DIY Leather
 

I love leather.

My creative, DIY, more-time-than-money, here, hold my beer side has long been common knowledge around here. But I have somehow become enchanted by leather. I have made a few projects by now, and I'd love to share them with you. This one here is not my first project, but it is one of the most successful toys I've made.

pic 01: First, a paper pattern. This stuff is expensive, so I'd like to make my mistakes on a paper bag first.

pic 02: Now I transfer that pattern to the leather.

This is very heavy, vegetable tanned leather. To get the stiffness and heft I'm looking for I needed to make it double thickness. That means I need to sew the two pieces together. To do this I have a specialized sewing awl.

pic 01: To make my stitches neat and even, I use a tool like a spur, a little spiked wheel to mark where the stitches should go. You can see the little dotted line along the handle of the paddle where I'll make my stitches. If you look carefully, you can see four or so large holes I made at the beginning with a punch. This was a good first try, but there was no way for me to make the holes go through the second layer of leather, so I quit, and just pierced both layers with the awl.

pic 02: Now I've made a couple stitches, lets' see how they work.

The way this works is I decide how long the line of stitches will be, say eighteen inches. I push the awl through the first hole, and pull through twenty-seven inches of thread. Now, the awl is in my right hand with the little bobbin of thread on it, and there's twenty-seven inches of thread hanging out from the first hole on the left side of the workpiece. Next, I move to the next stitch, press it through and then withdraw a little bit.

Since the thread is connected to the needle at the point, and the needle has a shallow groove in it, when I press through the first time, it pulls taught. Then when I pull the awl back, the thread's no longer under tension and a slack loop appears.

pic 01: Starting another new stitch.

pic 02: Pulling back making a little slack loop.

Now I'm going to make the actual lock stitch. I take the free end of the thread on the left and put it through the loop. Then I pull the awl out, leaving the loop of thread "locked" by the thread on the left. I then pull both threads outward in opposite directions, equalizing the tension so the place where they're crossed is in between the layers of leather. If I pull one too far, that side just has a flat straight thread with a little perpendicular crossing thread. Not good. So I have to pull the opposite side until it pulls the straight thread down into the stitch hole and "buries" the lock. Repeat this one million times, give or take.

pic 01: Starting the free end through the loop.

pic 02: Pulling the awl/needle back through the workpiece.

Hours later, with the outside edges of my pinkie fingers raw from pulling the thread taught, I finished the stitching. I am *very* happy with the result. Having said that, now that I've done this simple project, I can see a few things I can do next time to make it even better.

First of all, I'll make a shallow groove where the dotted line of stitches will appear. This will let the thread rest below the surface of the leather, protecting the stitches from being abraded. Honestly, in this particular piece, there's no practical danger of the threads being worn down to the breaking point. But for other projects, this will make a nice difference.

Next time, I'll make a much greater effort to make my stitches enter the leather at a perfectly consistent distance AND angle. The length of the stitches is nicely consistent, but the exit point on the "back" side of the paddle is somewhat variable, making a shakier line of stitches. Functionally, fine. Aesthetically, it looks kinda country. I'll do better next time.

There are other details you can't see since I didn't bother to capture them during the build process. I put a radiused edge on the whole paddle, save the end opposite the handle. This gave it a much nicer feel and a nicer look.

Next time, I'll also burnish these radiused edges making them shiny smoooooth. Next time.

If you look back you'll see I used brown thread. I put a lovely coat of black shoe polish on this one and the thread's black now. Still looks nice though.

Next time, I'll put a hole in the handle for a hanging strap or wrist strap.

Next time, some carving or stamping.... I have *lots* of ideas for next time. Valentine's day is coming soon. Watch this space!

pic 01: The bitter (biter) end. I like this treatment of the end of the paddle. It makes a distinctive mark, and it looks surprising, like someone bit through the end of the toy!

pic 02: Wide shot of the finished project. It sure takes a nice shine, doesn't it?

Oooh!
Just came here from the NSFW thread.
The toy isn't my kinda thing, but I admire the workmanship, and indeed it is a thing of beauty.

SG may be holding back on ideas for it's use

Ok. Time for a new project.

This is a keyfob for my girlfriend.

pic 01:
My patterns

pic 02:
transferred to the leather. This is veg tanned leather and quite thick, about a quarter inch. In fact, this piece is cut from the same piece of hide as the project above.

Once the pattern was transferred to the material, I used these small chisels to cut the piece from the material.

pic 01:
Here I'm starting my cuts.

pic 02:
All done at last. This represents a lot of cuts.

beautiful paddle! um, what's your address, again?:p:

Thank you, Cloud. You should definitely stay tuned.

(smiles) you're not the first

pic 01: I've learned to make sure that when I make double thickness items like this to reverse one of the patterns so I can put the flesh sides together leaving the hair sides on the outside.

pic 02: The top one will have a cutaway in the center. More chisel work.

pic 01: Here's the cutaway top with the full back behind.

pic 02 : I intend to hand sew these two sides together. I have a new (to me) sewing method, different from the method used on the bitten paddle above. One of the differences is that I want the stitches to rest in a shallow recess to protect them. I'm practicing making the groove the holes and stitches will lie in.

pic 01: Once I got my groove down (heh), I used this marking tool to make regularly spaced marks to guide me as I made the holes.

pic 02: I have to confess, I didn't use a hand awl for all these holes. I used my new sewing machine (deserving of a whole thread by itself--no pun intended) to punch these holes.

pic 01: Here's what it's gonna look like, eventually. I've just dry fitted all the layers together. You can also see in this picture (and the previous one) that I've radiused the inner edge. These are pretty close quarters for this kind of work and the tool I usually use for this is MUCH better suited for straight lines. Consequently, I had to do a bit of just plain hand carving, whittling almost. I will trim the inner red layer that is hanging over the edges before I bolt it all together.

pic 02: In other projects, I learned too late that if I intended to dye the leather, it's easier to do it when it's all apart and then just assemble the finished pieces. So here I've treated the undyed leather with some medium brown shoe polish. I really like this look.

pic 01: Trimmed. Glued. This is all coming together face down. I will put the back onto the backside of the front, after centering the red leather so the whole cutaway shows red.

pic 02: Looking good!

pic 01: Now to the sewing! I take about five feet of this thread, very heavy, waxed thread (left hand twist, mind you...), thread a needle onto each end, and then pull the thread through so the first stitch starts at the middle of the thread, like this.

pic 02: Now I start to make the first stitch carrying the thread to the next hole, passing the needle in my right hand through the hole and out the left side.

pic 01: Now I take the needle that was in my left hand and pass it through the same hole the right hand needle just passed through.

pic 02: When I draw up most of the slack from both needles, this is the effect. I've crossed the threads *inside* the two layers of leather. This process will be repeated many many times.

pic 01: Here's the first stitch, draw tight. Notice I still have a needle on the right and a needle on the left. That's how this process works, I weave these two needles back and forth past each other along the whole seam of the piece. This is different than the stitching in the paddle above. Above, the needle always stays on the right, just pushing a LOOP of thread through for the left hand thread to tuck through, then the point where the threads make a U turn (inside the leather) is pulled into the space between the pieces. The thread is holding against itself. In this method here (the heart), the thread is holding against the leather, not against the thread. This makes it stronger (a smaller bearing surface means more pressure and greater likelihood of breakage in the lockstitch method used on the paddle). The wider surface of a little bridge of leather that the thread bears on makes distributes the strain over a greater area meaning less stress per unit area, therefore less likelihood of breakage.

There's another reason this is much stronger. If you imagine a cross section of the seam made by the lockstitch method above, each thread is held tight to the surface of the leather by the thread on the other side. If one thread breaks, it sets free the thread on the other side. Perhaps you've seen this on some seams. A thread breaks and then on the other side a long continuous length of thread lifts off the surface of the material. But with this crossing method, when one thread breaks, the other thread isn't depending on it to hold tight to the material so it stays close. And the broken thread, on each side of the break, the thread passes back through the full thickness of the leather, instead of a quick U-turn. Much stronger.

pic 02: Many stitches (and a couple breaks and a restarts later), this is the result. I also added the metal ring for attachment to the keyring.

This is the victory lap really. She wanted it in black, so I shined it up again and gave it to her. It was very well received.

pic 01: Supine.

pic 02: Prone.

awwww. . .

Here's another paddle I made as a gift.

pic01--Pencil sketch of what I had in mind...

pic02--Now I need to transfer the sketch to some paper to make a pattern.

pic01--This is where I learned to turn one of the patterns over so the two halves are mirror images.

pic02--I cut these out using the bandsaw. It was a lot of very careful, tedious work. Tha's not a port wine beauty mark. That's my blood. Some of my tools are very, very sharp. They're designed to cut leather, and I am, after all, covered with it.

They're designed to cut leather, and I am, after all, covered with it.


Sez the Man in the Gimp Mask !!! ;)

pic01--Serious leather. Like what you'd expect on the sole or the heel of your shoe.

pic02--All cut out (outline at least) and the internal pattern is transferred in pencil.

pic01--This was when I discovered the usefulness of my chisels for this kind of work. Obviously the bandsaw wasn't an option. But I am considering getting a scrollsaw.

pic02--I like how it looks! Even with the blood... which by the way is visible, if you know where to look, even in the finished product.

pic01--Stacked.

pic02--Now I'm cutting the grooves that outline the design.

pic01--Looks nice and clean, doesn't it? I can see one little slip at the apex of the inside heart at the far left. Oops.

pic02--Half dead. Wait--half dyed.

Man thats going to HURT !!

pic01--This paddle uses glue construction, no stitching.

pic02--And then I put it to bed under this hunk of granite countertop. See you tomorrow!

pic01--Trimming the excess. You can see I haven't rounded the edges yet. This made for a *very* sharp edged piece.

pic02--I liked the contrast of the red leather showing through, but by the time I rounded the edges, and then dyed and burnished them, the contrast was lost. I'll make the finishing efforts like this before I assemble it next time, if I wish to preserve the contrasting edges.

pic01--Here's the finished gift. I gave it to my girlfriend for Valentine's Day. It's one of the few projects I've titled. This one is called "Beating Hearts".

pic02--Backside detail (heheh.. "backside").

pic01--Handle detail. I like the outline here, in my mind, it evokes the silhouette of a woman and it reminds *me* where the paddle's going.

poc02--And this reminds *her* where it's from.

DUDE! excellent thread! LOVE IT! granted i'm not into spanking, but your workmanship is awesome!

Hey V, StumbledUpon this the other night. Thought you might need a mini-project for a rainy afternoon...Do ya like Twizzlers?

An edible cat-o-nine-tails!