Sketch to leather

[dewi]

A sketch I've been working on that I'm going to carve into leather.

This is no where near done yet, but I wanted to ask whether the writing is legible... ie with the missing bits, can you still read it?

 

[quietone]

That is rather splendid. Yes, easily legible. Should be awesome in leather. What thickness will you use?

 

[crosslandkelly]

Looks very good.

 

[dewi]

Thank you... 3mm-3.5mm is available at LePrevo, so going to try it on that first of all. From all the carving I've watched so far, it all appears to be done on quite thick veg tan... been practising on some offcuts Hamish gave me.

 

[mick91]

When you start doing them full time you have your first comission mate

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[dewi]

lol Think that might be jumping ahead a bit Mick... decided to have a go, work out the questions I need to ask, then it'll probably be a trip up to Hamish. It is a fascinating art though... gob smacked at what goes into producing the leather work I've been drooling over... hence the reason I'm about a week behind with my work. Can't stop sketching ideas and fiddling with bits of leather.

I blame Hamish... its all his fault!

 

[Dreadhead]

Fantastic sketch mate. When working with a design, make sure you know your tools and techniques can deal with acute angles and tight curves. After carving this for the first time, you may find that opening up some areas, and closing others will give you a better flow when it comes to technique. I can show you this in more detail when I next see you a simple modelling stylus can do a lot of neat things when carving I call it 'the fixer'

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[quietone]

Regarding a stylus, they are really expensive for what they are. Any tips on a diy one?

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[dewi]

Thank you

I've ordered a swivel knife... nothing fancy for now... and I was going to use these...

for getting round the tighter bits... not looking forward to doing the lettering already lol

I know what you're saying about designing to the tools, but that is one of the reasons I want to just jump in and have a go. I'll be able to work out where I'm lacking, what I'm having trouble with etc.

If I had everything in front of me now, I'd be up all night carving it... I'm that giddy about it. But having to wait has its benefits, because I'm having ideas and sketching them out. Plus it gives me the time to make a stitching pony this weekend

What have you done to me Hamish... what have you done!

 

[dewi]

Regarding a stylus, they are really expensive for what they are. Any tips on a diy one?

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There is one on fleabay for a fiver...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Seiwa-Lea...729499?hash=item19e9fb185b:g:FcIAAOSw0HVWA4uI

 

[Dreadhead]

A stylus could be made relatively easy from bone/antler I reckon?

Dewi, are those knives for cutting your carving lines or cutting the design out? if the latter, then good stuff. But they wont be great for cutting your carving lines, as they wont open the cut wide enough for bevellers etc though you could always go over them again with the swivel. Have fun with the swivel knife it's a tricky beast to master but when you do it's a great wee tool to have

 

[quietone]

There is one on fleabay for a fiver...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Seiwa-Lea...729499?hash=item19e9fb185b:g:FcIAAOSw0HVWA4uI

I stand corrected, thanks for that. Call me daft though, but that looks fairly simple to replicate. I know it needs to be smooth, but shouldn't be too much bother?

 

[Dreadhead]

I use one of THESE

The spoon works as a beveller with some thumb pressure, and you can do a lot of small detail and tight corner stuff with it where your bevellers etc can't get. It's also good for things like smoothing out bevelled lines, marks, and lettering.

 

[dewi]

A stylus could be made relatively easy from bone/antler I reckon?

Dewi, are those knives for cutting your carving lines or cutting the design out? if the latter, then good stuff. But they wont be great for cutting your carving lines, as they wont open the cut wide enough for bevellers etc though you could always go over them again with the swivel. Have fun with the swivel knife it's a tricky beast to master but when you do it's a great wee tool to have

Hadn't considered that with the blades width... how the devil am I going to do the letters with a swivel knife?

Looking at the design, I see what you were saying yesterday now... and I'm not going to really know what needs altering without the experience of doing it. Blimey!

One of the reasons it fascinates me so much is that it is totally different to the line work I've done before... it's almost like 3D pinstriping.

Gonna be a challenge

 

[dewi]

I stand corrected, thanks for that. Call me daft though, but that looks fairly simple to replicate. I know it needs to be smooth, but shouldn't be too much bother?

There are some that are even cheaper, just don't know whether they're suitable for leather work. My wife uses them when she's working with clay, a set of 3 for less than a fiver... I'll have a gander and post up a link if they'll work for leather.

 

[reedx]

Those Seiwa leathercaft tools are well regarded and keenly priced from Goods Japan.

Colin

 

[Dreadhead]

I've been playing around on a wee project and thought I'd take a video to demonstrate that you don't need lots of fancy tools to 'tool' leather, you can do it with a simple spoon bladed stylus. You don't get the sort of depth from using a swivel knife, bevellers and mallet which I normally use. But for practice, and for certain projects where all that is needed is a light touch, it works a treat. Even when I use my swivel knife and bevellers, I still finish off all corners, points, and fine detail with the stylus and use it to correct any marks etc.

Anyway, pretty boring video but you get the idea (not sure how to embed videos here, could a mod help me out?)

[video]https://youtu.be/LwenRCj1Iog[/video]

 

[crosslandkelly]

Nice vid Hamish.

[video=youtube;LwenRCj1Iog]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwenRCj1Iog&feature=youtu.be[/video]

You should make that a sticky.

 

[dewi]

Not boring at all Hamish, thank you for posting it up...

[video=youtube;LwenRCj1Iog]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwenRCj1Iog[/video]

Hopefully thats embedded the video.

When you say you don't get the depth of the swivel knife, will it still be good for beveling? Or do you not need to bevel it when working with the spoon bladed stylus?

 

[Dreadhead]

working with the stylus in effect does bevel it, as you are using the stylus to compress the leather on one side of the line you are working with, exactly the same as you do with bevelling stamps (though perhaps can't really see it well in the video). The difference is there is no cut line, and you are only using thumb/fingers pressure. The benefit of using a swivel knife and bevelling tools is the cut line gives the tooling a very crisp edge, and the compression with the bevelling stamp and mallet works much better and compresses the leather more giving the depth.

For this project in particular, I didn't want it to be too heavy with the tooling, as the design itself is very busy and doesn't need much more work to really 'pop'. That is why I opted for the light approach, so the tooling is very shallow, no more than 1mm at maximum depth, but this way the design stays relatively simple and smooth. Also because cutting the lines with swivel, then bevelling with stamps takes about 3-4 times longer and I have a long way to go. This is a project for my own personal enjoyment, so I'm just chipping away at it when I need to take an hours break from commissioned orders