5 easy steps to wet mold leather yourself

foreign weather wet molds we currently have 14 styles of wet molds two triangles four rectangles two pills a heart two octagons and two circles now with our wet molds you'll see their three pieces most molds you'll see will be two pieces just a bottom piece and a top piece we've actually made ours as a three piece set for a reason and that is they're stackable so if you wanted to make a deeper mold just get a second mold put one on top of the other and now you have a deeper wet mold you could continue to stack from there if you wanted we chose this wood because it's very water resistant so you can see they're not lacquered and they don't have to be we've used our molds over and over without lacquering them they work just great it's also very smooth so you don't have to sand it it should be ready to go so certainly if you wanted to sand it a little bit if you notice any marks on your weather after molding you can definitely do that so I'm going to quickly take you over the five easy steps for using these wet molds first step is going to be choosing your leather you'll want to use a vegetable tanned leather takes water better molds a lot firmer than a chrome Leather So This is a natural vegetan this is corbachau carving leather definitely a natural weather works the best though you could also use a dyed weather like a skirting leather or even a other vegetan leather like Wicked and Craig English Bridal or traditional harness also mold great and you'll want it to be about two inches the cut to be about two inches bigger than the mold itself and actually if you want to just make one or a few at a time you're trying out a new leather our panels start at a half square foot one square feet uh one and a half square feet or two square feet and they're all 11 inches wide and our largest mold is actually nine and a half inches so really any of these molds you should be able to get panels to go with them so you can just get one or you know with one two square foot panel you could fit you know two or three molds out of one panel so really good yields there by the panel if you're not ready to go for a you know pull hide or other larger piece so once you've chosen the weather you want to soak it um really all you need to do is put it in a bath of warm water for five to ten minutes should be enough might be a little longer if it's a little more oily of the weather weather but a natural vegetan shouldn't take too long warm water is best not too hot not too cold okay now we've had our panel soaking in a vat of warm water for about 10 minutes a little piece of advice for when it comes to the soaking part you're probably going to use a wide flat tray like this I recommend bringing the water to the tray in a pitcher as opposed to trying to fill the tray up and carry it because these trays spill very easily and you'll make a mess so Pat it soaking Next Step will be to insert it into the mold about the mold you'll see that the center piece has one side that is rounded and one side that is not you're going to want to put the rounded side facing up that is because this will be the inside edge of your tray and you'll want that to have a nice rounded uh Inside Edge so that's why we do it that way so I'm going to take the leather out here the water drip a moment you can see it's you know nice and loose now didn't have to soak along with this natural weather thing you need to remember is for most tray designs you're going to want to put the flesh side of the leather up because this is going to be the bottom of your tray so when it's in the mold the tray is facing face down um so I've got my leather there gonna take my mold and just force it over the top should be able to do this with you know your own strength and pressure If you happen to have a clicker press that works great for this you can just take the whole mold with the weather put it in the quicker press quick down a little bit at a time until it's all the way down um otherwise great tool is simple Hardware clamps ratcheting kind those can force it down too and that's what we're going to do next to make sure it gets all the way into the mold is use the power of the ratchets and this is best to do from corner to corner to get even distribution all around so we're just going to center it here start in the top corner go down a little bit switch to this corner again a little bit at a time gonna alternate Corners again foreign [Music] go back into the actually go to this side and do each side on the centers because I only have two clamps here ideally you want four clamps one in each corner but does work okay with just two if you use them to force down the corners first like I just did all right got it good and tight now pressure on each side my mold is in there good and secure so I got it clamped down and secured and the final step is simply you're going to want to leave it in a dry place for 24 hours to dry and you're going to be all set if you take it out and it still needs a little more dry time maybe you're using finished leather that just takes a little more than a natural leather like this you can always take it out of the mold and let it dry a little more out of the mold so after a little bit in the mold um you know it's going to keep its shape just fine and you can let it dry a little more out of the mold after you've let it dry and taken it out of the mold you'll want to cut the excess leather around the edges you'll see there's a lot of extra leather here I used a one square foot panel and didn't cut it to shape you don't need to again waste this much leather you can kind of have a better yield if you cut it you only need to be about an inch and a half to two inches around each side before you insert it into the mold um but after you take it out you'll cut it to have a nice smooth edge around finish your edges and your tray will be done and that's how you use the Buckle guy DIY leather wet mold trays

Channel: Buckleguy.com

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Id: 4oeBq8kgQ-A

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 29 2023