Due to the number of assholes spamming my comments, all comments will close after a number of days.
To all of you assholes who have nothing better to do all day than solve my captchas, bugger off.
After a lengthy hiatus, I managed to get some new leather and some time back into my busy life, so I’ll be posting some new projects over the coming weeks. First up is another knife scabbard, this one for a dagger from my SCA kit. I’ll be stitching it tomorrow, so pictures will come soon.
On the subject of new leather, I’ll say it again, or maybe for the first time, or something…: buy leather in person. I lost about $24 in shipping inferior product back to the internet seller. They were cool and refunded me, but I would have saved the shipping both ways plus about 2 weeks of delay had I just gone to my local shop first.
Okay, on to the tools. I was digging through the Tandy catalog the other day and saw that the Al Stohlman super-froofy swivel knife was on sale for about the same price as they normally charge for a blade, so I snagged one.
Yes, the decoration is a bit over the top, but let’s face it: so is 99% of most Western-style leather carving. On the practical side, Read more »
As some of you know, I have played various pen-and-paper RPGs since I was about 9 years old, and as such have had many different methods for storing the required dice. Now that I have all these tools and supposed skills, I thought I would do something nice in the way of a new dice case.
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:
I may be taking a year off from eventing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have projects in the pipeline. In fact, I may be working through this year to put together stock for selling at events. We’ll see how it goes.
List of upcoming Projects:
I’ll post as I have progress.
You remember that scabbard I made for the huge knife? Well, a problem developed after a time with the finish. It seems to have tarnished to a greenish sheen reminiscent of that found on old copper. The scabbard’s owner thought it was an effect I had aimed for and rather liked it, but it’s been eating at me since I saw the green the first time. Here’s a pic:
Obviously, this just won’t do. The problem is, how to fix it?
Well, I took the piece down to the good folks at Oregon Leather, and they showed me how to use Carnauba Cream to remove the tarnish. Rub the product on, let it dry, and then buff it out with some sheepskin. Here’s what you get afterwards:
Not too bad. It may take another coat before I’m completely happy with it though.
So, if any of you dig through the RPTools forums, you may have noticed my promise to put up a custom dice bag as the prize of a betting pool. As per usual, I needed to start with a prototype, and this one turned out well enough that I’m giving it to Greyduck as a sort of belated birthday gift. Besides, I dragged him into tabletop RPG games, so I might as well feed his habit. (And neither one of us drinks Crown Royal, the usual source of geek dice bags.)
Here’s the finished prototype:
simple dice bag
Now those of you in the forums may know that the purpose of the betting pool is to guess the final build number of MapTool 1.3, and here I’ve gone and carved the symbol for DiceTool, which has been in released status for quite some time now. Truth is, the MT symbol substitutes a surveyor’s sextant for the die shown above, and it doesn’t carve well at that scale. It’s ok I guess, but I didn’t like the three tests I did of the sextant, so I’m putting the DT emblem on the dice bag – which makes sense anyway.
If the winner complains, he can always send it back :)
Now that Xmas has passed, I can tell you about two of the gifts I gave away this year – Phoenix and Dragon bracers. Here’s a couple of pics:
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.
Here’s the latest finished project, a pair of fancy-decorated cuffs:
These are the 5″ cuffs with buckles. They cover about half of your forearm (as seen in the last post). For the buckles and straps, I went with a slot-mount this time instead of the surface-mount method of the bracers seen previously. This allowed me to minimize the surface area required for them, as well as simplifying the construction process. I did, however have to re-create my construction template for the buckles from scratch, so once again one side fits better then the other. One of these days I’ll get it right.
For the finish, I used a Fiebing’s oil dye, followed by Angelus leather paint and topped off with Fiebing’s Tan-Kote. This design would probably look good in a nice brown, and leaving the carved design un-dyed like I did in the last pouch project should work out pretty well. I was making this pair for myself, though, and my current wardrobe is all black.
One truly nice point of this build was using leather from a full side instead of a belly cut. Bellies are great for prototypes and one-off designs, but for your best work use the best leather. Even then, I skimped a bit and used a “tannery run” grade here instead of an “A” grade leather. The main difference you will find between the two from what I could see at the leather supply store is that TR-grade doesn’t have as even of a surface color as A-grade. If you plan on dying or painting the finished product, however, the leather itself is the same quality.
No, not those kind of cuffs – these are just wide bands of leather that wrap around your arm at the wrist like a super-size watchband.
A friend of mine wants a pair of bracers or cuffs, he isn’t sure which. So, this post is to get some pictures out where he can see them to make up his mind. (Note: the bracer pictured here is an early prototype made from tannery-dyed leather that I will not be using again. It is, however, the only finished one I have at the moment.)
Here’s a cuff:
And a bracer:
Options:
Tied or Buckles?
Like I said, that bracer is a prototype – the straps for the buckles have been re-designed and look much better in version 2.
There have been a couple of comments recently asking about where I get my design ideas and whether or not I will be publishing patterns. Honestly, whatever I didn’t pull out of my own head was more than likely either copied off of something I had seen at an SCA event or something I found on the Internet.
I’ve seen some cool ideas for carving on tattoo websites, but I always make sure that the images I base my designs on are not copyrighted in any way. In this day and age, you gotta be real careful about what you copy, even if you don’t plan on selling it. The last thing I want is for some jackass lawyer to come ’round with a stack of paper in his hand because my design looks like his client’s.
Now, as for whether I will publish or give away my patterns and designs, allow me to put on my Asshole Hat for a second here. The entire point of doing this sort of thing is to be creative and enjoy yourself. I will never publish complete designs with instructions and measurements and such, because I want you to use the grey matter between your ears. If all you are looking for is instructions on pounding out some crap to sell or give away or whatever, go somewhere else. The world is full of knock-offs, and I would much prefer you take enough pride in your work to screw around with it until you think it looks good and would be happy to give it to a friend and have them show it off ’round the campfire.
There has been more than one occasion where I have taken a half-hour to carefully replace a screwed up rivet because i couldn’t bear to look at it. Would you?
As an example of this, I was at an event last year and discovered I had left my hat at home in July, and needed to get some shade on my head quick. I wandered over to a haberdasher’s and selected a wide-brimmed number with one side folded up. Now, it was all leather, but the guy had slammed it out on a commercial-grade machine, had run over his own seams partway instead of matching them up, and the hat generally had this “half-assed” feeling to it, like the maker was just trying to push out some stock for his booth.
Unfortunately, the guy got me talking and I forgot to ask how much it was until he was halfway through sizing it for me. He wanted $125 for this thing. The leather itself cost maybe $15, and the skull pinning the side up another $3, so he basically wanted $112 for the _maybe_ two hours he spent building and fitting it. If he hadn’t sized it for me I would have turned and left – as it was, I bought the damn thing and felt like an idiot for it.
So. The point here is that if this is the kind of work you plan on doing, get the hell off my website.
If, however, you plan on taking pride in your work, giving attention to the details and making things for friends and family that you will be proud to have them fuss over, well, you my friend are welcome here. But I still want you to think! Be creative! Use my work as an example of what can be done, but don’t blindly copy it for yourself. (Unless, of course, I have managed to perfect something beyond any hope of improvement. Then you may copy. snerk)
In the end, it all comes down to what you want other people to think of your work. Are you just goofing around in the garage, or do you want to make something to remember? Do you want your projects to get tossed aside after a year or two, or do you want your grandkids to ooh and ahh when you tell ‘em you made it?
Me? I want the grandkids to ooh and ahh.
