Some years ago, I started working with leather to make BDSM gear for me and my wife. It was solid, but not so beautiful. After learning more by making leather belts and wallets, I came back to where I started, and I’m really happy with the result!

Showing off a bit. Curious what you think :)

I recently made these sheath and mask for my tools

I’m going to the Texas renaissance festival in November and I’m making this armor chestplate for it. Last year it rained and I’m worried about it raining again, so I want to be able to protect my armor from it. I need the armor to hold its shape and stay firm while also not having a super glossy finish. If anyone can help that’d be much appreciated.

Like a lot of others, I started with a cheap set and I’m getting to where I need to replace tools like my beveler and I’m looking for a heavier mallet. There’s a list of other tools I need. What should I be upgrading to? Weaver had some master tool branded beveler that was $75. I’m sure that’s complete overkill, but I also don’t want to buy the $20 one from Amazon if it’s going to not be much better than the $1 one that came in the leather working kit I purchased originally. What’s the in between? There’s a lot of different retailers including Weaver, Tandy, Rocky Mountain, and more, but as someone that’s a relative beginner to leather working, I’m kind of just trying to go off price vs review quality without knowing much about brands.

This really truly is my first thing made of leather. I am a collector of many hobbies and leather is the latest. I learned many things in this project and I look forward to the next one already.

Enjoy my Pancake.

Lessons learned in no particular order:

-Cut quality matters! I didn't use the right tool for my first cuts and it shows. After getting the wallet assembled, there was a lot of time and effort that then went into trying to get the edges flush and smooth.

-Raw hand alignment is hard. Yeah... I ended up saying screw it after the first side and I 3d printed a corner jig. The second side went WAY better. Faster, easier, cleaner.

-Eyeballing doesn't line things up. "Pancake" was eyeballed more or less, and it shows. "0 of 0" was ligned up on the score mark, and it shows.

-stamps take as many hits as needed and if it's too shallow, the detail disappears when it drys.

-Glue holds the pieces, but stitching keeps them there. The panels for the card slots are already cracking loose. I'll stitch them over the weekend and hopefully that solidifies the edges a little.

- finish the edges of all panels before final assembly. It's going to be way to hard to access the interior edges of the panels now, so this is just going to keep a raw edge.

-use a good template. I don't like the way certain features line up. The tan card slot isn't tall enough so that made fitment less forgiving and less aesthetic. I think it just needs a thicker line to break up the other panels.

I named this one "Pancake" because when making pancakes, the fist one always sucks. Its burnt or underdone. It's got a weird shape. Maybe it stuck to the pan. It always sucks but you have to make it anyways. It let's you get to the next Pancake and the next. They rest of the batch is better but first you have to make one that sucks.

Skills practiced/learned:

Literally everything

Cutting leather

Glue

Sand

Burnish

Stamping

Stitch punching and stitching (soon)

I’m new to this all, I bought a lot of stuff and have two 10”x12” pieces of 5mm leather waiting for me to make the leap to mess around - but I was thinking of all the leather around me in a regular day - car seats, old jackets, baseball gloves - and had me thinking if people use leather from already made products? Or is that something to stay away from

Used leather honey and this happened, applied it 20 minutes ago, did I wipe away my leather in this area? Anybody know why it looks like this only in this spot?

I bought a shoulder of leather 3-4 lb from Tandy Leather to cover the jaws on a woodworking vise, now I’d like to make something more interesting. I purchased a $25 leather working tool kit from Amazon. Would a shop apron be too big of a first project? I’d need to buy more leather and was wondering if Tandy is the best place for a beginner?