What Leather Weight Should You Use?

hey everybody we're going to talk a little bit about leather thickness we get a lot of questions what thickness leather should i use for different projects and stuff so we're just going to go over kind of give a general rundown of what leather thickness is what leather thicknesses you should use for different projects etc to start we're going to talk about units of measure right because leather can be measured in a lot of different things you have really old world irons um european folks tend to measure in millimeters of thickness we go by ounces in the united states ounces does has nothing to do with weight really it's a measure of thickness and you can kind of get an idea of thickness to ounces by each ounce is about one sixty fourth of an inch right so um four ounces is going to be a sixteenth of an inch and eight ounces is going to be an eighth of an inch and 16 ounces is going to be a quarter of an inch so that's what we're going to talk about and the other thing is we're mostly referring to um steer hide or cowhide here uh you're not really going to get super thick leathers off of a lot of other animals unless you go like extreme exotics like elephant and stuff which we're not even going to get into um when you get like reptiles alligator croc that kind of thing the heights are going to be much thinner same with deerskin steer hide cowhide that's where you're going to get a lot of the really thick stuff most saddle leather hides start off really really thick so this is the belt leather that we use just some scrap of it this is about 12 13 ounces even this has been split down coming off of the animal and depends on the animal these hides are going to be between 17 and 22 23 ounces thick they're going to be really really thick so all hides are generally they start out that way and then at some point in the process they're split down for example the saddle tan leather that we use this stuff comes at 11 ounces but we have we ever split it down for us using their splitting service so when you're looking at different leathers and you see well maybe one comes at four ounces one comes at six ounces you have to remember that it all probably started at at least 10 or 11 ounces and originally off the animal was closer to 20 ounces we're going to show you how that splitting is done we have a small splitter over here and we'll show you what we mean by splitting so this is our beautiful landis strap splitter um tanneries are going to use basically a bigger version of this and of course it's more complicated and this one's like almost 100 years old so it's more technologically advanced but at the basics you have two rollers with a blade in between and you set the the thickness that you want your leather to come out at you put the leather in one end and then out the other you can see we're getting on the top our split leather that we set the gauge to how thick we want it and at the bottom we're getting what's literally called the split now split is just fiber there's no grain holding this together so sometimes what companies will do or what tanneries will do is they'll take split they'll add synthetics to make it strong again and that's when you get your lower grade leathers from because this otherwise is waste like we throw this away on the top here you have grain holding all this together so it's going to be much much stronger but this leather where this is a small piece but it might now feel more like a wallet leather this started out like this and this started out probably closer to this thickness when it came off the animal so when we say splitting that's what we're meaning we're taking a full weight leather and we're splitting it down and then once it's in parts you have to make sure you know what part you're getting you could get a super process leather that's just split that's been processed on top or you could get the full grain leather where this is where all your strength is so now the question is what thicknesses do we use for different projects so we'll kind of start from the thicker stuff first you're pretty much going to be struck be doing strap goods out of your thicker leathers this is anywhere from 20 ounces down they actually used to make uh shipping container straps out of it for cargo ships before rubber was really a thing at this thickness your leather is not going to stretch at all really i use it for here's my bag handles um this is five years old you can see this is the same thickness as our belt leather i just cut it small it's like half inch thick and the nice thing about this is if you round the edges nice it almost feels like cording so it's a nice it looks thin but it's not i mean i put probably 15 pounds in this bag carry it every single day no stretching at all anything under maybe say 9 or 10 ounces depending on the tannage if you're making a belt or anything that's going to have weight to it you're going to want to stitch it and the reason you're going to want to stitch it is this thread hopefully you're using synthetic when you're using it for a weight an application where it's taking weight or you're trying to prevent stretch the thread is going to prevent it from stretching if you have a 9 or 10 ounce belt and you don't stitch it what's going to happen is over time this belt is going to stretch even these really thick belts they'll stretch about an inch over the first two years and then they remain pretty stagnant after that so if you're a thick stuff you're going to be doing handles you're going to be doing strap goods that's pretty much all you're going to do you're never going to really be making a wallet or a bag out of like i mean i suppose you could make it out of like 12 13 ounce leather but it would be it'd be more like armor than a bag uh sticking with our bag here when we get into mid-weight leathers uh your six seven eight nine ounce leathers that's when you're gonna get into your simple tote bags your um your knife sheaths your pouches all that kind of stuff that you're going to be working with you're going to be um like tool tool sheaths for a tool belt something like that those are some things that you're going to make out of those weights leather of leather now when you do use this is an 8 ounce leather you don't really need to stitch anything as you can see even the stitching on this the lacing is eight ounce leather um you're still going to have a ton of strength here if you're using a veg tan now if you're using um something that's not vegetable tanned like a pull-up leather something super oiled even eight or nine ounces you're probably not going to want to make a belt out of it because that is going to stretch stuff anything that's made for shoes is designed to stretch around the molds and and make the shapes of shoes we're talking primarily about vegetable tan leathers here which are a little bit more dry they keep a little bit more their rigidity and over time they keep their shape better so for those thicknesses i always use thicker handles if you're not stitching thicker handles six seven eight nine ounce bodies for bags and pouches and that kind of thing if you do wanna use a thinner weight leather again remember that a lot of your strength is gonna come in either lining it so you have two pieces of four ounce leather making an eight ounce body and it's all stitched up or you're just going to use your stitching is going to become your strength and so your leather is going to be it's going to last a long time but it won't be deformed by anything because your stitching is holding it all in place so for mid length mid weight leathers again light strap goods um bags pouches that kind of stuff seven eight nine ounce leather is also really good for making little bracelets like this where you're not gonna stitch anything you can do your nice tooling in there or anything you like like that these things last a long time so when you get into thinner stuff uh this is where you're going to get a little more nuanced right so you're between an ounce and a half and four to five ounces that's where you're gonna make a lot of your smaller carry goods wallets bracelets uh stitch bracelets key fobs small cases that kind of stuff lined stuff you're gonna you're not really gonna line an eight ounce with a four ounce you're probably gonna line an eight ounce with a one ounce or you're gonna do two pieces of four ounce together to make an eight ounce piece that's fully lined and has no um fiber on the back so the biggest question is like when you're making a wallet because you know a lot of people watch us to make wallets what else do i do the pockets at what else do i do the body at and the answer fortunately and unfortunately is because leather is such a um diverse product it's it's there isn't one answer to that question so we'll go through it kind of one at a time and kind of give you some options for what ounce leather you can use for different parts of wallets depending on the style of wallet you're gonna make so for more simple construction these are shameless plug these are diy kits this is the card hole the card wallet you can go with like a three and a half four ounce leather for everything because you only have a couple layers um this is going to help keep the shape because you're not you don't have a liner or anything like that you can really just stick with one leather weight and make the whole thing out of it you get a little more complicated like our this is the production snap wallet that we sell on our own website you're going to get into maybe two leather weights right so your exterior is going to be a four or five ounce leather because while it is lined it's not fully lined right it has a half liner in it so the the extra thickness on the outside gives it a bit more rigidity however on the inside we're using a two and a half three ounce leather to kind of keep the bulk down and it also makes it it's a little more easy to mold in so if you put two cards in here it's not as stiff and it'll mold to the two cards and you can load this up and it'll be broken in fairly quickly and so then you get into the couple different lit weights and just a little bit of a different feel feels a little more of like a polished product then if you want to get even more luxurious think more french fashion house italian leather crafting you can get into the fully lined everything's lined even the pockets the hidden pockets are lined and this is where you get into it's not even as many leather weights this is like three ounce on the outside one and a half ounce liner two ounce pockets so you're a lot of little nuances right you could make this whole wallet out of three ounce leather if you skive because then you get your other dimension in we can skive the leather so we can remove thickness where we don't want it and keep it where we do like this wallet here this let this wallet is is fairly simple but it's got like a gusseted card pocket here the outside is four ounce leather the inside is two ounce leather so it's a six ounce shell but the whole outside is skived so the edges stay really slim because it's it's a pretty small wallet the gusset is a three ounce little strip here that i skype down on the edges to around one ounce so you have the thickness in the middle to give you that structural piece that you need but then instead of wet molding i use the one ounce and bent it so that i can kind of get the bend right so it sits comfortably so when you get to the lighter weights and then the pockets on these because there's no tea pocket like on this you have your tea pockets here and it comes in and down and you want to remove bulk on a design like this it's just one flat piece and then another flat piece so there's no tea pockets there's no bulk really the only thing we're removing is we're using our skiving knife to skive the edges so these are actually i think three ounce pockets so when i say there's nuance um i if you want me to tell you what to use for what i would say uh four ounce shells four ounce exteriors to your wallet two and a half to three ounce interiors and then three ounce kind of supporting structure for the insides of your wallets if you're gonna do a lined wallet like say you want a wallet like this but lined i would do equal leather weights inside and outside so do maybe three ounce on the outside three ounce on the inside glue them together for a six ounce wallet it's going to be kind of thick but then remove with your knife with your skiving knife maybe remove the edges or maybe use a one and a half ounce liner with a three ounce exterior if you wanted a little more slim generally pockets i like to keep all of my pockets at three ounces or under because if you go thicker than that you get into the problem of the pockets are too rigid and you'll actually snap your cards as you're trying to take them out before the wallet's broken and it is possible to to like make a wallet out of five ounce leather and break in the pockets but it's gonna be you're gonna have a hell of a time doing it it's much easier if you use three ounce leather it's gonna be just as strong and it's gonna be easier to use from the get-go and so that is a sort of a brief intro into leather weights and what weights to use for what um if you have any more specific detailed questions leave in the comments below maybe we'll make another more um we'll do a little bit more of a deep dive into this in the future um but until then thank you guys so much for watching and we'll see you next one you

Channel: Corter Leather

Views: 63,411

Rating: 4.9246011 out of 5

Keywords: What Leather Weight Should You Use, Corter, Corter Leather, Leather information, leather weight, leather ounces, what leather, what leather to use for wallets, what leather to use for, what leather to use for knife sheath, leather for projects, picking leather, picking the right leather

Id: bXTG5EhoJkE

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020