Handle Filler - vintage newspaper style!

Back in the day, in order to make extra income I would also perform repair work and refurbish old pieces of luggage, furniture and leather trinkets such as jewellery cases etc.

I reckon a large part of what I know today and why I admire the 'way things were' so much is in no small part due to this.

As some of you have guessed, the next course is part 1 of the attache case, which will be focusing on making a traditional handle.

Whether you are interested in making cases or not, the skills learnt in making a project like this are invaluable to so many other areas of leathercraft due to the techniques involved.

This will be the first course of it's kind and I'm sure there won't be many leather goods companies happy about it!

Anyway, this space isn't for plugging my courses, rather today I want to share with you a little vintage savoir faire from the luggage trade.

Traditionally, case and luggage handles are made from solid leather, especially from high end brands right? not so fast!

Here is an old picture that I found in one of my (also old) phones. It is the filler material used to pack out and shape the handle of a Swaine & Adeny Ltd case from around WWII (1939-1945):

Swaine & Adeny Ltd, now called Swaine Adeny & Brigg are generally considered top end in England amongst others in it's peer group like Dunhill, Tanner Krolle, Ettinger and a couple other Apex London brands.

These weren't the only ones using newspaper as stiffener and filler in their goods. @olena.wills recently highlighted Hermes using newspaper to stiffen a Vintage Kelly bag to add structure.

What you are looking at is a long triangle of newspaper which would have been wrapped around a piece of string.

It would have resulted in a gradual tapering of the filler from the centre down to the ends. They most likely would have used a paste adhesive made from boiling wheat flower for a long period of time.

As many beginner crafters may find shaping a small strip of leather challenging, I will include the old #leatherhack in the course as an option.

Due to this I thought I better have a go myself and run some tests. Instead of newspaper I have used another popular vintage material that is still easily obtainable - sugar paper. So called as it was popularised by it's use to package sugar.

Evidence of the use of sugar paper in the leather goods industry is extensive throughout old literature.

It is made from wood pulp and is sometimes referred to as construction paper.

PVA glue is now the modern equivalent to paste (actually wallpaper paste is probably closer), so I have used that.

Here is the result:

It is dense, strong and stiff, but with just enough flex to be fit for purpose.

I was actually quite surprised with the result. The only challenging part is rolling it tightly around the string core without gaps, but outside of that, quite simple.

Although today the use of a solid piece of hard rubber is more popular, some do also use vegetable tanned leather as a filler, seen here in Dunhill's 'Brook Briefcase' (starts at 0:44 to show exact part).

Would I use this in stead of actual leather? No, but the main reason is that I find using solid leather less time consuming and fiddly.

One thing I know for sure, is that there are many cases that I have repaired, or re-stitched where the newspaper filler wasn't the part that failed - even after nearly a century of use.

Sanding smooth once dry:

Final coat of 50/50 waterproof PVA to seal in any stray fibres:

Obviously the course will include information on making a completely solid leather handle as you can see in this prototype:

I hope you found that as interesting as I did! The way traditional leather goods were made has always fascinated me to no end.

Here's a little history and a nice message to end the post:

Have a great weekend guys.