Leather fox pouch

Leather fox pouch

I bought this [1] pattern to make a fox leather pouch to a friend of mine. I made some modifications to the pattern to make it more how I like it.

I used Veg-tanned Bellies 5oz leather for this project.

The steps

The laser machine is not involved at all in this project. Stamp each hole is a time consuming pleasure.

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Beavel all the edges.

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Dye the leather and add a layer of shene. This time I used a black alcohol pen for the edges and then applied transparant edge color.

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Sewing. Start with the nose.

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Instead of attach the band right to the sides of the pouch, I used D-rings instead.

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Sewing is done. Just trim edges and final refinements left.

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I hid the rivet for the tail inside of the tail. It looks nicer. Hope it will last.

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The result

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Razor leather case

Razor Leather Case

My safety razor broke during usage last week, so I sadly had to order a new one.

I'm not really into shaving at all, but I want something that works and safety razors does both work and is cheap in the long run. For those interested, I bought a AL13 razor from Henson Shaving [1].

This time I used my Laser cutting machine to cut out the leather.

The steps

I use Librecad [2] to create my patterns. It works well, but I miss functionality to add stitch holes in a good way.

Maybe I will write a plugin to fix that some day..

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I use Lightburn [3] to control the laser. It is simple and does what I want. It works with Linux as well.

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One tip is to heavily wet the leather to keep it flat on the laser board:

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It takes one day for the leather to dry, so continue the next day.

I should probably have run one more pass, the leather was not completely cut out. The scalpel came into use.

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Groove to cut a channel in which stitching can be set.

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Beavel the edges

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Stamp the holes:

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All holes stamped!:

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Dye the parts, i use the oil based Pro Dye with Saddle Tan.

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Apply black edge color and burn the edges. It became quite smudgy this time..

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Stitch the parts together.

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At last, apply a sealing to protect the dye.

The result

The intention was to use a leather flap to close the case, but the text would end up behind so I had to use a button instead.

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Leather watch strap keeper

Leather watch strap keeper

My watch was missing the strap keeper, so I had to make one.

To be honest, I did not put my soul into this project, I had an urge to fix it while the food was getting ready in the oven.

Anyway, here is my steps to make one.

The steps

Cut out a leather strap. My final size was about 14mm wide.

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Bevel the edges:

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The leather I was using was about 4oz, that is too thick, so thin it out:

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Cut it to the right length. Also thin out the ends so that the overlapping becomes smooth:

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Paint it black:

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Mark where to stamp the holes:

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Stamp the holes:

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Add leather edge color and burn the edges:

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Apply shene to make the finish look good:

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Hand stitch and glue the keeper together. The stitches is both for cosmetic and functional. It prevents the leather from stretching.

The result

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I'm actually pretty happy with the result. It took approx 1 hour and that was what I had.

I should probably have used the sewing machine though, I think it would look better with finer stitches and thinner thread.

Leather sewing machine

Leather sewing machine

I have worked with leather for some time which I enjoyed a lot. Leather is so general purpose and is both robust and nice looking. So far I've made myself a wizard hat, dice bags, mug pads, bookmarks..

The majority of all leather projects involves a sewing, which is quite entertaining but really time consuming so I invested in a $60 leader sewing machine which make the whole process a lot smoother.

It is a hand cranked machine machine.

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The stand

The stand that comes with the machine is really shitty, so I had to make a better one. I also wanted to have the machine on the table rather than on a tripod.

So I took some pieces of oak I had and glued them together. I picked oak as it is both aesthetically nice looking and because of its weight - I do not want the machine to move around as I'm sewing. As oak is quite hard, I tried to thread the holes and use a bolt instead of screws, and it worked out quite well. The flexible lump did not even needed any extra support.

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The end result

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The machine

The machine is impressive, especially for that low price. It was delivered with ten extra needles, three extra bobbins and one extra shuttle with shuttle bearer.

The machine is also surprisingly intuitive despite all tuning knobs, the mechanical design makes it easy to see where you need to adjust to achieve the desired result.

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I also like that the sewing head it rotatable, it helps you sew those tricky parts that you need sometimes.

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The thread

I've tested it out with several different threads. Nylon thread is very strong and works well with the machine, however I don't think it give the right impression on a leather project, so I go all in cotton.

Waxed thread should not be used in the machine as the wax goes off the thread and it ends up with cleaning the thread bearers..

The result

The first test project I made was a pencil case for my fountain pen. I've made a few before with hand stitching, the diffrence now is that it took 1 minute to stitch instead of 30+. The result is quite good too. It missed a few stitches, but that is now fixed after that I have adjusted the thread tension.

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The capacity of the machine is also impressive. It can sew three 2.5mm leather pieces stacked together complete unchallenged whatsoever.

Leather penguin

Leather penguin

A Linux guy needs his penguin, right?

I found this pattern [1] on etsy and thought it would be a fun project to make a little companion.

The leather I'm using for this is a 2-3oz veg-tanned goat skin. It is a little too thin to make a robust penguin, but I rather want it soft and squeeze-friendly than robust. That's how I prefer to have my companions.

The steps

Print out the pattern and tape to the leather. Punch the holes before cutting:

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Cut out all parts:

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Time to dye! Yellow feets and neb. Other colored parts will be black:

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I use white waxed linen thread that I dye for the feets and neb.

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The penguin does already looks happy :-) :

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The rest is to stitch all parts together.

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Before I finished sewing everything, I stuffed it with cotton and a big glass ball to give it some weight.

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The result

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And yes. Penguins need their hat.

Things to improve

Dye both sides of the leather. In this project I did only dye the top grain leather. Some of the holes are not dyed completely.

Use round punch instead of diamond, it would have been much easier to sew.