Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Leather Crafting Template and Tools + another card

This is what the plastic template looks like...hard to photograph so that you can see the detail...its not very deep detail, as it was designed to just leave an impression in a piece of leather for carving, etc...I bought my templates back in 1976/1977 when I first began tooling leather as a hobby...I was just outta high school, 17 years old, my parents would not let me work a full time job...and I was bored with sewing and crocheting...so my daddy and me went to a Tandy Leather store one day...and I was hooked...I made belts, wallets, billfolds, small purses, boots, gun holsters and more for quite a few years...
Some of the designs are in stamps, they are metal shapes that you hammer into the leather to leave the impression, like the horses, wagon in this belt strip...the mountains, fence, clouds, were hand carved...This is the end scrap from a belt I made in the mid 80's for a friends little boy...

This is a hand carved design from about the same time as the belt, was done for a friend, then she decided she wanted a different design after this one had some wear on it...it was designed to hold a bic lighter...her initials were stamped using alpha stamps...


This is the rack my daddy made for me to keep my tools in...this stayed on the backside of the desk I work on, so that all my detail tools were handy...



This is the buffalo template image, I made a wallet with this buffalo on it, in the early 80's for a friends birthday gift...




1 comment:

Sue said...

Thanks for sharing the pictures of your tools; and the story of how you started in leather crafting. You did wonderful work!!