Handcrafted
leather items made on the Sunshine Coast of BC, Canada
CUSTOM OR COMMISSIONED WORK
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How to tie a Mystery Braid
Steps to Tool Leather
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Leathercraft Guilds I am proud to belong to
Sunshine Coast Links that are relevant to me
Some other leather craftsmen I know
I sometimes do custom work, but am not prepared to do “everything” because if I did, I wouldn't be good at anything, would I? What, exactly, do you have in mind?
The Celtic tooled belt you see here was made as follows: The belt was cut from the hide and “cased” to get it ready tool. After drying it out to “just right”, I traced my design onto the leather, cut all the cuts and did all the tooling (tracing the design, cutting and tooling took about 15 hours). When all the tooling was done, I applied a couple of coats of Neatsfoot Oil and left it to dry for a couple of days. Next, I dyed it and then applied an antique stain to make the tooling stand out. The edges had to be rounded and burnished, and an acrylic finish was used on top. After that, the holes were punched and the hardware was attached.
The sign you see above measures approximately 46” wide by 34” high. The leather was a piece from a rather large hide. To make this sign, I had to “case” it in the bathtub to get it ready to tool. Then I had to wait until it was “just right” to trace the design onto the leather, do the knife cuts and bevel the letters. After it dried, the lettering around the edges was dyed black and “handcrafted” was painted gold. A couple of coats of Neatsfoot Oil was applied and left to soak in for a few days. I used a wax-based finish, then put it out in the blazing summer sun for a few days to darken it.