Thread: Leather

Ken,

Aside from the leather, they also carry a huge range of fasteners like copper rivets (bifurcated and normal) and studs which come in handy in metalworking....you are right, it's an eye opening experience but you should have seen their old store in South Melbourne before they moved...they even had the whips on the walls to go with the leather stuff.....and a good source of skippy hide for all the Pipers that blew their bags up...
Lee

Originally Posted by neksmerj

My godfather, this place had enough leather to make straps for every naughty kid in the world.

Good! After my 5 and 4yo performance today, I'm ready to make a few bottom smackers.

For those in Sydney and surrounds I have always used Birdsalls, in Mascot. They tan on site and you can talk to the tanners about which product would be best etc. Australian Kangaroo Leather Lacing Tools Accessories - Birdsall Leather Most swords have leather grips so leatherworking is something i had to learn early on.

Ken's mention of wet forming leather struck a chord. Back in 1982 while a student at WAIT (Curtin) I made this little chair. It incorporated milling, laminating, wet forming and saddle stitching. I'd never done any of that stuff before and none of the last three since. There was an old, I imagine '50s, horizontal mill with a vertical head. The mill made the windows rattle when it was running. I used it to carve out the back of the steel corner brackets which act as caps over the joints.

I still have some of the hide I used. Handy for preventing damage while holding stuff in the vice.

The saddle stitching led to another student project, and my use of the rattling mill again. I had acquired a taste for metalwork. I will see it I can find the parts I made.

BT

BT, that chair is fantastic, just love the metal corners and the leather.

How did you do the stitching?

I'm lucky in that I have an old Singer 29K13 boot patcher, hand operated. It sails through 6mm of leather with ease.

Nice work,

Ken

You lucky thing with the sewing machine. All my work is quality hand stitched... Mind you, there is no sewing machine i could ever afford that could baseball stitch a sword grip onto a blank.
Nice work on the chair BT

Ken,

I'm a bit rusty on the procedure, but simplified, the holes were punched with a multi toothed (comb?) punch, the two pieces held between my knees and the thread drawn through the leather with a pair of needles ie. one length of thread with a needle each end. A tricky job for a one off project. I can remember doing the job at my Mum's place and the house smelling of leather. Saddle stitching at midnight to meet some stupid deadline.

Saddlemakers used a wooden clamp or "clam" to hold the leather. I thought I could improve on the traditional design of the clamp by incorporating an opening and closing mechanism. I was wrong.

BT

I imagine that traditional saddlemakers's clamps were a couple of pieces of curved steamed beech bolted together so that the sprung jaws held the pieces of leather together for sewing.

My idea was to make a clamp in the traditional form using laminated Jarrah and make a mechanism that enabled the jaws to be held open to facilitate positioning of the leather being sewn. This was the second bit of student work I executed in steel. The curved lever started off as a length of 1" bar. There was a forge in the sculpture workshop and I was able to work the piece of bar roughly into shape while pretending to be a blacksmith. I used the old mill to cut the decorative recesses in the thingo that slid in the guide. The rest is hacksaw and file work.

In reality the mechanism turned out to be a waste of time. It was easy just to pull the jaws apart by hand. I sawed the jaws up and burned them but kept the metal bits as a memento, a reminder of student enthusiasm.

BT

ps. The photo below was copied from a slide. The only evidence that it once existed.

IMG_0009 (Large).jpg

BT, your metal parts are a piece of art! Fantastic!
That joint on the chair is just wonderful, the flow of metal and wood ... WOW!

Chapeau!
Nick

Originally Posted by MuellerNick

BT, your metal parts are a piece of art! Fantastic!
That joint on the chair is just wonderful, the flow of metal and wood ... WOW!

Chapeau!
Nick

What's surpising about those joints is that they've held together for 30 years Nick. The M6 fixings screw into threaded bushes silver soldered onto the inner caps. There is a short tenon on the seat rail epoxied into a stopped mortice in the leg. I think I epoxied the caps in place also. Good old Araldite.

Another 5 chairs would have been nice but not if I had had to make them!

Bob.

Originally Posted by MuellerNick

BT, your metal parts are a piece of art! Fantastic!
That joint on the chair is just wonderful, the flow of metal and wood ... WOW!

Chapeau!
Nick

I completely agree with Nick, all those parts are like miniature sculptures, you have a wonderful eye for design Bob, I can appreciate it, but could never hope to emulate it in a month of Sundays. Beautiful work everywhere, very well done
Rob