The Armour Archive

Good Morning,
I am new to the SCA and New to AA, I would like to get into leather working, but have no idea where to start any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
Vladislav

Leather working is a huge area, with lots of tools available.
Before investing in tools what projects are you considering?
I would ask around a bit, you might have someone local that can provide a walk though with hands on direction for a small starter project. Belt's and pouchs are fairly common starting places.

Tools can get expencive, Learn to takecare of them and plan ahead No point in haveing tools you don't need.
Leather dye will stain just about everything, so use cardboard and newspaper to protect surfaces.
Avoid working over cement, any tool on your bench will fall off and ruin the edge.

A good utlity knife with replaceable blades, and decent hole punch are universal for leather work. A dedicated cutting board or scrap lumber is useful.

Here is a tutorial I wrote to get you started with basic tools on a first project, a sword frog. It says "boffer" but it'll work that way for rattan too. Not period, but convenient.

http://hivemind.mvgc.net/BofferFrogTutorial.pdf

Beyond that, I'd suggest you head over to http://www.leatherworker.net. It's an excellent site full of really kind and helpful folks - but your first step there will be to read for a week.

Thanks for the info and the links.

For tooling leather, you have a half-bazillion stamps.

The quickest initial starter-upper is probably the Deluxe Leatherworking Tool Kit such as Tandy/Leather Factory (they had a merger some years back) sells. Hundred-fiftyish bucks, several rather silly starter projects thrown in, but a good fistful of tools and a pounding board to start with so you don't need to send for another three tools to do a certain project, just like you did on the project before and the project before that.

Sure, that works, but it's more fun really to have the leatherworking kit and then build upon that, getting additional tools only as and when needed.

They also sell books, mainly about tooling and carving leather, but these are valuable tutors for decorating the stuff, and as much as it costs to get it you might as well decorate it, right?

For sewing leather period-style, buy a stab awl -- if possible, avoid the one Tandy will sell you because its needle is made too soft and needs frequent honing. A lot of Tandy's cutting tools and sticking tools are too darn soft. For sewing, a thonging chisel isn't really right -- it's indispensible for the out-of-period technique of thonging a piece together, but it is not really a sewing aid. A thonging chisel makes holes that look like rectangles -- []; while the stab awl makes diamond holes <>. The difference is visible. Get a pouncing wheel too for spacing your stitch holes well and also for working your sewing thread down into your seams, which works best in the groove an edge groover gives your cut-out pieces that are ready to sew.

Purse- and pouch-making how-to books are around. I don't have any. Medieval- and Renaissance-date leathern items are discussed on the internet and you can find stuff out from these scattered references.

A good many SCAdians make or use armor of leather. You'll doubtless try some of that yourself; there's a lot to be said for making heavy-ounce leather safety gorgets for the local fighters -- especially reinforced ones, even up to a completely brigandine kind of construction -- for that can use light-ounce-weight leather.

Get a pair of vice-grips. Hold your stamps and drive punches with the grips, not with your fingers... and then maybe you'll avoid the kind of tendonitis that's keeping me from doing more leatherwork.

Vladislav, it would really help enormously if you could give us a bit more focus on your interest in "leatherworking". It's a bit like saying you are interested in food

There's shoe making, bag making, case making, none of which are quite the same thing but sort of overlap in some places There's horse tack, scabbards, belts. There are bottels and jacks and penners.

Decoration you've got cutwork, filigree, "tooling", embroidery.

There are many areas of leatherworking and while some skills cross over many boundaries, others do not. Tools needed for one can be quite different than those needed for another.

On this forum we've got people who do pretty much any of it you might be interested in, but it would help us help you to have a bit more information

Russ Mitchell wrote:Get a pair of vice-grips. Hold your stamps and drive punches with the grips, not with your fingers... and then maybe you'll avoid the kind of tendonitis that's keeping me from doing more leatherwork.

I'm really sorry to hear about your tendonitis, but I can't endorse the vise-grips suggestion. Using stamps properly requires a delicate touch you cannot get with vise-grips.

Thanks everyone for the valuable info I plan on getting a kit asap and the fund shall begin.