Hey Mick,
If you are refering to the nice crisp tooling you see done by a couple of the great makers on this site, sadly there arent that many types of leather that actually hold the tooling well.
Vegtan is the leather of choice it could be either pig or cow, or even goat but its the tanning that makes it hold the tooling, also you want a stiff type of leather rather then a soft and supple type as if the leather rolled, folded and creased the tooling will fade.
the way toooling is primarily done is by resetting the structure of the leather by weakening the solvent that holds the fibres together with water, and then reshaping it "tooling it" into a shape or pattern etc, by forcing it in the leather.
This works very well on vegtan, Chrome tanned is terrible at this though and I can imagine most other leather arent that likely to perform well. Especially upholstery leather as it usually tanned in a way to avoid wear, moisture damage or deformation.
However the calfskin could be worth a shot, just take a small piece wet it and press or whack something hard/shapelike into it, and see if it holds that mark?
Hope that helps,
Yours sincerely
Ruud
