All You Need To Know To Start Working With Leather!

gosh darnit Saran you're a loose cannon turn in your gun and shield you're off the case fine but I'm solving the murder myself [Music] hey there fellow Baker welcome to the shop we have a guest today it's Bjorn hello bit of a specialist in the cosplay world he works with leather so you were at twitchcon I was there sorry there your entire outfit was made from leather that's true including how many creepy faces on your cape it was like 50 or 60 and these are faces of people we know most of them yeah yeah it was spectacular your wealth of knowledge when it comes to this humble material dwarfs mine and you currently still live in the area so we dragged him down here so that you can spread the knowledge so the project today I already have a holster for my Han Solo blaster that I made a while ago that you were scrutinizing earlier guilty this is my Blade Runner blaster I made this last year and I want to make an under the shoulder holster for it so we're gonna get jumping on that but before we dive in I'd like to look know a little more about the material leather yeah and the massive bucket of tools you brought with you specifically the basic tool is that you need just to get started beer that's a big piece of leather so of all of the different cuts of leve this particular one is what's called a double shoulder so they take the cow if this is still part of the cow they cut it horizontally across the back so that both shoulders up forward to the neck are here this is the neck line you can kind of see how it gives that kind of u-shape over here we've got one leg over here we've got another leg and then back behind here are what are called the bends of the leather different cuts of leather have different names and they all have different properties and different uses so this is a double shoulder that we'll be using today so what kind of leather is this is your gonna go buy it what would you ask for yeah so this is what's called vegetable tanned leather and the reason that it's called vegetable tanned leather is because the chemicals that are used in the tanning process to take it from a skin hide to a stable workable product our vegetable tannins often oak or pine or a number of others locally I got a we have Macpherson's leather to get raw this is raw leather not wrong in the sense that it hasn't been processed but raw in the sense that it hasn't been once on any work to it correct yeah but you finished right but you could go it's very common to go to a secondhand store and buy like an old leather skirt or jacket the difference is that vege tonie's the stuff that you can wet form so if you're looking to make like a fitted mask or wet formed holster or fitted armor those kinds of things that need complex shapes then this is what you'll need to do that most clothing is what's called chrome tanned leather which are tanned using chromium salts and other chemicals it's faster and cheaper to produce it's also got different properties so you want to make sure that you're getting something that is right for whatever project you're doing but if you're gonna wet mold a holster you got to get the static it okay good good to know I will say also usually the Macpherson's or the there's a Tandy narrows they have a scrap bin as well too so if you're looking for this stuff only you don't want to buy a giant piece for a lot of money you can get a scrap to play with that's a great way to start but we're gonna start with this giant piece of leather for our holster and then we're gonna need some tools to work on it so Bjorn brought us some of his wonderful tools and we're thinking this is probably everything we'll need for this particular project it's not a ton of stuff over here we've got some double cap rivets these are specifically double cap because they've got this kind of rounded head on both sides of them a lot of rivets will have a cap on one side and then it'll just be kind of a flared out end on the other end I like these because they give a nice clean polished finish on both sides inside and out I'm a huge fan of clean and polished everywhere you go next we've got a hole punch this is a pliers style hole punch so the nice thing about this is that it's very quick and easy if you've got a bunch of holes you have to punch the challenge is that you're limited by the depth of the throat of these pliers so if you've got anything that is more than say an inch and a half from the edge of your piece you end up needing to use something kind of like this yeah so this is actually the cheaper option it's a hole punch that has replaceable tips for different diameters there but you just whack it with a hammer anywhere you can put a hammer you can use this thing you know I'm sorry about the choke of your tool so I have both for when I need them perfect also in this this travels between all these tools these are all really great on other things like foam foam paper cardboard pretty much anything you build with if it works with that then it works with that and I know that's a silly statement to make but it's something that a lot of people don't necessarily think about because they buy it at a woodworking shop or a leather working shop or whatever and their brain just immediately defaults to that's what it's used for this looks like a compass it is and it's so much more this is probably my favorite leather working tool that I own and I use it for many many many things so your challenge today is going to be any time you think we could use this I want you to point it out okay cool actually you watching at home if you can think of a creative use for a compass let us know in the comments below and somebody uses all right let's cruise let's cruise down the line well next up we've got a strap end punch as the name implies you use this to punch out the ends of your straps to give them a nice finish I like when the name of a tool describes exactly what it does it's handy right we've got some beeswax used for some edge coating edge finishing we've got what's called a bone folder it's literally just a stick of bone that is used for shaping molding we've got an edge beveler that kind of trims off the edge of a piece of leather to take it from what would normally be a 90 degree angle at the edge to kind of a rounded profile makes it a little bit more comfortable against the skin and a little bit better finished we've got a fancy edge finisher an edge burnisher this again helps to finish the edges so that they're nice and clean you brought a phaser it is indeed not sorry but good try this is just a box knife a regular box knife that's what I use to cut 95% of my leather work with of course we've got a handy dandy measuring tool I really like these because they're useful for going around corners and that kind of stuff we've got some wool dobbers this is literally just a tuft of wool wrapped in some wire so that you can apply finishes dyes antiques that kind of stuff we've got a marking pen and then some of the liquid stuff so this is an antique paste this is what we're gonna be using to color our leather we've got token all which is a Japanese leather working product that is for edge finishing and burnishing and then we've got pro resist which is a finish coat waterproof or water-resistant and general sealant and tastic we have our material we have our tools why don't we dive into the project let's get going all right actually before we get started I got a care package from Chris you know who you are from Tandy and Detroit thank you buddy for sending us some of our own tools I don't know what a lot of these are so let's take a quick moment to discover we'll walk you through it absolutely this looks like some of the punchy would you call this stamping industry yes the amps that you know that you have a million of at a swivel knife and a stand for that the other thing that's cool is it comes with a stand so that as you collect more you'll be able to kind of build out your tool set right you don't have to just stuff them in a in a pouch like I have another tool speaking of building up the tool set another tool a little tool holder great this looks like your punch yep ethic and then these were what were those those are edged bevelers so again used for rounding off the edges of cut leather very cool this I have a smaller one of these yeah this is a burnisher designed to go into some sort of a rotary tool like a dremel or affordable something like that used for finishing edges I could tuck it right up in here exactly exactly this looks like a larger one it is that's exactly that is that's usually gonna go to like a bench grinder yeah like that or I could put this in my drill press maybe yeah yep we've got a handful more other stuff here we've got some really cool scissors some shears so yeah awesome stuff thank you again Chris for sending us the tools we will put them to good use yeah okay let's put them to good use on our project let's go so we're holster as two main parts the actual holster that holds the pistol and then the straps that would wrap around my body absolutely and we're gonna start with the holster and you've got some paper here to make a template yes so I start all of my templates with cardstock something that isn't expensive so I don't have to worry about cost as I'm going through multiple iterations as I'm drafting templates to start out with most holsters I like to get kind of a rough idea of the shape of the gun and so I'm just gonna take a pen I just give kind of a rough outline and that gives us kind of a general shape so this is basically gonna be one of our sides we're gonna end up having a front a back and to sides basically as far as the measurements go I can just roll this up on its end and it doesn't need to be super exact and then I'm just gonna continue drawing my template so the I know kind of an approximation of where things are so because this is as broad as it is normally guns are significantly narrower at the bottom of the barrel for this one I'm going to end up adding probably I'll say three quarters of an inch to an inch to either side of this so that we end up with a little bit of extra material so that we can work from there so I'm just going to take each side of this basically do the equivalent of adding seam allowance but just to cover up this extra thickness of the gun that counts for the actual size and shape of the gun and then I'll add probably a half inch or so of seam allowance on top of that so this gives us just again a rough idea of what we're looking at for our template we can make some decisions here too like as the tip of the barrel going to stick out of the the end of the holster and how much of the rear of the gun is going to be included as well great point so depending on what you're looking for whether you want it to be a historical Old West or whether you want it to look particularly aggressive and threatening you know there's there's a lot of different elements that subtly change the look of a holster so we templated this so that we have our barrel covered if we wanted to leave the tip of the barrel exposed we can just cut off the bottom three-quarters of an inch of this and that's gonna leave just the tip of the barrel exposed which changes kind of the feel of the thing I'm making a couple decisions about this just cuz I want a cool holster I'm not trying to replicate the one from the movie so we're just playing fast and loose with everything which i think is fun I'm gonna start by just giving us a roughly straight line there and then we'll take that again just super rough here but this will give us kind of a general idea of what we want to look at and since these are supposed to be give or take mirrored I'm just going to fold this in half so that we can work along one edge and that automatically mirrors it to both sides makes things a little bit faster when you're you know potentially go through multiple iterations when you're working on a bunch of different stuff at once for this one we are going to leave the whole bottom edge of that exposed so that gives us this which in theory should wrap fairly well around here because we've got all of these lines marked this one is where our bottom edge is so I'm going to kind of crease there so that we've got things kind of moving in towards the center because we've got this thinner bit here it's gonna be a little bit narrower up here so I probably didn't need to add quite as much of a margin but I'm always a huge fan of erring on the side of having too much material as opposed to too little and that becomes especially important once you get into actually using the leather if you make the piece a little bit too big and you end up cutting off some scraps you waste those scraps but if you have to cut the whole thing again you waste a lot of leather yep so there you can start to see that we've got this kind of chamber formed so now there sits just like that if we were to take this line that we've got as one of our stitch lines or rivet lines then that works this side because this is a little bit narrower we've got a little bit more room than I would suggest or I would be comfortable with so I would maybe even say bring this edge in a quarter inch or a half inch this is exactly why I like to template with cardstock is because I can play around with it if I need to tape an extra piece on and expand I can do that if I need to trim off I can do that so let's bring this edge in about a half-inch total so if we do a quarter inch off of each side that'll bring things in a little bit further just so that things are a little bit better fitted cool our pattern looks like it's just about ready to go we added a little more room here and make it look pretty we got a leather so up next we are going to go ahead and transfer our pattern to the leather we'll get things cut out and then we will go from there fantastic is there a spot should we just use like an edge here so that's actually a great question that is way more important than you might think so over here on the leather you notice how there's all of these wrinkles Maxon that kind of stuff this is towards the belly of the cow this stuff has way more stretch to it and because of that it ends up being much less stable so we actually want to do something that's closer to the top of the shoulder or the back when it comes to leather the center right along the spine is the strongest most stable leather as you work your way towards the edges you get more of this stretchy wrinkly stuff so when you're working on a big project you'll actually want to cut off right about here so that you end up working with stable stuff there's a difference between the actual piece of leather and what's usable yield and this is still usable for certain things you just want to pick projects that are good for that kind of a thing so and we're gonna go ahead and cut that I'm gonna go ahead and cut that out sure and again this is just a box cutter like you don't need a fancy-pants knife one of the most important things is just make sure that your blade stays perfectly vertical so you don't end up with angles where you don't want them and keeping the knife very sharp so similar to foam I would start at a intersection like that cut away from it and just like foam leather is an abrasive material so it will chew through blades pretty fast this is called the grain side and then the fuzzy side is called the flesh side the reason that they look different this is the side that faces outside of the cow this is the side that faces towards the meat of the cow and so this when they skinned the cow the leather is like more than a quarter of an inch thick it's it's beefy stuff pun intended and when they process it they send it through these great big like 9 foot wide 10 foot wide knives that split off an underlayer in the top layer this would be what's referred to as like a top grain leather and then what gets split off of it has the fuzzy side on both sides and that's where you get things like suede and that kind of stuff so the majority of the strength of leather is towards the top of the surface so suede is not something that you want to make like a load-bearing belt out of that's something that you want the majority of that leather strength in it this top surface will take stamping tooling that kind of stuff whereas suede does not so next we're going to bevel our edges that kind of rounds off the corners so we need a tool that must be what this is for quite good try though so we're actually gonna use what is called an edge bail remember that thing we talked about a little earlier it's just a matter of holding it with a little bit of pressure on your index finger holding it at a consistent angle so that the height of the back of the tool stays the same and then you're just running it along the edge to pull off what I like to refer to as leverage spaghetti that just kind of rounds off those edges so that they are nice and soft and we're only going to do this for the top side for our sides and then for the bottom and the top of this we're gonna do both sides since those aren't gonna be up against each other whereas this side they're gonna be butted up against each other and we want those to line up one of the nice things about these is that in order to strop them as well as sharpen as most people will ever do to them you basically just take a piece of leather lace that is close to the width of your edge beveler and you just put some strapping polish on it some some Rouge like a board with some leather straps on it yeah yep so I can't quite reach in there with that tool so I'm just gonna do it with an exacto and you could do all this with an exacto absolutely not be as fun as this tool and that's that's one of the things that's true most leather working stuff just because there is a specific leather working tool for that job it usually just makes it faster and more consistent it's not what makes it possible this edge here has not been beveled and then this edge over here has been beveled we're looking pretty good so far you had mentioned earlier about the different thicknesses of leather and for a holster yep this might be a little thin yeah so normally you'll want like eight to ten ounce this is like five six ounce so we're a little bit on the light side we have the option of lining it and we could double up on this or we've got some suede that we could use totally up to you lots of options I think we're gonna roll with this okay now I'm not gonna wear this thing every day so I'm not too worried about durability sounds like a plan we'll go with that next step we are going to figure out and lay out our assembly cool can I use this yet yes actually let's let's see how you think you're gonna use that and this is an educated guess is that we need to figure out where the rivets are gonna go along the edge yep absolutely so what using stitching whether using rivets the question is how do you want to line these up and this is the majority of the uses that I use the compass for or the wing dividers is for measuring and spacing things so for this one we can set it to you know if we were to do a super close to our edge stitch line I could just mark that there if we're doing rivets we're gonna want it to be a little bit wider so if we wanted to mark where our rivets go we could put it like there and then mark out where each of our rivets go and then you can also use this to mark spacing between your rivets so you've if you draw yourself a continuous line then you can use this to set well I want you know three quarters of an inch between my rivets you set to roughly three quarters of an inch and then you can just follow that line and that gives you perfect spacing no matter where you are along the project awesome let's do that so we've got our rivet head is here so we want to make sure that we are giving ourselves enough room so that once we smash these rivets together that we're gonna have room on both sides that it's not overhanging our edges so if we do that then we can just mark and again it's just kind of a matter of marking a border line and then it's up to you whether or not you want to continue that line up here so that's roughly center to there so we'll put one towards our corner here I'm just gonna press in there so that sits like that and then let's shoot for again roughly somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of an inch so that way we can mark from there and I'm just gonna kind of ballpark the center line for that so that then we have marked where we want our holes to go and then that one will decide what we want to do there this is the the rotary head of this thing there's six different options you tend to want to go one size smaller than whatever it is that you're using because leather has a little bit of stretch to it alright so if you want to go ahead and punch those I do I know I want to yeah as if you you probably have lifetime of experience of punching holes one thing I will say is the plier grip hole punches when you're working with armored leather you build a lot of hand strength oh I can imagine a massive pain but then once you actually build the hand strength then it's nice because it's just not an issue so then what we can do is we can just line these up and put four holes you just like using that as your reference the Han Solo blaster I stitched this part so that's why this time I want to try these rivets this is great could you come and hold stuff for me whatever I need it absolutely I'll just I'll just send you a bill so what I like to do here is just to make sure that our edges are lined up we're gonna grab a handful of these and go ahead and just thread those through so we can see how clean our edges are so we're pretty close do you think you want to do a border stamp yeah a little bit of decoration yeah for sure so next up we're gonna go ahead and mark and cut our borders so that we can do a little bit of fancy edge stamping and which tool do we need for that I'm actually impressed well we'll start with that and then we'll move on to the swivel knife as you can tell is a knife that swivels go ahead and take that make sure that you've got it spaced the same as the one that we already did looks correct perfect and we'll go ahead and do the other side just so that way we make sure that they are the same one of these will be in the back so we're gonna still decorate the back you don't have to but you know what it would be good practice so with the wing dividers perfectly straight line it blew me away when I first started using these how much practice that actually took for me to get functionally competent with it and it really is just a matter of practice you'll get there first try these are adjustable height so the stem here you can rotate this whole thing so that it goes there I have mine pretty much at the top and then this rotates so that it can go shorter or longer you'll kind of get a feel for where you want yours to sit a lot of its based on the size of your hand since I have giant Bearpaw hands I like mine at the top which knuckle or which segment of your finger you rest on is 100% a matter of preference I know people that do first second and third again it's just a matter of how you feel you have the most control I don't know I think that would work its index finger sits in the saddle and then your thumb and your middle finger are the ones that are going to be doing most of the work the easiest way that I find to kind of rotate this is whichever side you want it to go to pull with that finger so it's not necessarily a push and pull I find that I get much more graceful curves if I just pull with one side and then let the other side kind of fall out and you're scoring the surface you're not cutting all the way through it yeah so this is cutting into the surface but it's not going all the way through and this is a brand new blade so it's actually it should probably be strop that's why it kind of pulled a little bit as it went so I'm cutting with that this this correct yeah so you'll kind of lean the tool so you're just working with the corner that's furthest away from your finger and then go slow give it whatever time it needs and the goal is to shoot for between a third and halfway through the leather as just kind of a ballpark you'll get a feel for how light or or hard you want to cut based on the project yeah there we go perfect that wasn't so hard so next we'll go ahead and spray the leather with a little bit of water so that we can bevel things so you want to do a misty spray go ahead and douse it fairly well and then we'll let it sit for a minute let it absorb in you're good there so you can see that it sucks up that moisture if you're using thicker leather you'll want to give it a little bit more moisture if you're using a thinner leather then it's gonna take a lot less so we'll give this another minute or so once it starts to get back to close to its natural color that's when we're gonna know that we are right where we want to be with this so using water to soften this works on the edged hand leather correct yeah so chrome tan won't work all of those kinds of things this is specifically for vegetable tanned leather yeah so this is I think this is oil tanned and the water just beads up on the surface and even if it doesn't beat it's you're still not gonna be able to stamp into it now I have to put that away wet all right it's been a couple minutes it's starting to dry a little bit yeah I also grabbed a big piece of plastic but you said anything heavy would be useful as a work surface when you're doing this kind of tooling like a big piece of rock yeah ideally you want to use either like marble or granite something that is as dense as possible as weighty as possible because when you're stamping you're putting energy into the leather and then that transfers through to the work surface the goal is to minimize bouncing so that we don't end up with an impression the tool bounces and skips and then hits where we don't want it to because that's how you end up with really messy tooling one of the nice things is that you can go to any local countertop place and they'll have sink cutouts that they don't use that are inch and a half two inch thick granite or marble slabs that they just throw out and usually have to pay people to haul away so they usually give them to you for 5 10 15 bucks and you've got a perfect tooling surface now your hammer looks a lot different than my hammer oh that's true but this wood this'll work right it'll work you haven't dated for a moment I do and there's a reason for that because the the rubber mallet has the exact same problem where it'll bounce so this is a leather working maul and usually I hold it with a pinch right behind the head of the hammer so that this acts as a pivot so that when I strike the tool it bounces back up but then my fingers catch it which limits kind of its its motion so that if it does try to bounce on me I'm limiting both the upward and the downward motion whereas with a hammer where you tend to hold it further back on the handle it's gonna rebound and it's just generally less controlled if I'm gonna use this I might just grip way up on it hopefully minimize them yep and that's that's exactly it is when you're tooling leather you want to tap the tool not strike it so so this is what's called a bevel ER and they come in all sorts of different widths all sorts of different textures this one has a really fine texture and is a little bit steeper so when you look at the tool it's got this flat face over here and then it's angled over here so the goal of this is to basically create a sharp 90 degree angle on one side and then a slanted gradation on the other side so that it creates the illusion of one edge shifting underneath another edge it's going to create the look of a second piece of leather that is thicker or wider or on top of this main body the goal is to kind of walk the tool along so you're tapping and moving yeah so that the goal is to just kind of as consistently as possible walk the tool along your line and you shouldn't be afraid of going back over your lines to clean things up because it's definitely not fair to expect yourself to get it exactly perfect the first time I know I don't expect it of myself so I mean honestly I'm a little disappointed you and me both bill this color change is from some of the oils and fats of the leather getting squished to the surface by the compression of the tool and so it burnish is the leather which is that kind of color change which also gives a little bit better visual cue that there's layering going on it acts as kind of a natural shadowing as you go most dyes are translucent rather than opaque so some of this darker color will still show through after you diet and you can go either forward or backwards towards your hand or away from your hand all right everybody hold onto your butts I believe in you bill that was the weakest tab okay so one thing that I will say is you want to make sure that your tool is straight this way yeah you're kind of drifting a little bit moving in that way cool perpendicular the head of this tool is a moving target so my hand both hands have to move at the same pace as I swing so that's interesting where we're getting there see saw on our way around the corner okay good I'm happy with that it's real good stop hammer time I'm sorry if you weren't born in the 80s you probably don't know what that means so this is a newer hammer and that's an older one but they're the they're the same they look the same at one point yeah they started out same color handle they both have this kind of tapered head this one is a significantly smaller one so it's not that this one's been used and eventually ground down but you can't actually throw one of these on the lathe and turn it to kind of resurface the hammer so this one's darker and that that's all you it's a combination of leather tans in the Sun and it tans as it absorbs oil so as you handle things like leather wallets holsters that kind of stuff they pick up the oils from your skin and that does kind of burnish and darken it yeah it's a bunch of leather discs that they threw it on a lathe and turned it so next up we want to burnish our top and bottom edges that way we can wait until we've riveted this to do these once we can make sure that they're line gonna line up perfectly we're gonna start with a little bit of this token all burnishing gum and then we've got a edge slicker so this stuff is kind of goopy stuff I don't even know what it's made of but again it's it's a gum tragacanth is kind of the the common one that's used by a lot of United States leather workers token ole is again a Japanese product the goal of this is to bind the fibers at the edge of the leather so that they're not all sticking out again leather is a made up of a network of fibers and so by binding them together and then pressing them down it kind of lays them all flat and allows for a really nice smooth edge so give that a minute or so to kind of start to firm up and then we'll go ahead and run along with this I want to pick which groove is going to basically be the the size that fits and then one size up we don't want there to be a gap between the top and bottom at the center where if you go with space that's too small you won't end up getting the flat of the leather so you want to be a little bit on the larger side of that and so we can see that this we get this really really nice feel that oh the difference so shiny like that and so you can kind of get into the corners here it's a combination of pressure and heat so basically all of the parts of friction that lay those fibers together that then whatever your burnishing compound kind of grabs into and then lays down it's because of the token all that we're getting this really nice shiny finish it's a little bit more challenging if you're just using water there are a lot of incredibly skilled leather workers that do just use water but it's it's a little bit more finicky to get it to a really nice polished edge this will still take color so you can dive through this and then once we do our final everything we'll run over with a sealer that will actually make it so that it won't absorb anything else from there yeah you just want a little bit of pressure but it's more about generating a small level of friction than anything else so this is one of the ones we got from Chris here and it spins and I imagine it doesn't you don't have to push hard just that's friction is what you want it you get from it I see this seems like the civilized way to do it here there's very strong thoughts that some people have about what is the quote unquote right way to do it as far as I'm concerned if it works yeah it's the right way this pointy part here you really do kind of need a hand tool to get it yeah yep like there's always a reason to own one of these mostly because it's fancy and pretty it is really I mean this one is this one's amazing this is way fancier than mine's actually jammed this in the in the drill press which I learned is a legitimate thing to do I don't know why it's burned on the pond there it's the friction from the metal plate at the bottom of the drill press that's probably exactly what that is because my my other one that's not as pretty as this one has the exact same thing going on so this is the non slicked edge and we'll do that later and then this is what it looks all shiny and burnished nice and greeting yeah and this is a thing that a lot of cosplayers and a lot of professional other workers skip as a step and then they label it as rustic a lot of people use it as an excuse to have unfinished things I need to start making more rustic foam armor the next step is stamping yeah so let's pick a border stamp to you which is great because I just got some stamps we're gonna go ahead take your pick probably want to stick to either this row or this row so I want to go in something that looks kind of sci-fi and I'm feeling like like one of these maybe oh yeah I like that and we can alternate it with something like that that just gives a little bit of a dome kind of a rivet II look we need to moisten the leather dampen the leather to get it to be able to take impressions adding a little bit of water to it lubricates those fibers so that they're able to move and then once it drives they lock back into place which allows them to keep the shapes that we put into them got my state holdup whoa whoa whoa calm yourself all right so we need to test on scrap because before we make a decision that we can't undo which leather is notorious for so let's go ahead and mark out where we want our border to be and then which is there a preferred direction for this and that one of the nice things about leather working is you can do whatever the heck you want what I would suggest is butt it up against your edge so if pick a line and then go against that line just give it one good whack or yep if it's a particularly large stamp occasionally I'll give it one on one direction and then I'll lean the stamp a little bit different way and then give it a second one yeah and then I could just like alternate it like thank you like you could do something like that have now this sort of radial pattern that's really cool so this one that you recommended is dished so if I so that looks like a rivet which is cool because we if we want this to look more sci-fi yeah I could even go in and paint that later I imagine yep absolutely we tried a bunch of different stamps here and had a lot of fun but then I decided we're gonna go for this guy to go around the edge over here did some practices this is the side we're gonna see so why don't you do that one and I'll do the back so we're using a little bit heavier Maul than we were using before just because this is a fairly large surface area for the stamp and we want to make sure that we're getting nice deep clean impressions when it comes to stamping start where you want to make sure that things are lined up things are visually important so that you can make sure that things are nice and crisp and lined up and clean when it comes to border stamps geometric stamps all of that kind of stuff things can potentially drift as you work and so making sure that wherever is important is lined up the best is in your best interest want to be as consistent as possible with the amount of pressure and make sure that you're lining things up the same way so if you've got a gap between each of your stamps try and keep the spacing consistent so that you can see that we're ending up right at our edge like that as opposed to ending up with like half of a stamp missing very good and that's something that you kind of pick up over time yeah and I notice that you could go back and come back and then this will lock back into place yes and whack it again if you need to redefine any of those edges yep because the leathers still damp if you flex the leather too much it will kind of lose some of that definition if that happens it's not a big deal you can usually go back through and clean things up and then you want to make sure that you're leaving it to dry without any sort of major flexing going on you definitely tell a practiced hand would just be better at getting it closer on the first whack yeah and it's a lot of it's muscle memory you know when you've done it a thousand times then it's gonna kind of just kind of line itself up don't hit your finger hit the tool it's pro tip from Bill me to you this looks really great I want to add just a splash more detail we got some hexagons cuz that's from the future I don't want to put a stripe of them across there you said we need we should put duct tape on the back of this yeah so to keep it from one of the things that is kind of a problem when you heavily stamp leather is that because you are compressing the leather when you stamp into it it squishes the leather but because leather deforms plastically when it's wet it squishes downwards and then out as well so you end up with a center part that's stretched and then the outside is stable where you've got your borders and so you end up with kind of a dish thing that starts to dome on you so by adding a little bit of tape to the back of it it holds that fiber network stable at a little bit of extra strength to it so that instead of squishing outwards it stays put and prevents that warping there are some projects like if you're making shoulders for armor where you want it to dish you can use that to your favor but for something like this we want to be able to wet form it later and so we're gonna go ahead and just leave the stamping where we want it I'm gonna use some painters tape to mark out where we're gonna put our stamps and then we'll start hammering while we're working on those stamps I want to take a moment to thank our patrons over at patreon.com slash punished props it's thanks to you and your financial support that we're able to work in this awesome gigantic shop with some of our friends on these really fun projects if you'd like to jump in on the fun consider tossing us a dollar and you get access to things like behind-the-scenes vlogs every single week early releases on all of our build videos and extra credit videos for those build videos extra credit videos where we take a dive into the project once it's done to discuss some of the finer points of the build sometimes we get a ton of extra footage when we're filming like we did here with Bjorn and that footage instead of making it into the main video we get put into the extra credit video accessible to patrons so thank you so much for your support I hope you like the extra bits of goodness we've made for you you can head on over to patreon commoners props to give us a little bit of support thank you so much let's get back to the build next step is we're gonna have to figure out where we want our rivets to go for the back for our snaps yeah so what we're gonna do is we're gonna build the harness so that you'll have kind of a placard under your arm so that that way it can just snap into place if you want to swap that out for an ammo thing if you want to swap that out for a pouch then you've got options it's just kind of a modular system great let's go get my analog so this is the what the holes was kind of gonna look like when it's done and it's gonna go under my shoulder there yep and it's just where you're comfortable how you how you want to draw and I also don't want the gun to fall out yeah roughly a 45 degree angle okay I think that looks 45 Brit does that look all right great perfect so what we'll do is we'll go ahead and mark like there and they're kind of about like that and I think that's pretty good go ahead and grab the hole punch right over there I would go from this side that does reach okay go yeah as we say if you're close you can bend it you'll want to be careful about how you take those liberties but you can get away with it most times next is snaps which means don't stop just just this is our rivet press whoo now whenever I've done snaps or rivets or anything I just whacked it with a hammer we're really acceptable absolutely what you happen to have this wonderful I will say I am garbage at that yeah so I have a machine that helps me this is the stem and that gets pressed through the back of it like that so it looks like so and then that goes on top of it oh that this that rests on there in the tool and then that the the snappy part that guy goes on there and then that goes in our tool on that little stem and then with me oh yeah that's easier like that there we go and those are on there pretty much permanent yep and if you had to take these off you could drill that out was just high just like a rivet like I've had to do in the past so now we got our rivets to put the edge together yep so we've got a handful of the stems and caps so this is going through there and then one of these will go on there and it's nice that they snap in place absolutely then you can line it up well and this is super super great for armor and stuff as well because you can just snap them together and then they just stay in place that's gonna be our anvil the lever means that they just shift straight up and down so you're pretty much guaranteed a perfect set every time the bottom side of the rivet slides into this it's got this collar that also kind of pops up and down so that when this goes it'll actually press down and set this top section has a little bit of a divot in it right there so that this will sit on the top of one of these caps which again gives it kind of a registration to lock into place at this point you'll lock in the bottom you lower the handle just a little bit lock in the top and then just press and you are off to the proverbial races it's super super super nice basically if you're ever doing anything where you need to set a boat load and a half of these rivets suddenly the press starts to pay for itself in the time that you're saving just because rivets are a time-consuming process and they just set 9:00 in about 15-20 seconds that looks really nice there now the the earlier is that we could through this up yep so we'll grab a bit of a sanding disc got a belt sander if you've got sanding I am very comfortable with sanding so let's see I got my rotary tool here with just a sanding bit and I can see in those flush and you'll see the moment when it gets flushed because it'll suddenly look really really nice and then we'll be able to go back through and slick those yep probably bevel these edges yeah again depending on how much sanding you have to do sometimes you do have to re bemol also make sure that you hit this front the corner look at that so you can kind of true things up a little bit the difference between super basic leather work and mind-blowing ly good leather work is more often than not how many steps they do of finish and polish and so now that you've got that couple of layers together you'll start to see where if you do too small of a size on the the edge slicker you end up missing part of the flap so to play around with with which size of that you're using you'll figure out which one works best now is the time for color indeed so while there are literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and thousands of options for dyes paints antiques that kind of stuff we're gonna opt for some feedings dark brown antique paste this just happens to be what I have handy for today so we're just gonna go ahead and grab some of this that looks gross it is pretty gross and we're just gonna smear we're gonna be super heavy-handed on this yeah we are look at that it's like weathering a prop though like you do you brush all this stuff on and you're like oh no what have I done that's pretty true yeah and so with the antique we're gonna leave it on for just a little bit and then we're gonna take a paper towel this is just like weathering oh look at that this is leather weathering that's exactly what this is that's that's why it's called the antique is because it has kind of a multi tonality that it does the deep spots the stuff that you've cut or tulle they're stamped tends to hold more of it and it gives it that weathered antique look that's exactly what this stuff is for depending on how long you leave it on it will absorb and hold more of that color so if you want it to be darker then we can leave it on for longer if you want it to be where it's at this looks pretty good the way it is I think so we'll go ahead and just hit it and again I want to overlap both the the new stuff on the old stuff so that I have kind of a transition area so there and again the goal is just to see if we can get things to match up as well as possible color wise so that's pretty good depending on how you're feeling some people will leave the inside of it undyed on antiqued some people will kind of lightly hit it some people will line it with a different color of leather there's all sorts of different options it just kind of depends on how you feel we decided that we should wet form it which we could have done before the antiquing it's not going to be the end of the world we may have to reallocate because the the antique is a water-based thing the prop I wrapped up in cling wrap and it will be it won't get wet perfect won't get stained yep so we're good to go that'll protect it well you want to give that a test fit and you make sure that we're at least on the right track and see that it's yeah it's snug which it should be that's what we want and it looks like it wants to fit right in there all right so we've got a bowl of water here when it comes to wet forming you want to use room-temperature water if you use warm or hot water you'll be able to get more significant contours and more significant shaping going on but it will also kind of shrink and warp the leather a little bit as it dries so just be aware that you kind of have to be careful with that so you can kind of feel that how it's quite soggy very very malleable I've given that just a little bit of time to set in some of our antique is pulling off of it again that's fine go ahead and plot that and where we need and let's set that so that we've got the tip of that just kind of poking through and this is where we'll use this guy this is a what's called a bone folder and we're basically just gonna find our contours and press along so that we can figure out how this needs to get shaped yeah so you're using the form of the prop as a brace to press against to create the form of so we can feel that there's a kind of a nob there up that iconic weird knob on the side of the blade or in a gun that I have no idea what's that what it's there for this would be tough to do with a prop made out of like EBA foam yes because it would compress as you push into it so a rigid prop would be good yeah a lot of times people will make either a wooden form of something like that or you can 3d print with thick walls if you were to go with a you know two or three times what you would normally print at four wall thickness you're usually okay another thing is up here since we want to make sure that the gun doesn't fall out we're gonna wrap there there's a little bit of a knob here I'm gonna kind of push this down around the back of it so it has a little bit of a flare here and then I'm gonna pull out here so it flares out here so that this part will kind of clasp it into place and just kind of hold things some people will use like a vacuform ER to do this and I've seen some really really nice results that way boy this looks really fantastic it's getting there this has to dry yes so we'll leave this off to the side while we're doing that we'll go ahead and whip up our harness so we'll go ahead and grab your double the blaster is gonna go here yep and we want a panel for that to snap to yes or whatever other attachment I want to hide under there we're making that a little bit modular for you and then there's gonna be a backplate sort of thing yep and then some straps and it will have them along both arms like so so we have to cut some straps and some panels and you've already patterned them how about there's one of them the other ones can basically just be rectangles and straps we use a tool called a strap cutter that is literally designed for purpose cutting straps makes things really quick really easy and let's jump to it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we are just about wrapped up and ready to try this thing on we made this little plate here to snap this on to but what we found that was that the the blasters actually to having it was pulling it down so you made another panel that works better yeah so he just widen things out in both directions a little bit and instead of going with two snaps so that it would end up pivoting we ended up with four snaps so that it's got a little bit of support in all directions so that if it tries to lean it's got something stopping it yes so we can snap these and the snaps are so that we could put a different thing here if we wanted to yeah otherwise we could have just riveted this on permanently but that's on there I don't need this anymore and I think it's time to try it on let's give it a shot this is a size adjustment with this snap here so hopefully this is the right size and I think it just goes on like a backpack through too much like so yeah stylish and comfortable yeah and then now this fella can go in just like that up top yeah that was [Music] [Music] Joran I feel like a certified badass wearing this thing this is so cool so cool I can just go ha ready to go take out all the replicants this was a lot of fun I learned a ton and I also learned that I need one of those I didn't Eve one of those and ever I'll take one of everything I hope you learned something too leatherworking is so versatile and so cool and the skills transfer yeah there's so many other other places thank you so much for hanging out with us today thanks for having me it's been a blast get it if you're interested in see what Bjorn is up to and you should be then you're gonna want to go check out your twitch channel yea which that TV slash Bjorn's workshop course will have a link down below and then you you just got a new gig didn't you I did you're moving you're leaving us I'm moving across the country so normally in the the greater Seattle area moving down to Houston to work with Prince armory I'm super super super excited about it you should be most of what I do is kind of fantasy adventure type stuff LARP stuff Renaissance Faire type stuff and he is at the absolute top of that game and so I'll be apprentice in for the foreseeable future check out his website Prince armory calm we will also be starting to stream a twitch TV slash Prince Armory also check out his youtube we'll put some links in the bottom for that as well some really really awesome armor builds coming at you soon I'm personally very excited to see what you start cooking up you and me both so I'll be following along as well as you said love links down below thank you again to our patrons for helping support all of this work so that we can come in on a weekend and buy lunch for Bjorn we had barbecue great delicious if you'd like to join in on the fun it's patreon.com slash if you throw us a buck you get access to a ton of extra content tons of awesome stuff it's fantastic we're gonna shoot an extra-credit video just after this little deep dive into this project if you want to learn any more about leatherworking if there's a specific thing that you want to know more about please let us know in the comments that'll do it for today thank you thank you thank you thank you we'll catch you in the next build all right so this is the the nan was slicked slicked there we go Thanks we're gonna have so many bloopers for this video it's Bjorn hello that's it Bjorn is the specialist Brits got the macro lens out now and I'm all self-conscious about my nasty fingernails hi I'm bill and I make stuff for a living hey looks good I'm happy with that it's real good yeah it's okay that's the back nailed it it's fine judgment-free zone gets the backside I need to start making more rustic farmer you know what all that material is over there it's deconstructed armor I think a finger would've been easier I think you're right bread I wasn't gonna say it

Channel: Punished Props Academy

Views: 295,347

Keywords: Leather, leather crafting, leather working, leatherworking, leather basics, how to leather, how to leather basics, leatherworking for cosplay, Bjorn's Workshop, leather for cosplay, leather holster, wet molding, leather tooling, leather tools, leather craft, swivel knife, tandy leather, leather tooling tutorial, leather carving tools, leather tooling and carving, Punished Props, Punished Props Academy, Bill Doran, Chinbeard, props, cosplay, tutoial, how to, DIY, how to make, make

Id: 42HvV9uQxr0

Length: 55min 51sec (3351 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 25 2019