Leathercraft Masterclass

I discuss edge paints, stitching thin leather, managing workflow and much more!

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Show Notes:
In today's live we're going to be talking edge pain how to test for quality how to test for longevity how do you stitch angles in thin or soft vegetable tanned leathers how do you manage your workflow as a leather crafter and many other questions associated with leathercraft that have been sent in via instagram dm now if you're not following me on instagram leathercraftmasterclass and then you can get your questions in every month so i can answer them here live for you on the q a sessions hi my name is philip and welcome to the leathercraft masterclass q a now as usual i'm going to be going live on instagram to take some live questions as well but obviously this is pre-recorded on youtube now if you do have any comments or anything you have to say about some of the answers that i'm giving any further questions or if you want a question for the next q a don't forget to pop it down in the comments below and if you enjoy this video don't forget to give me a thumbs up okay so let's go live on instagram you are now live excellent excellent okay so i'm gonna go straight into it and uh the first question today is uh how to check a new edge paint for quality and durability how do you test the new edge paint for quality and durability interesting question really because there's quite a few edge paints on the market now and quite a few that are very very popular but uh which one is right for you so there's quite a few tests that you can do that i recommend first and foremost how easy is is it to apply so even if it's durable and everything else if it's terrible to apply and when you come to you do your edge paint it's either too thick or too thin for how you apply it or the kind of leather that you're putting it on then you're never going to get the results that you want from your edge paint because it's just not it's just not behaving itself on the edge like you want it to if it's reasonably easy to apply uh if it's reasonably good at self levelling without dripping too much because there's always that compromise self levelling is always good because it kind of flattens itself out but that's usually thinner viscosity edge paints that can tend to drip so it's always kind of a toss-up between smooth application and something that's can be quite drippy especially if you have a curved object very difficult to apply unless you use lots and lots of very thin layers so how easy is it to apply the next thing is how long does it take to dry and does it dry nice and straight does it dry nice and flat do you have any issues with ridges down the centre which a lot of people think is it absorbing in the centre it's not it's along the edges of the dome where it's thinnest it dries faster and it pulls away towards the edge causing a valley down the centre that's just something that dries a little bit too quickly it's not bad quality that some people might think it is it's usually when you're in an atmosphere that's very dry air conditioned for example or high heat the middle of summer you can get that or edges that are very very thick very very wide we're talking five millimetres or more very easy to get ridge down the centre so slow down the drying process and also thinner layers and lots of sanding in between but going back to testing you can also test how well does it hold up to twisting so what i like to do is get a strip of leather and then edge paint on both sides and then let it dry and then i like to twist it and twist it and twist and torture test it usually with a set of pliers just to see if that twisting and stretching will actually start to crack or delaminate the edge paint and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't sometimes it holds up very very well giardini is quite tough in that regard uh i think that was the best i tested on that test the poorest was fiebing's edge coat which is not really an edge paint it's more of an edge stain it's designed to kind of be put on once and that's it it's not several layers a lot of people try and use it as an edge paint and it's not very good in that regard but yeah so torture testing it by twisting another one is is delaminating can you actually pick it with your fingernail if you cut it down the centre so you've done a cross-section of your edge paint can you peel that end off with your fingernail if you can that's not good the second test is if you give it a little bit of a slice with a sharp knife to separate the edge paint from the leather can you then gather it and pull it off without the edge paint breaking if the edge paint breaks that's good if it kind of carries on and peels off that's not great but if you're going to do that test again make sure you do it on different leathers as well it might just be you've chosen a very waxy or oily leather and it delaminates quite readily that just might mean that it needs roughing on the edge or a primer for example so do test torture test and also test on different leathers that's very important as well all right a couple comments here uh hello again from northern minnesota hello i think you're on the last live weren't you i'm assuming there's only one person in minnesota

and your sushko handbag says hey i hope you're doing well good to see you around again uh anya and congratulations on the little one i don't think i've had a chance to uh to say that good to see you cool okay so that's edge paint uh the next question any insights on how to consid keep a consistent workflow motivation and inspiration so this is uh i i'm going to assume i didn't check who this was but i'm going to assume that you either have a full-time or part-time leather goods business one one thing that i've found that helps me kind of organize my day helps me manage workflow and keeps things working and flowing throughout the day is organizing good habits to start your day with so sometimes you can have if you're working in leather goes business you can have lots of orders you've got emails to get through you've got customers contacting you and you could have supplies that you need to get in contact with you might have your finances or taxes to deal with there's lots of different things um as leather crafters or people in the leathercraft industry who own a business and run a business you kind of have to wear many many hats social media being one of them video being another one it's you know it's virtually endless especially if you have a podcast as well if you have an internet forum a blog a website that you have to upkeep the list is endless so sometimes it could be very daunting sometimes it could be very overwhelming and it's easy to kind of cherry pick what you want to do that day and do the things that you want to do and avoid the things that you don't want to do so i find starting out with good habits you know what time of day are you checking emails what time of day are you checking dms what time of day are you posting on instagram or what time of day are you actually sitting down and doing the work that you want to be doing in your craft what time of day are you making the phone calls so there's all sorts of things that you can try and organize to make sure that your day starts off correctly and that you're working through it without any issues because it's very easy to get overwhelmed and you know you get brain fog and then it becomes overwhelming and that's that's not a good place to be so creating good habits and starting is so starting with the basics is what i recommend starting with a good morning routine you know what time of day do you wake up what's the first thing you do when you when you wake up and starting with a routine that you can then allow to become a habit over time uh recently last few weeks i've been waking up a little bit earlier well a lot earlier in the morning and what i do is i get my phone and i put it next to the coffee machine and next to the coffee machine is my cups with my pods and the coffee machine is filled with water so literally when the alarm goes off i have to go downstairs to the coffee machine to turn it off and while i'm there i just press the thing and the coffee starts coming out and then i can have that and then i can go and have a shower get changed go straight to the gym come back have another shower if necessary always necessary uh have a shake and then i kind of start my day and then i start with emails or getting back to customers doing my dms and then i have a monthly schedule so i know what i'm doing so if you start with the basics of what you're doing in the morning what time you stop to have something to eat what time you finish at the end of the day because it's very easy just to go over and then it's 10 o'clock at night and you you're still not done so try and structure your day as much as possible to give yourself the best chance and the last thing you talked about was motivation and inspiration i would definitely recommend as i do every month something that i do is i set aside an entire day where i take my laptop i take my phone i take a notepad and pen and i just go to a coffee shop and it might be a different coffee shop every single time it might be one that i'm familiar with but new locations often kind of give you a little bit more inspiration because it's you're in a different environment if you know what i mean you're not kind of doing the same thing all the time and what i do is i just sit there and i come up with new ideas usually it's about what the next course is going to be how i'm going to structure it how what techniques i really want to teach what have i done already what do i need to do can be ideas for social media posts blog ideas is another good one and i sit there for several hours usually get through quite a bit of coffee and uh and just come up with these ideas and i might just go through instagram or pinterest or scroll through google images and just kind of see what's out there and start designing something gaining inspiration but if you can set aside an entire day to sit down and go right i'm looking for new ideas i'm looking to get inspired by new designs new concepts try different leather that i haven't tried before try a new technique that i haven't tried before experiment with something and there's nothing else to distract you that day you're not doing your usual things this is a sacred day that you use to kind of propel you your business your mindset forward uh a little bit further than it was last time all right so how do you slick edges so next question third question how do you slick edges on a project that is non-vegetable tanned leather okay so how do you slick an edge that is not vegetable tanned leather so i'm going to assume uh when you say non-vegetable tanned leather you're probably not talking about alum alum toured leather and kind of brain tanned leather you're probably talking about chrome town leather how do you slick an edge um and when you say slick i'm going to assume that you mean burnish so i'll read that question as how do you burnish crime tan leather the general consensus is that you can't mainly because it's not firm enough it doesn't react with water the same way it's much more water resistant than vegetable tanned leather and add to that it's it's too soft it doesn't hold itself to to be burnished so how do you normally tackle chrome tan leather well first of all an easy one is going to be edge paint so easy a common one is going to be edge paint another one is going to be a turned edge okay alternatively you can leave it raw but chrome tanned leather with raw edges doesn't really age very well so turned edge where you skive the end you thin the edge of the leather and you fold it over itself and usually stitched it to another piece that's folded too that's probably the most elegant way of dealing with it but edge paint is going to be another one there is a way that i sometimes a method that i sometimes use to give chrome 10 leather a burnished look uh and that is to stiffen the edge first so you can use something like uh hold on one second you can use

acrylic resolene red line okay acrylic resolene by fiebings but it's just like a you know like an acrylic paint uh varnish that you uh water-based varnish that you put on wood it's a bit like that but watered down and what i like to do is get a sponge quite well saturated and go along the edge of the chrome tan leather and what that will do is it will soak into it doesn't sit on top it's not like edge paint it's not thick it soaks in and you might need to do that a couple times to get the right effect but what that will do is it will start stiffening up the edge enough so that you can sand it okay and then after sanding if it's still okay you can sand it with a finer grit and a finer grit and finer grit you might need to add a little bit more resaline along the way but it doesn't take long to dry at all and then once you get to a nice smooth edge you can then use a top coat a gloss top coat like uh giadini's top coat is a good one i think uniters make one or alternatively if it's a really fine grit that you've finished it on what you can do is start polishing it with wax okay so you can use a carnuaba wax you can use columbus wax or something like that but essentially you have to stiffen up that edge first you can't burnish it uh some combination tanned leathers uh you can burnish with things like token oil i'm talking re-tanned leather so a combination of chrome tan leathers and vegetable tan double tanned you can so latigo leather things like that it's it has a little bit of stiffness it's not as water resistant as pure chrome and with the right edge compound like tocanol you can give a reasonable burnish to it but it's not going to be as good as pure veg so that's that's one method that you can use but a more elegant method is going to be a turned edge or alternatively uh edge paint uh next question edge paint storage edge paint storage uh temperature longevity etc so temperature longevity etc i would always recommend if you're in high production maybe it's you or a team of people in your workshop or boutique um and you're getting through quite a few products then buying edge paint in liter bottles can make sense if you make one to two projects a month and some of them might be burnished or turned edge so you're not actually getting through edge paint that much you might have several liters of different colors on your shelf for a very very long time some might be a little bit more used than others there is a shelf life sometimes it will be listed on the side of the bottle um but once you've opened it i don't like to keep mine for more than six months before kind of throwing it out some giardini lasts about a year i have some bottles that looks pretty good and they're almost two years old of united's edge paint but it doesn't really get that cold in here so i wouldn't use them unless it was on a prototype but ideally you want to you want to kind of be getting through your edge paint in about six months and if if you still got it at that point i would probably let it go another tip i'll give you is to use smaller bottles of edge paint so if you can buy them in say 250 ml or if you're really not using edge paint very often 100 mil there's a lot of places now smaller shops that will actually sell you that quantity it may not be as as economical as buying you know a large liter bottle but if you have smaller ones it's every time you open it it's a fresh batch okay it's going to last longer if you're not opening it frequently so you might have something that will last well over a year if you haven't opened it on your shelf but if you're constantly opening and dipping it in and there's bacteria getting in there's all sorts of you know bacteria and fungus and yeasts in the atmosphere gonna get inside and want to erode it so that is buying smaller bottles is something that i'd recommend it's what i do um before when i you know produce leather goods for a business and it's what i did for a living i'd buy larger bottles now i buy 250 250 ml bottles and uh i just you know it's only a small quantity if i haven't used it for a while i'll throw it away um so it's it's not a problem uh another thing to consider as well and i get asked this quite often is about edge paint and freezing edge paint if it's been frozen at any point it's it's garbage it's rubbish it's to be thrown away so if you're ordering from a cold country or you're ordering from a country and you live in a cold country and it's the middle of winter that's not the best time to be purchasing edge paint because if you're i know in australia and you're ordering from norway and it's the middle of winter it might be fine when it gets picked up by the delivery company and then when it goes to the warehouse is the warehouse being heated is it heated in the van along the way when it's minus 10 degrees because if it gets frozen at any point uh it's it's degraded it's it's perished it's no good now the person who asked me this question is an airline pilot so he'd probably know more than i would about this but i'm not sure what temperatures the cargo hold and the plane reaches whether it's actually heated in there or um it can go below zero so that's something to think about as well when it goes on the plane but especially ordering edge paint in the in winter the same can go for glue as well by the way a lot of glues will not deal with uh being frozen and thawed out okay it's not like a chocolate cake

all right next question uh so this is i guess this is a personal one not a personal question but a question aim more towards me personally uh what leather craft are you most proud of and what do you think is the hardest project uh to do what's the hardest thing to do in leathercraft so two questions there um what work am i most proud of i i thought about this question earlier and

i have a bit of a bad trait i'm not always that proud of myself very much i constantly get reminded if i reach a milestone or do well on something uh to take a second to en enjoy achieving something um of note uh in business personal anything like that um i really i really do struggle to try and because every time i do good work or i do something really well or there's a course that i put out and it's a huge success i kind of i don't feel proud necessarily i feel like yes that's what's supposed to happen but if it goes wrong then it's battle stations you know so maybe it's not it's difficult to find what i've done that i'm proud of but one thing that is a sure-fire way to feel a sense of pride is when i see students who have created something from the courses especially if it's the first uh i remember uh the first person to create the de havilland travel bag which i think is mike's leather uh the student success post on instagram with him he created it um apologies mike if if i'm wrong i think you're from russia but i remember you were on holiday at the time i think it was thailand and you had a photo shoot done with a bag i remember you sending me through those pictures and it was the first to have lund to come out after the course and of course it takes a few weeks people have to watch the course organize the supplies if they don't have them already and then obviously make the bag but i remember seeing it for the first time and it was a big project right it's not the most technical but it's a very large project i thought are people going to take this are they going to do it are they going to like it is it something people are going to want to make and uh i just remember seeing the first one it was it was quite emotional um more so than many of the other courses for me to see it and i was like man i'm so happy to see that it just really gave me a sense of pride that perhaps is lacking in myself but when i've done a good enough job where somebody can make it on the other side of the world and understand my techniques and not even send me an email asking for clarification on anything but there it is just like that's that i taught that and someone has made it and then it just snowballed after that and so many people i think the only project that has been created more is the turenne luxury handbag but that was a kind of a milestone of like yeah people do like the bigger courses if they're a little bit more technical or challenging there are a lot of people that really love that and i guess that uh that makes me the most proud is when i see students creating and it can be small projects as well it's not the big ones especially people who are brand new to the craft they've just kind of learned how to stitching and you know stitch and then suddenly they make a card wallet that i've put out in one of the courses it's just so encouraging to see people kind of levelling up and building up their skills and and pushing themselves and yeah it gives me a great sense of pride next part the question is uh just checking here what brand of edge paint do you use i use uniter's ep 2000 which is a kind of a satin finish it's not polished it's not matte it's kind of somewhere in between what do you think is the hardest to do so what's the project that i think is the hardest the hardest thing i've ever done oh courses wise i think there's a few challenging products best spoke products probably the most but courses wise something that you guys have known or seen probably the hardest technically is the bloomsbury attache case uh that was that was hard nuts i mean the project is challenging yes but it's teaching it in a way that by the end of the course no one's got any questions uh teaching in a way that by end of the course no one's gonna mess up it was a really difficult one you have to think several chess moves ahead all the time are they going to understand that are they going to remember to do this you know emphasize this point several times to make sure that they understand that they have to allow a margin for the thickness of the lining otherwise the case is not going to close the locks are not going to close the hinge is going to be out of alignment and all sorts of things so that was probably technically the most challenging to teach that was a long time in the making i'd been thinking about that and planning that for about two years so to give people an idea of how long a course takes to create is not one month the prep there's several overlapped with the prep work that goes into to teaching something like that or the the blackwell mini doctors bag that was another another one that took a long time to prepare months and months and getting better at the moment but uh that one was about seven or eight months to prep that course to teach it in a way that people could do it and two people have done that so far that i think that's probably the hardest one for students to do because it involves creating your own metal frame around a form and i provide patterns for the wooden former um yeah so that was uh those those two are probably the most challenging to teach and probably to make as well but a few people have made them now and it's uh encouraging to see okay so final question last one uh do you have any tips on how to keep a decorative angle in thin leather a good question this has been the the bane of many stitch artists over the years of how to keep a decorative angle so when the stitches are kind of zigzagged across they come down at an angle like that i'm sure you understand what i'm saying in hand stitching it's often time oftentimes very difficult to achieve a very steep angle which is indicative of hand stitching so that you can see yes this was hand stitched versus something that was a machine stitch which looks a lot straighter so we always aim for those little high angles because it kind of shows that it's something that's been done by hand and something to be proud of so how do you get that in thin leathers so if you understand the principles behind stitching of how stitching works in leather is if you if you say you take a piece of thread okay i take a length of thread and you mash it up and put it on the table it's all in a twisted mess you grab one end of the thread you grab the other end of the thread and you pull it apart under tension okay what's it going to do as long as there's no knots it's going to straighten out it's going to form a straight line the shortest distance between two points is a straight line so naturally when you're stitching in a project the leather the way it's angled because our pricking irons and our awls are keeping an angle in the leather the hole that we're making is diagonal the leather is telling it to go at an angle so if you're pulling really really tight the thread is saying the more tension you give to me the straighter i want to be the shortest distance between two points is a straight line so on thick leather and firm leather like vegetable tanned leather say for example a bridal leather belt four millimeters thick turn over maybe two two and a half millimeters thick and you're stitching that in you've got six six and a half millimeters of firm vegetable tan leather that leather is the boss at that point okay the thread is not going to dictate where it lies it is gonna do as it's told and stay at nice angles but if you go through thin leather maybe two half millimeter pieces of uh goat skin put together and you're trying to stitch that it's very soft and very thin and it's not going to dictate to the thread where to sit the thread is going to want to straighten out and that's what this individual is trying to avoid so how can we uh get around that well you can either choose a firmer leather or a thicker leather and if that's not an option for you you can reduce the spi okay so the easiest thing to do is reduce the stitches per inch so if you're noticing on a certain thickness and a certain firmness that you're losing that angle and the stitches are going straight reduce the stitches per inch so that might mean if a 3.38 millimeter iron seven spi is not working for you reduce it down to a three millimeter stitch spacing or nine spi and see how that works and if it's still not getting the results reduce it down a little bit more another thing that you can do is reduce the amount of tension that you're giving it as well okay remember especially on a smaller stitch spacing you don't need as much tension or as thick a thread as if you're having a larger stitch space spacing higher spi so that's something else to uh to think about as well now if you're laminating two pieces of leather together what can you put in between if you if it's not necessarily going to thicken it out too much what can you put in between that's going to stiffen it okay to allow it to dictate what the thread should be doing you can add very thin reinforcement so that could be a thin bonded leather 0.25 millimeters a very thin piece of vegetable tan leather or a simple way of thickening or thickening a simple way of stiffening two pieces of leather glued together is to use pva glue instead of say contact adhesive which doesn't add much stiffness at all pva soaks into the leather and hardens and gives a very mild fiberglass effect if you know what i mean so when you use pva you generally end up with something that's stiffer compared to something that you would use say solvent-based contact adhesive or especially water-based contact adhesive solvent-free so that's something else to be aware of i appreciate your video explaining how to hand sew canvas uh you're welcome to be completely truthful i can't remember doing that maybe i have at some point i've made a lot of videos i was like uh have i i must have at some point maybe it was stitching canvas to leather damn okay too many videos there okay so i hope that has uh answered some of the questions guys now uh don't forget right now and i'm not going to be doing it for that much longer okay i'm going to be coming out with a different offer but right now there is a guide on leathercraftmasterclass.com which is a 20-page article on how to choose tools there's also a leather guide on how to choose the right leather for you and your work so don't forget to go there leathercraftmasterclass.com which will be linked below on you guys for you guys on youtube and get your free guides i'm going to be changing that up soon so i'm not sure what i'm going to do with the guides at the moment but uh who knows so make sure you get yours so thank you for joining me and if you enjoyed this video don't forget to give me a thumbs up below to let me know if you have any questions again about anything that i've talked about or if you have some questions that you want for the next q a don't forget to put them below in the comments section and of course join me on instagram leathercraftmasterclass where you can put your questions in on the stories when i start asking for monthly questions and that way you can double your chances of getting your questions answered but thank you for joining me and i will see you in the next Q&A cheers guys

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