Hi, I'm Jim Linnell, with Tandy Leather.
I'm going to be showing you how to make a wallet,
and I'll be going through each of the steps,
with each of the tools, in enough detail so that you'll know
how to get the best results out of your leatherwork.
The tool that we're going to use to cut the design into the leather
is called a
of the swivel knife is the blade, obviously.
We need to make sure that that blade is ready
to cut smoothly and cleanly,
so that we have good control over what this knife does.
To do that, we use a
A rouge pad is just a piece of leather
with jeweler's rouge rubbed into it.
And as I pull the knife across the rouge pad
you can see that it's turning dark.
What that is, it's little bits of metal coming off the blade;
it's actually polishing this blade up.
This is the same thing that a jeweler would use
on a buffing wheel, to polish up jewelry and such,
and that's what it's doing to this cutting edge on this blade.
Even though this blade might be very, very sharp,
and it should be very, very sharp,
it's still not polished until you put it on a rouge pad.
The important thing with stropping your knife
is you want to hold this tool
so that the bevel of the blade is flat on the leather.
So as you're pulling the knife toward you
you want to pull straight back,
and try to do equal number of strops on both sides of the blade.
One of the bad habits that I've seen people get into
is they will strop like this, and they will actually reach the back
of their piece of leather, they'll raise up their hand,
and what that actually does, if you get into the habit of doing that,
is you'll actually round off the cutting edge on your blade.
It'll be polished, but it's not going to cut very good.
So this is the very first thing you want to do,
is make sure that your knife is working smoothly.
Next, we want to make sure that we know how to use this tool.
I've got a piece of leather here that's all cased up, ready to go,
but let me show you how this tool is used.
The basic grip for a swivel knife is to lay it on your bench like this,
and pick it up with your fingertips.
Place your forefinger up here in the yoke,
and just grab onto it like that,
and that's pretty close to the kind of a grip that you'll use.
You'll actually place your forefinger into the yoke,
up to about the first knuckle.
You'll have your thumb resting on one side of the barrel,
your middle finger just opposite of that,
and I actually have my ring finger resting on the side of the blade,
and the rest of my hand actually rests on the table,
so I have good balance when I'm making the cuts.
The cuts are made by angling the knife away from you.
This is a straight blade.
They do make blades with angles on them already,
but I like to use this type of blade, it's what I've used all my life.
The cuts are made by just angling the knife away from you.
so that just the corner of it is in the leather,
and you always make your cuts by drawing the knife towards you.
The tool is called a swivel knife
because obviously this part up here rotates, it swivels.
When you're making the curving cuts in your leather,
you make those curving cuts by rotating your fingers.
One of the other bad habits I see beginners have,
or even some folks that should know better,
is that they will get in the habit of moving their whole hand
when they're trying to make these curves.
You'll see they're moving their whole wrist,
or their hand, or their arm like that,
and you'll not get nice smooth, clean curves when you do that.
Using this swivel to help you make those cuts
really makes it work a lot better.
All of the downward pressure determining the depth of the cut
is done with this finger right here.
This does all of the pushing down.
The rest of these fingers are for steering it.
A good practice would be, first of all,
learn how to make a straight cut.
That's just put it in the leather and pull it towards you.
Learn how to make curves that curve to the left,
and curves that curve to the right
so that you can make your knife go
in whatever direction you're going.
Learn how to make some S-cuts,
so that you can move it in directions
that it needs to go to follow your pattern.
One of the other things, and you'll be doing this a bit,
and that is learn how to taper out the cuts.
When you start making a cut--
and this is another one of those general rules
about cutting the design into the leather--
you want to cut about one-third
to no more than one-half the thickness of the leather.
So when you're pushing down
you're going to start out the cut pretty deep.
But a lot of these cuts-- as you go down the length of a stem,
or in certain parts of it-- some of these cuts have to taper out.
We do what we call
so I would like you also to practice feathering out your cuts.
Start out and get that one-third
to one-half the depth when you begin the cut,
but then as you pull the knife towards you
let it fade out and disappear.
You'll see that that's a real important technique to use
when you're using this tool.
If you're comfortable with your knife,
we're ready to go to work on our project,
and get these lines cut into the leather.
You can see that my leather has still got a lot of moisture in it,
so I'm going to continue cutting right now.
One of the first things that I will do
is I will cut this border line into the leather first.
And you just want to get your leather turned
so that you can be pulling this knife towards you.
And just follow those lines along. I'm cutting, like I said,
about one-third, almost one-half, on this lightweight leather,
maybe a little bit deeper than that,
but no more than one-half the thickness of the leather.
You'll notice how often I turn the leather as I'm cutting.
And again, it's very important
that you be able to see what you're doing.
Make sure you can see where your knife is going
so that you can follow those lines very carefully.
When you're cutting your lines,
like I said, try to follow them as closely as you can.
And when we start, for example, here on the flower,
we're going to have some of these lines that we'll need to fade out,
like on these flower petals here.
As I pull the knife from the outside down toward the center
I want these cuts to fade out,
and come almost to disappear as I get there.
As I bring a couple of these cuts together,
where we have petals that overlap,
as I make a couple of cuts come together,
I'll bring the swivel knife up till it almost touches,
but I'll stop just short of where that cut touches the other side
because if you cut past where you should,
you'll leave a little nick into the flower petal,
and that's not a good thing.
Cut all of the lines; the only lines that I'll not cut
in this piece of leather will be these dotted lines
that I used to outline where the seeds go,
and I'll also not cut this little circle in the center of this flower.
That just shows me where the flower center's going to go.
The rest of the lines are all going to be cut into the leather,
and take your time with this.
One of the types of cuts, or some of the types of cuts
that folks sometimes struggle with is doing something like a scroll.
A scroll is this spiral-looking line that you have here,
and it's a feature in a lot of leather patterns.
And when you're making a cut that has that much turn to it,
you really need to be ready to turn your leather
as often as you need to, so that you can always keep your knife
being pulled towards you as you're making this cut.
That's the only way.
Don't try to make a cut like this without ever moving your leather,
or without ever picking up your knife.
You'll find it very, very difficult to do that.
As you get close to the border, lighten up on it,
so you don't actually cut into the border,
and on the other side here pick it up again.
That's how you get those nice smooth curves on those cuts,
and you have to take your time; this is not something,
and actually leatherwork shouldn't be something
you try to do as fast as you can.
It should always be something that you do as carefully as you can.
One of the things that I have never been successful in finding,
and I wish I could, but I've never found something
that would erase a cut if I put one in the wrong place.
So it's very important that you understand what you're doing,
and put those cuts exactly where they belong
before
Maintain good moisture content.
This leather's just right for cutting right now.
It's got just the right amount of moisture,
and it's starting to come back
to its original color, but yet it's still--
you can see a little bit of dampness in its appearance.
And a lot of times I'll go by how the leather reacts,
rather than even the color of it.
It doesn't have to look wet to be wet enough to be worked on.
A lot of times if you're getting nice clean cuts,
if you're getting good depth,
you're not having to struggle to get your tool to work correctly,
that probably means you've got
about the right amount of moisture in it.
But if you're not getting your cuts to open up,
that could mean that it's starting to dry out.
As you're cutting, if your swivel knife
starts to want to stick and drag in the leather a little bit,
that's telling you that you need
to get your strop close by, and strop it again.
One of the things that you accomplish
when you are stropping your knife, is you clean it up, as well.
You remove anything that might be sticking to it,
that might be in the leather:
the chemicals and such that they use to tan the leather.
That actually will build up on your knife blade,
and by stropping it occasionally it will clean it up.
One of the other things I should mention to you
is to be careful about undercutting.
I was reminded, as I was cutting this curving line here--
But let me show you on my scrap piece of leather here, too.
One of the habits that beginners often will pick up,
and it's a bad habit: you do have to tip your knife
away from you, so that just the corner of it is in the leather,
and pull it toward you, but that actually--
Your hand is almost in your own way.
You can't quite see around it,
so you have to learn to look in at it an angle from here,
so you can see what the knife is doing.
But what some folks will do is sometimes just lean the knife
over to the side, like this, so they can see what they're doing.
But you can see what happens if I cut like that:
it actually undercuts the leather.
It actually raises up a ridge of leather on one side,
and if you get in that habit it will distort your design.
It's going to make the beveling and some of these other steps
that come along difficult to do.
So when you're making a curving cut like this--
I'm keeping that knife perpendicular to the leather,
but you'll notice that the top, up here,
as I make a cut like that, is rocking back and forth at the top,
so that I can keep it perpendicular to the leather.
If I started out like this, but did not rock the tops,
see what happens when I make that cut?
It immediately starts to undercut.
So you need to practice this,
learning how to rotate the knife back and forth.
These are little things and, honestly,
the only way you get better at this is to practice.
If you've got some scraps of leather around,
you should be using those scraps
to learn how to make your knife do those things
that you need a swivel knife to do.
You need it to be able to go where you want it to go.
You need it to be able to make nice smooth clean cuts.
Okay, once we've got the design entirely cut into the leather
we're ready to start stamping, and we'll move on to that next.
Thank you for joining me today.
Be sure and check back often here at our blog,
and we'll show you more tips and ideas
on how to get the most fun out of your leatherwork.