Hello, I am making a box and it seems I need to have the edge of the base and and the edge of the lid to be put face to face against each other. Is it possible that if I put edge paint on both of these edges will they have a tendency to stick to each other? Or even rip the edge paint from one of the edges? Should I consider covering one of the edges with some non-sticky material like suede? I am asking because on the other box I have a painted edge put against the flesh side of the leather and indeed the edge paint 'adhered' to the flesh side and ripped a few fibers leaving a visible markings. I am worried that edge paint on both edges might result in a simmilar effect. The image below shows how the box and the lid will lay on each other when the box is closed. Cheers!

Hello, I've recently bought a 4mm black, dyed through shoulder. The leather seems great on the top side, burnishes really pretty and has a real meaty touch to it. It has however quite interesting, almost plastic-like finish on the backside - does anyone know what sort of finish that might be and is it a good indicator of quality? Is it normal for tannery-dyed leather to bleed its colour on moisture contact? Should I protect the leather somehow if I'd like to make leather neck lanyard? I wish you have a great evening. Cheers!

Recently I got fascinated with box making. Prototypes: 1. Simple, flat lid box 2. Simple box with a rounded lid overlapping the base. A practice with bending the leather and making a sharp bend. 3. Final version, trying to look like a chest as much as possible (Work in progress...) Goals: 1. Perfect box stitching 2. Chest-like look 3. Real reinforcing straps properly stitched (It makes the manufacturing process much more complicated, trust me on that) 4. Nice, rounded, consistent lid shape 5. Lid with a well defined, sharp bend near the lid. 6. Solid, strong stitching making a full use of the softness of the leather. 7. Perfect fit on the lid with additional sheets of leather which help to index the lid on top of the base (In progress) 8. Properly finished, nice to touch corners In this post I concentrate on the last prototype (that black monster) Data: 5mm thich cow veg tan, shoulder for the outer shell 1mm goat chrome tanned leather as lining Base and the lid are both lined. Reinforcing straps stitched mainly for aesthetics. What I don’t like about my chest: 1. Straps on the base are only glued because… I forgot to stitch them in before I glued the lining :( 2. For the first time I used very spongy, 1.0mm goat chrome tanned leather. Lining compressed slightly when I was doing my 45 degree cuts. As a result, on the inside the panels of box do not fit that well. 3. Doing a butt-stitch on the lid: I set the stitching marks and make holes on the main part of the lid, bend it, then glue it to the sides, then by looking at position of holes in on the lid, I make holes in the side panel freehand and stitch it altogether. Obviously stitching on the side is not that pretty, but it’s hard for me to get another manufacturing process: 4. Butt-stitch also makes the side panels and the main lid part deform slightly. I need to work on getting the holes properly angled to mitigate it. 4. No metal. The box is 150mm x 110mm x 130mm (WidthxDepthxHeight). Having these sizes it think it would make it much more interesting to have brass hinges, buckels on the straps, some closures or handles to lift the lid. 5. On the inside of the lid even through the lining you can see the deformation of leather from straps. I think next time I will use some thick sponge/foam create a buffer and sort of mitigate that problem. (look along the orange line) 6. I think it would be more functional if it had a removable deck inside it. 7. It's tricky to predict and draw the shape of lid's sides. Thats why I first made the sharp bends, then formed the lid curve, put it on the base and that's how I got the shape of the sides. You can see the difference to the predicted shape. It's all about leather thickness and unpredictable sharp bend near the base. 8. After stitching the lid I wanted to glue additional panels on the inside, to the sides of the lid. They would help to index the lid onto the base. I could have cut them earlier because now it's hard to get the shape right to get the perfect fit with the lid: What I do like about my chest 1. Leather selection: dense, meaty and heavy shoulder with softy feel on the outside. Helps to pull off a nice looking box-stitching 2. Shape, looks and proportions – I feel like the chest does look solid and powerful 3. Corner finish – I managed to glue the corners and then burnish them properly which gives a nice to touch, slick surface on the corners. 4. Resulted in: knowledge, courage, skills and MISTAKES! :D All in all, It’s been a great journey with these boxes. None of them perfect, none of them are going to be sold, but each of them consecutively got more and more complicated. I gained experience, skill and I know what’s left to practice. I decided to create such posts to show you what problems I faced. Maybe my experience and conclusion will be beneficial for some of you. I received help from many of you on this forum so I decided it's time to give something back. Especially that box making is not that popular on the Internet What do you think about it? How would you describe my manufacturing decisions and problems? Maybe you have another suggestions for the aesthetics or construction? All comments appreciated. Great thanks to Phil for his box-making tutorial. It was the inspiration for me!

Good morning, I'm prototyping a simple, single-pocket cardholder/wallet with viscose lining and some inner leather reinforcement. I went for Osbourne snaps (Line 20) but I can feel they need quite a lot of force to be closed, which requires to squeeze my wallet quite considerably. 1. Should I try different type of snaps? Smaller ones? Maybe snaps are not an option at all here? Magnetic clasps? 2. Maybe I should try to move the snaps lower to the leather bend so that the snaps get more reinforcement? Or support the leather somehow else? 3. The piece doesn't have perfectly flat surfaces or superconsistent bends. How do you go around it? I'm not aspiring to making luxury, high-elegance, formal leather goods, but still I feel like keeping the structure or shape to the goods is important. On the other hand, if the item shapes on its own during usage it gives it a bit more liveness and uniqueness. What is your thoughts on that one? Pics here: Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz8pFv-iNFY It's covering all of the above. No need to watch the entire video, it just shows the wallet in action. Thank you for any advice, I hope I'm not asking for too much :D Cheers!

Hello, I'm having a hard time figuring out a proper way to align or overlap pockets of a card holder or a wallet to make them look flawless. The point I'm referring to is the place the two sheets of leather touch each other. The object under consideration is here: Corresponding to the sketches lower: A is the upper pocket, B is the lower pocket (the brown one) and C is the biggest sheet of leather that the above to are stitched into. And there are 3 ways I found I could make the two layers of leather meet. Basically they vary in the angle of cut: 1. 45 degree angle, that's the one I'm experimenting with at the moment, I find it relatively easy to cut with japanese knife and I think it might give good results as the layers hook into each other but the top surface stays flat. 2. Perpendicular cut (Used in the card holder at the top) - Easiest to cut but the joint might be visible when looking at the surface of the wallet from the top. 3. The hardest to achieve for me. I used skiving to get the angles but I never managed to get a flat surface on top, getting it right seems quite tricky. The question is, do you have some advice here? How to align/overlap the sheets of leather to get a clean, good looking and durable joint/connection? I think the most common on the internet is the solution nr 2, but that sometimes leave a small gap between the layers. Thank you for any advice. Cheers, Radosław