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Category: Leather

The difference in leathers

So I don’t know much about leather, I’m still learning, that’s fine. My first leather hide, selected with help, was a Craftsman tooling side, 2-3oz/0.8 -1.6mm thickness, something of a special order, they said. This has worked beautifully for three saddles so far, with two more in production. It machine cuts well, takes dye really well, moulds beautifully and glues quickly. Winner! Except I can’t get hold of any more very easily up this end of the UK. So I’ve been trying a different type of leather. Not quite working so well, sadly. It has some interesting good and bad points. Doesn’t cut so good, takes dye well but then becomes very stiff when it dries. Its cracking when worked, but that’s producing a lovely antiqued, sort of burr walnut effect. It has produced a sweet (if a bit wonky) set of saddlebags in a new design which I never thought was going to get finished! I’m persevering, its interesting, let’s see how we go.

tan-saddlebags-new-design-work-in-progress-detail

However, I think this might be an idea… Seminar Day – Understanding Leather and its Uses

Cutting leather

The first couple of test saddles I made were cut by hand. Even though I’ve been using scalpels for years, there were many attempts at various stages to produce decent pieces and that was all a little tedious! I was improving the more I did but didn’t feel I was ever going to be great at it. In my other job (designer), I use a really good production company called C3 Imaging. I knew they had cutting capabilities, I just didn’t know whether leather was something they could cut. Fortunately for me their Zund cutting machine can cut almost anything, given the right blade. One leather blade later and we did our first test cuts, so exciting and so successful. The cuts were sharp, clean and detailed. Score one for the technology!

I have since found that modern saddles these day are often cut and stitched using cutting and sewing machines, so I don’t feel that it’s an absolute necessity for the craft that everything should still be hand cut.