Completely Hypothetical....

[McFarkus]

Dirka, go to the Tandy Leather store in the 1400 block of Madison Street and inquire abour some basic leather tooling classes. I'm sure they have them

Turpin (posting on my mother's computer)

[GlassMan]

My grandfather used to do a lot of leatherworking. It was a hobby of his. One thing he used to do a lot was use a series of dies and use them to press in on the leather and create designs in relief. By varying the pressure with which he pressed he could achieve amazing realism. I have several of his pieces that are cherished posessions of mine. One of them is a stallion rearing up on its hind legs in a western scene. I remember he used a single tear drop shaped die to slowly push in the entire design of the horse, and by varying the pressure he managed to create a beautiful impression of the muscles gliding beneath the horses skin. He really was quite an artist. He never sold a single one of his works, they were all gifts for others.

[billmcc]

Dirka,

Leather tooling isn't especially difficult and it sounds like you have the skills to be good at it.

Here is the Tandy website:
http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com/

[A Hay]

Here's a small project I worked on this weekend. Dirka, this is for you.



It's based on the Celtic Knot in Dirka Skene's Avatar.
It was a nice little practice piece. Size is about 5 inches by 8 inches. Only tools needed were a swivel knife, a beveler and mallet, a modeler spoon and a edger. I put Resolene finish on the light parts of the knot and then used Tandy Dark Brown Antique Stain for the finish.

Next time I'll pay more attention to getting the width of the lines on the pattern more uniform before tracing it onto the damp leather, but this was just practice to see how it looks.

If Dirka has the talent to draw the knots, she should be able to do the leather work also. Other aspiring leather workers, let's see your work too!

This was my last decent size piece of leather. Need to get to the store next week while I'm on vacation. Then I want to make a really good Scottish Lion Brown Sporran for myself. Then a Welsh Dragon for my new St. David's cilt.

Cheers,
Tom