Sharpening Leatherwork Tools - The Edge Beveler

hello and welcome to the leather workshop I thought I would tell you today a little bit about tools that you need for leather work and in particular one tool the edge beveler which you need to keep sharp so you've got four main tools that I use that have to be kept sharp in the workshop once the all one's a knife a good pair of leather scissors and the edge beveler now the edge beveler needs to be kept sharp because you're you're shampooing the edge of your leatherwork and you want it to be neat and you also want to make the job enjoyable blunt tools make leather work really awkward and really difficult so you might buy brand-new tools this is a brand new edge beveler and you'll get it out of the packet but it won't be sharp so you need to learn this even if you're buying brand new stuff because you want to make sure they're in tip-top condition before you begin so you look at this tool and it's a funny little shape it's got a tiny little blade in between two arms and then it's flat on the back and you think how on earth I gotta sharpen it but it couldn't be easier and the more regularly you do this the less work you're going to have to do like with most blades so we've got one of our sharpening sets here which is basically a bit of wet and dry paper tied on to a bit of flat board with a couple of elastic bands and a bit of leather with the fluffy side up again stuck to a piece of board this is a piece of mesh and what you want to do is flatten off the back side of the tool and it might create a little burr between those jaws and you want to knock off that burr and then that will make it sharp so what you can do just to make sure you've got the right angle it's just color a bit of markup in one you tool and then rub that on your wet and dry paper this this particular piece of paper is about 1200 grit which is quite quite smooth because this doesn't get too roughed up so you've got your pen on the end and you're just drawing it on the paper and I'll put my finger on the end to just apply the pressure look underneath taking all the pen off so I know I've hit the right spots but I do a few min parses paper you always think you're wasting time when you stop to sharpen your tools but you're so not you're saving time is a long run by a long way so much written dry paper and then I can I just feel it that feels nice and smooth put that to one side and then I've got my piece of board with the leather on which I put a little bit of tormak boning paste on just a little bit and rub that in it just gives it a little bit of extra sort of grit to it just a little bit and then I'm going to run it down the leather as well so after rubbing it down the strop there you might find that you've got a little bit of a burr on the little blade in between the arms now it's quite small it's difficult to get into so I just use the edge of a piece of scrap leather to sort of get in there and strop it like this and it seems to work I'll just pull it back towards me like that the more acute that angle the better is to get him few passes on there then I go again on there couple on there and then another few on the edge of this leather so I think that should do it now earlier when I used it it was creating this horrible sort of rougher than if you can see that a rough sort of edge which you don't want and it's also really hard to push through the leather so that's what it was doing earlier so I'm hoping it's going to be an improvement on that so I've got a saw sheet here that's in the making and I'm just gonna try it along the edge and see if it's got any better oh yeah I can feel that oh so different look at that it's beautiful and smooth beautiful and smooth I've run down this side as well any other way down oh it's so different that's amazing that's a joy using the sharp tool like that so you can see that literally just taking a couple of minutes to sharpen your tools can make the world of difference it not only makes your work more enjoyable but it will make your finished product that bit better and also just to stop and sharpen your tools and check that you've got everything you need it's kind of meditational as well so enjoy your work enjoy your tools and I'll see you next time in the workshop

Channel: Ben & Lois Orford

Views: 110,316

Keywords: leatherwork, leather, lois Orford, craft, workshop, ben Orford, tools, edge, beveller

Id: _RSNBIMEH_8

Length: 5min 16sec (316 seconds)

Published: Mon May 11 2020