Leatherwork for Beginners - Basic Skills (Tutorial)

Description

Having not done much leatherwork before, I decided to make a basic leatherwork tutorial for beginners. Using basic leatherwork tools, and showing just basic skills. This is the renewed format of Shed Sunday. The sunday video series where I make videos on bushcraft and survival tutorials, diy projects and general making things videos! For this episode I enjoy the rustic feel and durability of leather, and many of my bushcraft tools involve leather. I have leather knife sheaths, leather tinder bags, leather strops etc. It's something I would like to learn more about, and this is what shed sunday is all about! You guys can learn along with me. Thanks for watching - Mike

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Tags: leatherwork,beginners,basic,skills,shed,sunday,tutorial,tools,basic leatherwork,leatherworking tools,diy,do it yourself,bushcraft,survival,tips,knife sheath,bookmark,leather bookmark,cheap,save money,making,maker,woodworking,leather,ta outdoors,ta outdoors shed sunday,leatherwork for beginners,beginner leatherwork,leatherwork projects,leatherwork tips,how to make things with leather

Video Transcription

welcome to the shed might care from ta outdoors and in this episode we're gonna make a basic leather bookmark with chapter markers so did some research on Google and it came up that the average height of the book was 9 inches I don't usually have it 9 inches is quite a fair amount I sort of read this size but obviously it fluctuates depending on the read this is my side of the mountain great book by the way thanks for those guys that recommend it I'm gonna go for probably a bit less than that and I'm gonna go metric on you guys and probably say about 170 hundred and seventy mill height width maybe an inch inch and a half and it's catching up first just so I've got a rough idea of what I want and then we're gonna get straight into the letter work that's roughly the size I'm gonna go for it was in the end I think 190 mill yeah 190 mill by 35 mill wide the reason I've drawn these dotted lines here is because that's where I'm actually gonna cut down and there's gonna be individual flaps on the bookmark itself it's just more of an arty designed really to make it a bit more flexible up here and this top end so when you put it in a bookshelf or anything like that the bookmark can flop over like that and not be so rigid and knock everything for the leather I've got 2 mil thick veg tan leather so it's nice and flexible nice and pliable which is really what you want for a bookmark you don't want anything too rigid gonna cut out my template here and then I'm gonna dye the leather afterwards try and burnish it I don't have a burnishing tool but I have a pen so I'll give it a coat out and then put any final touches on at the end I want to I'm just gonna put this to the left-hand side of the leather because I just knowed it it's easier for my right hands come down this side it's pushing lightly to begin with just to get a good idea for a mark and then I can push a bit heavier afterwards yeah the piece I want and see it's not level that's better I don't have a burnishing tool so I'm just gonna use the best of this beside of it rough it up trying to smooth it up sorry this I'm not an expert leather worker bueno means this is pretty much about my third ever leather product leather project but hey we're all learning being to mill leather it's super difficult to keep this rigid enough to try and burnish the edge maybe you guys have a better tips next thing I do dab a water just get the lever dump so I'm pretty much level with my pattern now what I gotta do is just cut out these flaps as I'm gonna call them there's probably a name for them but I don't know what they are gonna cut these lines now here I've just described him in a pencil but I'm going to cut rather than cut from the top of the bookmark down to this line this is my base line so I'm going to cut from the base line to the end of the bookmark and I'm just going to score it really gently first probably using the ruler actually as a guide Bently school pushing down more each time

you can see the kind of flexibility in it by just cutting these up this is this is fairly rigid it doesn't Bend as well as these which also acts as like a decorative pattern I guess really but these will get more supple as I put water on the leather and let that water absorb into the fibers of the leather they do become a bit more supple however when I dye it they're gonna go rigid again so I'm just gonna have to keep bending them and rolling them and stressing that leather out just on this end once I've put the dye on so one last thing I got to do to bookmark before we die it is put a little stamp in there now because leather working isn't my business it's not what I do I've only got two leather stamps here I just keep them in a little glass container we've got like a mountain scene just there and a wolf howling wolf I think this one we're gonna go the howling wolf now you should really use a rubber hammer with this but like a mallet I don't know really to do the stamp high up I'm going to do it a high up probably about I'd say and there's my howling wolf you're quite new to this shape most of you but behind the flag here I've got my leather dies I've got British tan medium brown walnut or chocolate and they go they range from darkness so the darkest is up here this chocolate is the darkest oh I have at the moment up this end all the way down to kind of British town here I think I'm just going to go for a medium brown I just short store them in these I store my leather dyes in these old kind of I think the Charlotte's UK UK guys will notice Charlotte's olds Curie there's a curry sauce jaws and I just put a lot of sticker on there now I just like to be able to I like to see what the color of the dye is on the glass like through on the insider once they know exactly the color so just by seeing you can see through there it just gives you a better idea just gives you a better idea of to die and win it all the sealed drains down I just tip it up tip it back down again let it settle you'll see it settling and then you start seeing the light reflect through it and that's just about there I can see now that's the color of the dye of what it will be you've done a bit of leather dye before and dabbled with it one lesson I've learned is to definitely wear gloves because the stuff just gets everywhere and stains everywhere I've got some daubers there but I think this time I'm just gonna use a small sponge get those gloves on now I've learned so much from getting leather everywhere that gloves are paramount they protects your skin as well obviously you just hope that dye soaked in and this time I'm gonna get it wet on both sides because I want to dye this side

little goes a long way I find don't forget the edges the other important thing is the gaps in here are all going to be the natural color of the dye so you've got to try and get in these gaps as well which is obviously why the gloves come in handy because they're going to be that veg town color all these flaps down and getting all of these

so I keep all my leather treatment another protecting in here and what I've got various things like dubbing Gail's dubbing that is old-school a nice just a cotton rag really I said a nice rack cotton rag couple of leather lacing for other projects and some mink oil this just helps to soften soften and waterproof the leather I use it mostly for the softening ability just to make it more supple especially something like this I'm just letting the leather die at the moment sorry the leather dry and then I'm going to polish it up and we should be there I use this on my general knife leather and things like that apply fairly generous amount you will see some die obviously see some die come off on it usually it's just like surplus die and I only really need to apply this to the front section you want to give it a real good polish it it brings out the character of the leather as well you can see all the stresses and things all the grain

so that's that's it pretty much finished just to kind of de-stress it will stress it I just like to roll it up in a ball quite tight like that and it just it gives it a makes it a bit more malleable when you want a bookmark to be I personally prefer bookmarks to be a bit more flexible sorry you can see the sweat on my forehead cuz it's about 35 degrees Celsius in here at the moment obviously no wing because I'm in the it's roasting all right up a couple of times and then for me you know it's sort of gonna be a decent bookmark from where I've made these in the past is where it flops over like that that's the that's how I want it like a bookmark to be nice and malleable and that way it can just bend in a book now I've made this short you really should make it nine inches like they say the average book height just because if you look there if I put at the base of the book that's barely sticking out really you want it so that that sort of inch and a half two inches is sticking out please remember as a kid from my nan was that these were nice and flexible just meant that you can just put your book anywhere in a book book case that you'd still know that you're not gonna lose your page the other thing these may have been used for I'm not sure but perhaps you guys might know if I'm just I'm just guessing at this but I I wonder if the bookmark would go in like that and then each one of these individual things could be chapter markers so let's say I wanted to go I'm on page 39 now and I wanted to keep a chapter of 89 you fold one of these now into that chapter and then you can fold that book and then perhaps I'll go to page 115 fold the next one down like so I've never used them like this before 142 and let's finish off with 155 so there that bookmark has bookmarked all those different pages by folding off like that folding them over like that and that way I can flick make it a bit more

114 it's really good it's just a multiple way you can find pages they go 123 that's where I got to and you can see up there that's just each individual page that this bookmark fold it auntie let's do some close up so you guys can see it now [Music]

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so thank you so much for watching the video that is how to make a simple leather bookmark with as I found out chapter markers if I could be critical of what I've done here I wasn't happy with the lines that I attempted to do they're kind of patent lines where you would normally make for leather stitching again I don't really know what the correct terms are I think my stamp the wolf's stamp I didn't hit hard enough and they needed to stamp that in a bit deeper but you know other than that for a first time I would have liked to have maybe I need to get a proper burnishing tool and actually burnish it properly but the edges came up pretty good the beveler didn't didn't work amazingly but you know it's it's all about the learning experience and to me it's been great fun I've really enjoyed making it hopefully you guys have enjoyed watching it it's a great little kind of beginner project give it a go if you can I'll pop a link in the description of the tools that are used and the leather and everything like that thank you for watching shed Sunday I've been Mike from terry outdoors and I'll see you next week in the shed [Music]