Many years ago I took up leather working by first making myself a belt. This was inspired by finding dozens of harness buckles on an abandoned farm. The buckles were found in the ashes of a fire. Pretty soon I was making belts for friends, then taking orders. Leather shoulder bags, coin purses & card holders etc soon followed.
Back in those days, I sprayed the leather using a hand fly spray. Worked well, but now I use an air brush using Raven oil.
It was tedious slicing up the 3mm plain embossing hide with a steel rule and Stanley knife, so hand made a plough gauge or strap cutter.
The width of the strap is set by sliding the fence across to the correct width, then using one straight edge of the hide, just push it in and slice right down the hide. It cuts like a hot knife through butter.
The card holder consists of a front and back, dyed, glued and stitched together. While still damp, the leather is buffed to a high shine. The next step is into water, then a three piece former pushed inside and moulded to shape. An elastic bandage wrapped around keeps the shape whilst drying.
The sewing machine I have is an old Singer 29K13 boot patcher refurbed internally by myself. I'll cover the Singer in another post.
A final buff and Bob's your uncle.
A few pictures are worth a thousand words. These show the card holder, boot patcher & plough gauge.
Ken
