bottle of wood glue and about 30″ of strap leather cut to 7/8″.

The first question you’re likely to ask is how I got the strange angle out of the plywood on the top of the clamp arms. The answer takes a few steps. Looking at the picture below for reference, I first took a small block of plywood and sliced it at an angle turning it into a chisel-shape (1). This was then glued to the main arm of the clamp and allowed to dry, at which point I came back and sliced the resultant sandwich on the same angle (2). (I just measured 3/4″ from the existing cut.)

In the next picture, you can see how I have glued the left arm to the support blocks. (The right arm is just standing there to look pretty.) The plywood in the foreground is the seat plank, and you can see the two notches I have cut. The larger notch is for the base of the left arm, which has a matching tongue cut into the bottom of it. The smaller slot is to allow the tension belt through the seat plank – more on that later.

Considering that I’ve glued and screwed the left arm to the support blocks (cut from a 2×6) and then glued and screwed the blocks to the seat, that notch isn’t strictly necessary; it was on Al’s plans though, so I did it anyway.

Here I’ve secured the left clamp arm assembly to the seat and started mounting the front legs.

The support block has been beveled inward on each side (A) and the legs have been given a matching bevel on both ends (B). I used the scrap from the bevel cuts to make a flat surface for the clamps to grab as I glued it together. Once the glue dried, I went back and drove a pair of screws through each leg into the support block. You can’t see them here, but don’t forget the lateral and longitudinal support braces on the legs – the screws and glue at the top won’t be enough to hold them.

Now we get to the part you’ve been waiting for. In this pic, you get to see the completed clamp assembly. The belt is secured to the left arm, passes through a second Footman’s Loop, then back through a third on the left arm before it goes down through that slot I cut in the seat plank.

The arrows point out the compression springs that I drilled into the support blocks. These push the jaws open when the belt tension is released so you don’t have to worry about prying the arms apart when re-positioning the work. I bored the holes about half the height of the springs. To secure them in place, I slid a washer between the last two coils and dropped a screw down the center through the washer which is driven into the block.

Once the belt passes through the seat, it attaches to the tension arm. I’ve used a Conway buckle as an adjustment – this lets me use a single strap instead of making a two-piece belt system, and I think it gives me slightly greater flexibility of adjustment.

Here’s a close-up of the tension mechanism. The saw teeth are cut into a piece of mild steel, which is screwed to the side of the leg. Another section of steel was bent over the tension arm and bolted through. Just beyond that is the D-ring mounted with a bit of steel strapping.

To make the saw teeth, drill through the steel with a 3/16″ bit, then cut a slanted ‘V’ shape out with a hacksaw or a Dremel cutting wheel. Polish it all up with a file or a grinding bit in a Dremel.

The final step on this is going to be applying an ebony stain and finish to the whole thing, but I figured it would photograph better in the raw. I will also probably make a seat cushion for it to protect my aged behind :)

When it comes to full-size stitching horses, I have seen reference to three different types, two of which are built much like a child’s rocking horse in that they offer a full seat and have 4 legs under them. The first has a belt that travels through one of the clamp jaws to attach to the other at about the halfway point, leaving you some 8-12″ of jaw depth to work with.

The second type, called a Saddler’s Horse, has a complicated mechanism underneath the seat to close the jaws, giving you a much greater depth in the jaw. Saddle-making requires that greater depth, whereas the rest of us can get by pretty well with the harness-maker’s horse.

The third type is used mostly in the U.K. and Europe and is called a Clam. It is basically just a really big set of tweezers that rest on the floor and you hold them closed with your knees while you stitch. The arms of the clam are shaped in such a way that their resting position closes the jaw so you have to pull the jaws apart to insert the workpiece. This model offers the benefit of requiring far less space and you can adjust it to your own preference very easily. It requires a stool for you to sit on, however.

In his book The Art of Hand Sewing Leather, Al Stohlman includes the complete plans for what he calls his “Quarter Horse”, a stitching horse that rests upon any available chair and only has a pair of front legs. It is a variant of the harness-maker’s horse that has the strap going through the jaw arm for tension.

I’ve done a lot of research on this, and it has been very difficult finding someone willing to sell one of these, so I’ve decided to build it myself. Over the next couple of posts, I’ll be documenting the construction of a 4-legged variant of Al’s “Quarter Horse”.

Now, for most geeky gamers, the classic method of dice storage is a Crown Royal bag – it’s a good size for dice, it’s garishly purple (and therefore easy to spot among the clutter) and it gives you that extra bit of cred as a younger gamer to have something that was associated at one time with alcohol of a better variety than PBR or Ranier. Myself, I’ve had things like fishing-reel cases and random belt pouches, and my last one was a suede pencil-case I picked up at a bookstore. I like the style of the pencil-case the best I think, since it also leaves room for a couple pencils and other such that a floppy bag doesn’t. It would also give me a chance to practice up on another method of stitching: the Butt Stitch.

(DunDun-Dunnn….)

Once again, I go to my Al Stohlman’s Guide to Sewing Leather where he outlines the basics of this difficult stitch – and of course he makes it look a lot easier than it is. The idea is that you take two pieces of leather and line the edges up. You then stab (using a curved awl) through the top side out the edge of piece A, then in the edge and out the top side of piece B. Picture it as a pair of phone books: you stab through the front cover and come out in the N-section, then into the N-section of the next book and out the front cover. Here’s a picture:

In this instance, I have made a tube by wrapping a piece of leather around a bit of plastic pipe I had handy. If you plan on doing something like this, I would HIGHLY recommend using a piece of doweling instead of plastic pipe for one simple reason: tacks. Al recommends using a bit of glue to seal the pieces together, but I really don’t like trying to sew through glue. As you can see, I chose instead to go with a bit of ribbon to hold it all to the pipe, and as such I had some gapping problems when pushing the awl through.

If you use a dowel, however, you can hammer a few tacks or brads through your work to pin it to the dowel, thus snugly securing the work and making the sewing that much easier.

There are still other pitfalls you will run into. For this project, I chose a “tannery run” grade of leather instead of an “A” grade, and I have paid the price. I cut the pieces from the center of the hide I had to get the best color, and once I started sewing I realized that the surface layer of the grain was being pulled from the substrate as I snugged it up – and I wasn’t snugging all that hard. In the “Top seam” picture below, you can see how the first dozen stitches are separating.

Full seam

Top seam

Bottom of seam

Once we get down to the bottom seam, things are looking much better. (Except for the bat wings being at different altitudes, anyway. I apparently had my pattern skewed ever-so-slightly…) This is due to two things: the leather tightened up at that stretch, and I also ditched my bent awl in favor of my straight awl. The straight one has a thinner cross-section and puts less stress on the seam. Al’s advice originally was to take a regular awl and bend it using heat – which is excellent advice indeed.

Here’s a picture of the bat symbol after it had been cut and beveled.

Now on to the rest of the project. Here you can see how I have attached the lid:

The lid is a second tube, cut to be a larger diameter than the main body so it fits snugly over the top. That top panel is attached with a variant of the butt stitch, in which I stabbed through the surface of the tube, out the edge, and into the bottom of that top panel and through. That seam gave me a blister on my left hand from trying to brace the top panel as I stabbed through it. That blister tore when I was doing the bottom panel with the same method. Every project demands a sacrifice…

And finally, we have the completed project in it’s natural habitat: the kitchen table with dice.

You’ll notice the round seam above the bat’s head. I pulled the magnets out of an old phone case and sewed them into the two pieces of the project as a way to make sure the top didn’t flip open. I scraped out the flesh side of each pice to thin out the leather, and then glued and sewed some scraps over the magnets to keep them in place. It turned out to be unnecessary though, as the top is snug enough that spillage won’t be a problem. final finish is simple oil and Fiebing’s black dye, topped with a coat of Tan-Kote.

Oh, one other thing I learned on this project: when slicking the edges, use real cotton canvas. I got a much better result than with the scrap of old trousers from the rag bin I had been using prior.

I recently decided to invest in some better miniature screwdrivers, and found a set with a single handle and interchangeable blades that takes up a very small amount of room in my backpack kit. The case, however, is an uninspiring plastic jobbie with a blown-plastic insert. The lid is kinda thin, and I get the feeling it will get cracked before long.

I smell a new project!

While the tool roll I have shown you before is pretty neat, I decided to go with more of a wallet approach on this one. I figured a three-pocket design would be good, with a cover flap that snaps in place. This also gives me room to carve something interesting on it.

For the pockets, I figured I could use a softer leather sewn onto hard leather, and if I worked it just right, I might be able to hide a couple of seams for appearance’s sake. Considering the dimensions of the screwdriver handle, it would require at least one layer of welt to thicken the profile enough to look right.

So – on to the sewing.  I dug some suitable material out of my scraps bag and spent about an hour agonizing over the math regarding how big the top section should be to make decent pockets, settled on some numbers, and set to it. The outside seams are done with glover’s needles, and I won’t be doing that again without a thimble. Those bastards are sharp! I switched to my awl and harness needles for the handle’s pocket.

Once the pockets were stitched up, I cut the welt piece and skived it thinner along my stitch line so it wouldn’t bunch up too badly on the final seam. The welt is a U-shaped piece that just goes around the outside. In the pictures below, you can see I’ve also cut a second U-shaped piece, mounted snaps, and glued it atop the welt, which has already been sewn to the pockets.

Now comes the fun part – carving the design.

After much thought and agonizing, I decided to go with the Transformers Autobot insignia. I’ll be using this kit at work, so it has to be something bland enough that no-one could take offense at it. (The other most popular idea was to carve “I void warranties” on it, but I suck at lettering.) Here’s the piece with the design carved and backgrounded:

As I said, this will be living in my backpack and subject to all the dangers therein, so I backgrounded the positive image instead of the negative to give it a better shot at survival. I also intended to dye the whole thing black and paint the design silver, so this will save the paint from being scraped off as well.

Now for the painful part – sewing three layers of 7-8 oz leather together. Here’s a test-fitting of the project:

Again, I begged forgiveness from the ghost of Al Stohlman and used my Dremmel to pre-drill the holes. I’ve gotten better at judging seam distances though – I managed to get all of this seam done with one piece of string. Here it is all sewn up and the snaps installed:

The edges look a little rough here – these pix were taken just before I trimmed and sanded everything straight and smooth. Once that was done, it was time to dye.

Points to the World’s Best Girlfriend here, she brought me another bottle of dye just as the first one ran out.

The fiddliest bit of this sort of project for me is the coloring process. Dying something black is simple and straightforward enough, but the painting gets at me. First a coat of bone white, then we tidy up with a dye marker, then a couple coats of silver, more tidying up, and correcting where I over-tidied… you get the picture.

The last two steps I finished just today – I slicked the edges and applied a thick coat of Tan-Kote. Here’s the finished product:

And now it goes into the backpack, rarely to be seen again…

Real simple project, just cut out two shapes and stitch them together. The only tricky part was to keep breathing while trimming down the bunny fur for the cuff – cut bunny fur floats, and that shit gets everywhere.

The cuff is two 5″ tall strips of rabbit fur cut from two different hides to get a good quality section with no blemishes. Sew them at the sides so it forms a circle, then stuff the circle into the stocking until the top edges line up. (Fur should be touching the inside of the leather). For best results, tack the fur in place in about 4 places to make sure you’ve got it centered and not bunched up.

Now stitch the tops together (I used a simple running loop stitch), then turn the fur out and down, and viola: fur-cuffed stocking.

Finished scabbard

…and I decided it was just too pretty to dye, so I gave it a coat of sealant and called it good.

I think I’m actually getting good at this…

With that in mind, J went out and bought us a new camp hatchet, and sure enough, i decided it had to have a scabbard for safe transport.

I’m not sure if J and Illyana intended for me to be making a scabbard for it, but they sure didn’t complain when I offered. They’re no dummies.

Anywho, here’s what it looks like before the dye. I made it ambidextrous, so it’s pretty on both sides.

Those rivets are called double-caps, and designed just for projects like these where you can’t hide the ugly side.

In this design, the top and bottom rivet are there to keep the scabbard from pivoting off the blade (the tips of the blade are almost right at the points of the trefoil) and the two middle rivets are there to keep the blade from cutting the stitches.

Now to figure out how I want to dye it…

The Phoenix:

…and the Dragon:

Not bad, if I do say so meself :)

Dragon…

…and the Phoenix

Notice these will have laces instead of buckle straps. I did not have wrist measurements for the recipients, and lacing them gives much better adjustment. For colors, the Phoenix is going to be dyed black and then the bird will be painted red, possibly with some orange and yellow highlights if I’m feeling daring. The Dragon gets a medium brown background with the dragon itself dyed black.

For that, I’m using the brush dye method, and here’s what it looks like at phase 1:

Astute observers may note that the dyed version doesn’t have grommets yet – that’s because I screwed up the dye process on the first attempt. I dyed the dragon and the background with the brush method the first time, but the brown dye just does not cover evenly, and I could not find a way to smooth it out for the life of me. This time, after I have soaked all the black I can into that dragon, I will apply a few coats of resist and then use a wool dauber to spread the brown dye right over the top.

And if that doesn’t work out, the next one gets dyed brown first and then I’ll paint the damn dragon on.