Today’s bounty’s tooled leather

Custom tooled to order leather strap for a vintage Holland buckle set. It’sw measures 1 1/2″ with custom tapered ends that measure 5/8″. In length it’s 41″

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Hollands Collector Buckle Set. 5/8″ tapered billets onto a 1 1/2 wide strap.

This is a special ordered belt strap. Over twenty(20) hours of tooling went into the design. To make a custom strap to be tooled is as follows: First you glue two(2) straps together. Then wet your leather and place in a bag. After letting sit for a day you pull from Ziploc bag. That is what you call casing the leather. So you let sit til the outer color returns to the original color. Apply template pattern and carve. Then tool with a conglomeration of 150 tools to bring to life. Now to oil the piece to replenish it’s natural suppleness.
Then I will put a stitching groove along the edges and punch my stitch slots. Hand stitching with waxed linen thread is a timely process but no other stitch can compare. Bevel and burnish all edges. I apply a beeswax along with my cocobolo burnishing machine I made. The cocobolo wood possess a high oil content along with the beeswax and moisture and turns into a golden brown that looks like glass. Definitely a secret weapon to my arsenal of tools.
I’ll pick this up in my next post. Thanks for checking out myTodays bounty, Larry @acrossleather.com