UPDATE June 2023 The Achilles' heel which was that croocked zipped pouch has been redesigned from scratch. 11 (eleven) prototypes and 4 months of work later I came to a conclusion with it. Here made in Forest Green ostrich. __________________________________ The story goes like this..... In 2021 a cigar aficionado approached me to help him re-dress his $20 humidor bought on Amazon which became kind of ragged, being made of cheap faux leather. The same as when I made my first leather bag, I initially resisted the request thinking that the guy can simply just buy another humidor, one of a better quality. Without knowing him personally at the time, I also explained him why I think this is not a really good idea, financially speaking. After he explained me his intentions I understood and accepted working on this project. As I usually do with any brand new project I work on, there is a researching stage in which I do my best to understand the different aspects of the problem, mostly the ones that are not obvious at first sight. And this project was plenty of them. The whole process lasted a few months, which while I deconstructed and reconstructed the object, first in my head then on my bench. And I came up with this thing... It was the first prototype. This year, in the last two months I made another one which looks like this.... There are some obvious differences here. Amongst them the pouch - used for the cutter and the lighter - is made on a piped structure, different than the lose pouch on the black one. Although it is better than the first one, it still needs further development because it has to submit to the cylinder in a way that should leave the zip straight. Any ideas here are highly welcomed! The more subtle differences are: - The padded body which offers a nice touch to the hand and resolves the overemphasis of the turned edges of zip area which strikes through at the black one. - The end caps at the black have been stitched through. That was a real pain in the...fingers. So I decided to use a different approach at the brown one: apparent stitch and industrial contact adhesive. I'm really curious how it will stand the test of time. For the next one I will probably do box stitching. - The stitched in long piece on the back that creates the hinge. It's literally impossible to stitch this by hand on the body of a cylinder of 75mm diameter. It's almost impossible to do this on machine either. On the original Chinese humidor that piece was stitched on the body on one side only. That's why I didn't do it at all for the black one. Well, actually I did it, but sporadically, here and there, as you can see. It's still lose though. So I had to come up with a solution for this problem. And I found one which is still hand stitching on all its length, but I won't reveal details about how I did it as it was nerve wracking to me for a good amount of time finding that solution. Any guess though? - Under the pouch there is a proud on the surface stitched in banner which, at the black humidor as the original one, was meant to offer a hidden seam with the body for the base of the pouch. For the brown humidor I kept this piece just for design purposes but leveled it with the rest of the body. For me it was an arduous one, and it still is until I'll be able to resolve all the remaining issues which are stitching the end caps in in a convenient manner and an adequate pouch for an impeccable appearance.

Long story short....well, that is not the case here, but the long story long sounds like this: In 2020 when I settled my workshop into an over 100 years old house here, in Romania, I decided my hermitage would be worth a nice panel to make my hardly gathered vintage tools - and not only - available at a stretch of a hand. Inspired by Philip's tool panel I decided to step the things up a bit by making a nicer 😋 and bigger one (120 x 60 cm to accommodate the existing and ever increasingly stock of tools). Therefore starting researching the trunk making history I have found out that, although there were a few trunk makers in the mid 1800's, Luis Vuitton set himself apart by introducing an unique at the time striped canvas model which was produced for quite a few years, beginning from 1872 until 1928 when this model, although officially gone since 1888, has been made a last copy of to a client who was fond of the stripe model. This trunk was known in the era as the 'Rayée', which basically translates in English as striped. Initially, Vuitton started with a red stripes canvas, but after 4 years, due to intensively being copied (sounds familiar?) by other trunk makers he turned to the beige stripes canvas which he patented. Because I wanted to pay homage to a pre 1900 trunk, and being - to a certain degree - an easier choice to make a faithful reproduction after, I immediately fell in love with this old model of trunk and considered it to be the ideal muse for my tool wall. Now, prouding myself with my love for accuracy, I approached this project from the beginning with a great degree of finesse and precision. The first thing I have done was researching the originals with some trunk restorers from France. I have asked them to measure for me some very specific parts like stripes width, slat width, corners dimensions, width of leather border, distance between pins and rivets etc. Gathering all this information together I then initiated to simulate my panel in a graphic design software. Soon after I was going to find out that the bill at home does not match the one at the fair... Initially I started covering the 9mm MDF board with the carefully selected heavy-weight hemp canvas to match as closely as possible the original pattern. After rigorously testing all kind of paints, combinations of colours and proportions I came up with a nice recipe. I then made a mix of water based coloured wood lasures which I impregnated the canvas with to give the background colour. Next, I carefully placed adhesive tapes at a specific distance apart one from another. All good up to this. But after giving the second, darker colour, layer of lasure over the adhesive tapes, I was going to find out that my clear defined stripes I was dreaming of wouldn't be quite there, rather they were all going to come 'out of focus'. Hmm, vintage from the beginning, I thought to myself in an attempt to sweeten the bitterness of disillusionment... Next, after laying down the leather border and initiating the hammering of those over 400 brass pins, I was also going to find out that my highly accurate pin positioning in my simulation would not worth two pennies. The perfectionist in me was compelled to accommodate himself with the given situation... Before gluing and installing the wooden slats I lined them with the same leather I made the borders of to increase their thickness on the entire length they were getting in touch with the canvas. Thus they were going to overlap perfectly the leather borders. Plus, I have slightly 'skived' down the ends of the slats to create a raising effect to the 'brass' corners for a faithful reproduction of how the original trunk was done. Supplementary, from place to place, I have hammered some pins for a better fixing of the slats. Apropos of the corners, I was heavily tempted in the first instance to buy some dedicated trunk making brass corners and rivets from France. But after calculating how much money would I spend for them I thought I would rather put that amount of money on the panel in the form of tools, not brass pieces. So here we go... I have ordered myself a 3D printed moulding form which I have moulded leather corners with. Next, with a metallic brass pigment spray, I have covered the leather in brass pigment which surprisingly ages similar to solid brass. As this panel was going to accommodate different shapes of tools I had to come up with common solutions for different problems. The leather knives are hold in place by a few 20×3 mm disc magnets covered by leather patches. The purpose of patches is to attenuate the impact with the blades thus preventing magnets breaking and avoiding the metallic noise associated with the impact. The magnets thickness was selected so that, when covered by patches, they would retain enough attraction force to keep various knife weights on panel and also the handled knives would have enough distance from the slat to make full contact between their blades and the covered magnets. The patches thickness was chosen so that there would be an equilibrium between the holding force of the magnets and the releasing force required to get the tools out. To conclude, a lot of searching, researching, planning, testing and construction was done during this project. It's not the kind of project you would get money out of, but it was done with passion and with an a-la-long mindset because the psychological impact it makes, and it already made after 1 year of show up on the wall, builds trust between potential clients and I, the artisan. Moreover, it allowed myself to dip my toe into trunk making, which is another craft I'm considering looking into for the future.

Hi guys! Recently, a fellow craftsman sent me as a gift a silicon table mat along with the indication to use it as a gluing board. Its particularity is that the solvent based contact adhesive doesn't stick to this surface quite well, making it an ideal choice for a clean and grippy surface to glue leather pieces on everytime. What do you guys think? Are there any other surfaces you like using as gluing boards? Regards, Cristian

In regards of the new course Phil has launched, allow me to introduce you an old video from 2007 about an italian workshop which makes leather wrapped boxes in a particular way. Please enjoy!

Hi people! I've recently acquired and refurbished an old FAV skiving machine. It has built-in suction so the motor drives the exhauster and the knife at the same time. Therefore the bell knife is always spinning whilst the conveyor wheel is driven on demand by a built-in clutch mechanism at the back of the machine. I have countless times reviewed the "Techniques of the Bell Skiver" course which helped a lot to properly set the machine for operation but there are still some issues I couldn't figure out on my own, as I usually like to do. So here's my trouble: I'm working on a project implying turned edges in 1.6mm thickness chrome tanned calf leather. The technique I'm trying to emulate is that from "The turned edge Passport Wallet" course seen bellow Basically, what I'm trying to do is getting those straight, sharp & crisp edges for a high quality turned edge. Instead, what I'm getting is this This is what I do: In the first instance I set the width of 10mm up to the guide on the foot arch itself Then I trace some guide lines on the leather for proofing For unknown reasons the leather is bunched up towards the guide Because of the bunching the skiving width is not maintained consistent anymore Also, another frustrating issue is that the skive's step is not crisply squared, rather it's at a 45 degree bevel. Dressing it up with a french edger is virtually impossible due to the very soft nature of the leather. The quality of the actual leather work piece is much better than in the image which is a scrap used just for demonstration purposes. Regardless of that the leather can't stand the touch the the french edger due to its softness. To sum up, what is that I'm doing wrong and what should I do instead to get proper skived edges for turning as seen in the Passport Wallet course? Thank you! Regards, Cristian

Yep, I made myself one about a month ago. Made from solid bamboo flooring board, oiled with linseed oil, covered with 1mm very firm cowhide on the front and 2 layers of iron-on canvas from Abbey (not the best solution, but well...). I do not advise on using bamboo unless very good cutting tools are available. It's very tricky to work with it due to it's fibrous nature. Also, don't try to hammer it directly with brass pins (will bend and crack the wood) or steel pins (will crack the wood). Been there, done that. The optimal approach is pre-drilling the holes with a dremel. Also, due to the board thickness (15mm) and pins length (11mm) I had to carefully choose the pins position on both sides to not jab each other. I had some 1mm oddly firm cow hide bellies which I thought will work the job (and it did, indeed) on which I've applied some green compound disolved in the usual paint solvent available at any hardware store (where I live it seems the white spirit is some kind of niche product nowadays...). For the canvas I've compulsively searched for a heavy weight one without succes. After trying out two types of medium weight fusible cotton fabric the experiments revealed that the fusible canvas Abbey is selling was a good enough compromise for the job. I ended up with two layers of canvas sticked together with PVA than glued down on the board with PVA also. Brushed some Brasso on it and that was that (btw don't stick your nose in the bottle - that's a warning for those whom never used it - not only it doesn't smell like vanilla, it will instantly unclog your sinuses too - again, been there done that). So, at the end of the day I've learned some precious lessons working this project out and ended up lately with an usable strop. Not the best, not the worst - just usable. I consider making another one in the future with better wood, maybe thicker leather and definitely better canvas. Thanks for reading, Cristian