Leatherworking
I chose leatherworking as my second hobby for several reasons. First, I’ve been interested in it since I watched this How It’s Made episode about custom gun holsters.
Second, unlike my first craft, origami, I have zero experience in almost any aspect of it (unless you count craft-leveling in World of Warcraft). Also, leather is an amazing material (sorry, animals). It’s versatile, extremely durable, smells great, and is requisite for basically any good action movie. Seriously, would Neo have looked as cool destroying The Matrix in corduroy? I don’t think so.
Finally, leatherworking has an odd blend of structured rules and free form design, so it’s a nice bridge between origami and my next project: watercolor.
The Briefest of Histories
Leatherworking has been around since basically forever. Tools found from the Oldowan period suggest hominids were hideworking over a million years ago. Some of the earliest documentation of leather working is found around 7,000 years ago in Egypt, but it wasn’t until the Moors came about in the Middle Ages that it became what it is today.
What really got the ball rolling with leatherworking was perfecting the tanning process. Tanning preserves the leather from decomposition, and keeps it soft and workable. While everyone was dying of Plague in Europe, the Arabs perfected vegetable tanning (vegtan), which is still used on most craft leather today.
The Projects
To get this hobby started, I journeyed to America’s leatherworking chain store (who knew?), called Tandy Leather Factory. I expected to find a poorly lit room with piles of skin on every surface and one grumpy old man behind the counter mumbling about the woman’s vote.
I was pleasantly surprised to enter a clean, bright, and well-organized store. The only employees were two middle-aged women, one of whom became overly helpful in her desire to get me started. This was both encouraging and uncomfortable. After she explained a few points, I settled on a beginner’s kit that had stamping, dying, and sewing involved ($80). She suggested a swivel knife which was a slightly painful purchase at $20, but also pretty dang fun. Finally, there was this sweet decorative bull I decided I needed ($30). I went home and watched some YouTube videos, which inspired me to grab a few more tools from Amazon. This brought my starting total cost to around $150.
Beginner
The kit I purchased came with two rounders (coasters) for practice, a money clip, a wallet, and a belt. Since there were two rounders, I asked Life Partner to make one, too.
I had watched several how-to videos hosted by some adorable grandfather-types. These sweet grandpas made leatherworking look incredibly easy, which made me more than a little skeptical. Regardless, I dove in.
It turns out, it is incredibly easy! I really enjoyed this project and was amazed at how quickly I was able to finish it. From grabbing materials to putting on the final shene, the coasters below took about 45 minutes. Even more surprising was how relatively unmessy and unsmelly it was. In fact, it actually smelled quite nice.
Doing these, I also learned of the difficulties of leatherworking.
- First, this is an unforgiving hobby. If you make a mistake, you either try to hide it, or you start over. You can see my mistake in the offset stamp of the coaster.
- LP didn’t want to put on his finishes, so I had to. In his, you can see I added too much moisture and the finish became blotchy.
- Finally, the surface you use to stamp on is important. I felt I wasn’t getting enough depth in my first piece, because my cheap Kmart table was absorbing too much of the hammer’s pressure. When I tried my second piece, I used a heavy cutting board as support for the leather with better results. Most leatherworkers use a granite or marble square.
- Another fun fact: Things that stain leather (a.k.a. skin) will also stain you.
Yeah. Get gloves.
I made a few more coasters, and invited some friends over to do the same. This was the result:
Moderate
After making about 10,000 coasters, I decided I really didn’t need a moderate craft. However, I did
Challenging
For this project, I purchased the sweet looking bull I mentioned above. According to the website, the final product could be one of the following:
Up until this point, I have loved leather working’s beauty in simplicity. But, I really wanted to challenge myself for you. The first step was tracing a pattern from the instructions to the leather. I used a ballpoint pen to remember where I had already marked, and because it made a decent impression (also because the lady at Tandy told me to).
The next step was to use my swivel knife to cut each of these lines. At this point, I was getting a little burned out. Everything I’ve made before this was very quick, easy, and near instant gratification. I had been at this about an hour and felt like I had accomplished very little.
There are two basic tools needed for this project. One is a backgrounder, which helps the flowers and vines stand out from the background. The other is a pear shader, which unsurprisingly, gives shading. As I started to work through this project, a friend broke my pear shader, and that’s where I stopped for the day.
The lesson: Buy good products.
It took about ten hours total to get to this final (admittedly awesome) result. This includes the tracing, the stamping, and the dying.
My one regret was using a leather paint instead of a leather stain. The paint, while lovely and vibrant, really washed out, rather than emphasized, the painstaking details of my bull. Whereas in the sample picture above, the flowers really pop, here you have to sort of squint.
The Analysis
Start Up Cost 5/10
I really can’t give Leatherworking a high mark for start-up costs. If you’re starting from scratch, I don’t see any way of starting for less than $50. This would include a kit (or leather and a pattern), a mallet, a few stamps, dye, and finishing shene.
Cost Per Project 6/10
The benefit of leather working is that once you have a good set of tools, the only cost will be the leather and maybe a stain or two. But, due to the versatility of leather, the cost of your project is going to depend on what you are hoping to make. A full suit of leather armor is going to be a little more expensive than a pair of moccasins. I have found that the average cost of small personal items like wallets and belts to be around $20.
Focus Needed 7/10
I definitely think this is something that you could do while watching a movie or chatting with friends (though it is a little noisy). You’ll want focus if you’re actually carving the leather or planning your project, though.
Time Needed 9/10
Set Up 9/10
Leather working tools are rather small. Everything I needed came in a 12” x 18” box. To set up my projects, I simply grabbed the box and a cover for my table. It probably took less than 60 seconds. I imagine as your stash grows, it may take longer to decide what tools you need and which stains you’ll use, but I really have a hard time imagining that this would take more than 5 minutes to set up.
In-the-Shit 10/10
This was probably the best part of leather working for me. The speed with which a project could be completed (and beautifully) was exciting and surprising. Granted, I was not really doing any complicated work, but even the awesome Youtube grandfathers could complete more intricate designs in about twenty minutes (and they’re obviously slowing down for our plebian benefit).
Delay of Gratification 9/10
You are going to see something really beautiful really quickly. However, most projects are going to need time to dry before doing any sewing or gifting.
Giftability 8/10
The gifts you can make with leatherworking are extremely varied: purses, gun holders, belts, shoes, decorations and so on. With minimal effort, you can make something that is truly unique and beautiful. Because these items are small, you can probably give 2-3 gifts to the same person before you wear them out. I gave the money clip from my kit to a relative for his birthday which he seemed to quite enjoy.
But let’s be honest, no one really uses these.
Space Required 8/10
If you do an image search for ‘Leatherworking Bench,’ you’ll find pictures small desks with loads of supplies on them. This is because the amount of area you work on is typically about 12″ x 12″, and you only focus on one part of the leather at a time.
I do have to deduct two points for space required. First, you cannot do leather working (sewing excepted) in any sort of moving vehicle capacity. The various amount of tools you need also make it difficult to ‘bring’ somewhere. Also, because you are hammering stamps into the leather, you want a solid, hard surface, as mentioned above.
Deep in the Saddle Bag
Naturally, with something as old as leather working, there is going to be so many variations, deviations, and incantations to learn. I lost an hour of my life just reading about tanning methods, so beware.
Wet Molding
Wet molding is the technique used to get really cool things like masks, saddle bags, containers, etc.
Leather Braiding
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Random Observation
While watching videos or visiting forums for various hobbies, I found that in most crafts, hobbyists tend to consist of one group: Middle Aged White Women/Men, split along appropriate gender lines for appropriate hobbies. I have even been to a quilt show and was honestly uncomfortable by the lack of diversity it presented (also by the number of cat sweatshirts, but that’s a story for a different time). Anyway, the reason I say this is because leatherworking seems to avoid this trend. As I scrolled through videos, posts, and visited the stores, I found women and men from a variety of races sharing their passion. I think this is cool.
Leatherworking Links I Found Useful While Creating This Post That I Thought I Would Share With You
Another experimenter who posts about his own adventures through leatherworking.
I don’t know what it is about these folks, but I just love their videos.