That Don’t Make No Sense: Leather Nonsense
We all love a good list, right? I’m back at it with another one. This one is myths about leather work or nonsensical advice I keep encountering.
“Going back through the grits.”
This might be a no brainer to some people, but sanding an edge with 220 grit, 400 grit, 600 grit, 1200 grit, then returning to 220 grit is stupid. If you made a mistake, it is fine, but some people really believe that this repetitive process is a.) not simply just starting over, and b.) results in a better end result than going through the grits once could possibly achieve. This is wrong. I don’t know how to explain why it is wrong other than by explaining what sandpaper is meant to do, so feel free to skip this section entirely if this is too tedious a subject for your time.
Sandpaper grit refers to the size of the granules on the paper by describing how man granules can fit in a standardized area. Different grits apply different finishes, because the granule size determines the size of the scratches left in the surface. It is only the surface that is affected. Let’s first talk about metal. The point is to remove the high spots in the surface to get it flatter and flatter, more and more consistent. You start with a coarse grit to remove the really high spots, but you keep going until that grit’s finish has covered the entire surface. Now the high spots, ideally, should be limited to artifacts of that grit. So you use a grit slightly finer, knocking down the high points of the scratches left by the first grit. You could have started with your second grit, but it would take forever and would be harder to maintain a flat by hand the whole time. You keep going finer and finer, until the high points are so minor, the edge is shiny. If you then go back to your coarse starting grit, you are taking a good edge and applying fucked up, jaggedy scratches for no reason. There are no high points to remove— you removed them already. This is no different in leather than it is in metal; only the surface is affected.
“If Vinymo breaks, you are doing something wrong.”
I must defend those of us who learned with Ritza thread. Vinymo is a twisted thread. If you rotate twisted thread in the opposite direction than it is twisted, it unravels. When it unravels, the needle will break off the fluffy, scraggly end. If you learn with flat, braided thread, you learn to keep the thread oriented in such a way that it doesn’t twist. This muscle memory, funny enough, will unravel Vinymo over a long stitch line. It is best to keep twisting the Vinymo to maintain the “factory twist.” To know which way to twist— it’s the direction that doesn’t unravel.
The point is, if this happens to you it is not necessarily because you are stitching wrong in general, but maybe that the thread requires a flourish specific to that thread style. If you are pulling the thread tight by the needle, disregard all of this and stop doing that.
Other explanations that are “doing something wrong:”
The thread is not waxed enough. On long stitchlines, remember to rewax. I run my thread through a 50/50 paraffin/beeswax blend and then run it through a canvas cloth twice.
Tightening the stitch from the needle. What I mean is holding the needle and pulling the stitch tight from the needle. This is wrong, and excessively wears the section of thread that is pulled through the eye of the needle. Always tension holding just the thread, not the needle.
Wrong needle size/wrong thread size. If your thread is too large for your chisel holes or your needle is too large, as they pass through the hole they struggle to squeeze through and this abrades the thread more than is typical at the correct size, causing it to break. A good indication of this mismatch in size is also if you are reaching for pliers, rubber, or thimbles to get your needles through the leather.
“It’s wrong to use a press to chisel.”
I don’t use a press to chisel. However, this is a hack a lot of folks use that have mobility issues to get around in their hands, arms, or even back. I’ve heard it can be useful for those with sight issues. I think this a good reminder that the world doesn’t end if someone uses an unconventional or new method to make something out of leather. Nobody gets hurt, and nothing falls from the sky. It’s good to be curious, but the initial inquiries are often very rude and presumptuous.
I think it’s good to remember that for people with arthritis, poor vision, missing limbs, or many other challenges (as well as disabilities that are not so visible) the “right way” might be completely different.
I should add: one way to be more inclusive and inviting as leather workers to these differences is to lighten up a little when people use methods different than your own even without a disability. If you’re a dick about it until the person you’re criticizing cites a disability as their reason and you suddenly switch your tone, you were still being a dick and they should not have to justify themselves.
“Your price is what your customers are willing to pay.”
This is mostly true. How consumers of the product evaluate the quality is much more important than the maker’s assessment. This is helpful both in cases of inflated ego and low self esteem.
How do you square this wisdom with the fact that we have all seen some leather workers list something for sale at a price that makes us think, “Oh, gimme a break”? Well, I think you can’t. Good pricing is far too complicated to be condensed into one easy slogan. For one, for this to make sense, you have to first find your customer. Not a customer, but yours. Who are the people with whom your work resonates, and what would they pay? Changing the price because they aren’t magically coming into existence in front of you is silly.
I am not going to offer a better slogan and to be honest, pricing is an aspect of leather work something I’m still learning. I suspect many successful leather workers are, too.
“The lens concept.” (Bend Allowance)
The idea behind the lens concept (for those that are unfamiliar) is that if you are wrapping leather around a curve, the correct length of leather you need to fit around the curve is calculated by adding the thickness of the leather to the radius of the curve, and then from that calculating the circumference of the new radius. It does not work. I repeat: it does not work.
To explain why, imagine you are wrapping a piece of leather around a coffee grinder to get better grip while grinding coffee. The grinder is a cylinder, so a full circle, and let’s say you are cross-stitching (like a baseball) so each edge meets squarely, instead of overlapping a seam allowance. The grain side is facing out, the flesh side is touching the grinder itself. The flesh side has to travel a smaller distance to traverse around the cylinder than the surface of the grain side. If this is hard to imagine, think of nesting dolls. So, the flesh side has to compress (it’s being squished together) and the exterior grain side has to stretch. We must account for the material flexing like this.
Now, you might be thinking, “This all sounds a bit complicated for a coffee grinder, and how would you even account for that? Leather is too fibrous for engineering-style precision.” You’re wrong— get on my level. However, I’m not going to get my method here because it is a little hard to explain, especially in a way that is digestible to anyone with limited algebra experience as would be my goal.
“I always design around the chisel.”
Well, look at you! Hee hoo haw! Do you though? This might offend some people but let me be clear: I don’t care if you do or not or how you do it or anything. I am deeply annoyed by people who insist this is the “correct” way, and then it turns out that they actually don’t and have to fuck around with a couple chisel holes to get them to fit.
A while back I asked one of these sage elders how I could do this with a 2.7mm chisel because it would require that I somehow cut a pattern piece accurately to a tenth of a millimeter (and I later learned it actually requires hundredths). They told me I shouldn’t have purchased such a fussy chisel size, and that I should’ve acquired something easier like 2mm or 3mm or even 2.5mm.
Here’s the thing: the chisel spacing is describing the measurement between the center of one chisel hole (not a whole chisel tooth) to the center of the next. So if you just take the chisel spacing and multiply it by how many stitches you want, you’re neglecting to account for half of the chisel tooth on each side. A whole single chisel width altogether needs to be added to the calculated length to achieve the dream of calculating and cutting a pattern that allows you to cut your leather and just scribe a line that will beautiful fit every single chisel hole exactly where you want, or a wallet pocket where the chisel perfectly meets the top edge without clipping it. Here is the punchline: I have yet to find a chisel from any brand that is a nice round number that protects you from tenths or hundredths. This is why these patterns “designed around the chisel” often require some overlooked fucking around.
Now, designing around the chisel CAN be done and there are two methods with which I am familiar:
Get comfortable with Adobe Illustrator and edit the sizes of each pattern piece with the keypad, be very mindful of stroke thickness, and always include a 20mm x 20mm square to test the accuracy after printing.
Use digital calipers that lock well to mark thick watercolor paper, cardstock, or some other relatively soft (not plastic sheeting) pattern material and check after cutting. The reality is that hundredths functionally don’t matter and can be rounded up or down, but it helps to get as close as you can. If you need a dimension that is too large for the caliper method, cut it as accurately as you can to a mm rounded up a little, then scribe the difference with calipers and if done well it usually fits the stitchline chisels perfectly.
If this is overly fussy and stupid to you, don’t do it! If you think I’m wasting my time and it’s holding me back as a leather worker, be grateful you have a leg up in the market! In other words, I am not accepting “advice” if the advice is just that you think I’m dumb, especially if you haven’t tested my thesis.
For those that are new to leatherwork, don’t trust people that are very firm about “guiding” you to the correct methods and take it personally when that guidance is rejected. Everything I am describing is what I like to do and I understand it’s not what other people will enjoy doing in their shop sometimes.
“You can’t get slanted stitching on both sides without a pony/ You can’t cast without a stitching pony.”
This is not true, kind of. On very thin leathers (less than 2mm seems to be the most agreed upon range) it is incredibly hard to get slants on both sides of a saddle stitch with any method, and Nigel Armitage’s x method seems to be the easiest way. However, in general, the “leapfrog” stitch many people learned from Corter leather during the pandemic does allow for a cast, he just never taught it. If you’re unfamiliar with the non-pony method, I recommend his video on the method as this next bit is going to be confusing without a visual.
When doing the leapfrog stitch, you start by putting two needles through two holes next two eachother. The thread on the right is pulled down and away while the left needle is pushed through the right hole. If when you pull the right thread down and away you make sure it crosses over on top of the left thread before the left goes into the right hole, the right thread will force the left into a slant shape. This is a cast, and on thicker leather this results in a slanted stitch on both sides, front and back, of the stitchline. This yields especially good results if after the left thread has gone through the hole, you tighten the backside by pulling the thread up and to the right before continuing through the next hole. This might not make much sense without visuals, and if anyone out there reading this would like a visual, feel free to reach out and I will figure something out to explain this better.
“You can’t get good results edge painting without improving air flow.”
I think my edge work, which just dries upside down in a regular room with no ventilation, disproves this. But, some neckbeard once told me that I would get better results if I introduced a space heater, hair dryer, or box fan. I said that might be good because it’ll dry faster, but I don’t have the space to do so in my little shop room. He took issue with my claim it would only improve the dry time and told me it would improve my results. So, I showed my results and said I’m fine with them. This sparked one of the most unhinged coke rants I’ve seen in a leatherwork forum and throughout the rambling I noticed a few things. The dry time he stated he was achieving was the same as mine without any airflow and while that could very well be differences in thickness of each coat, it’s interesting that we are spending the same amount of time on an edge, but I use less electricity and did not purchase a $700 dry booth as he did. Additionally, we use the same number of coats (primer, 2 thick coats, 1-2 thin coats) and though the guy claimed to avoid the valley that appears in the center of the edge altogether with his dry booth method, my results are better in the end.
So the moral of the story is that methods don’t matter, standards do. Don’t worry so much if you’re doing it right, worry if it looks good to you. If you find yourself about to say weird shit to someone on the internet about how lucky they are to have found your beacon of light, find out if their edgework looks better than yours first.
“If you cut everything right, you don’t need trim allowance, it’s pointless.”
Well, there are a lot of things that you don’t “need.” This is one that’s repeated a lot by British leatherworkers online and they often will say that it’s American leatherworkers primarily using trim allowance. I think that they misunderstand why this is done. For the most part, they’re right. I prefer to spend the time trimming a wallet and waste a tiny bit of material (though I will often turn wallet trimmings into earrings) than spend time and energy lining everything up perfectly gluing. Trim allowance also means I’m gluing an offset about 8mm around the edge of a wallet pocket rather than 3mm and I find it’s much easier for me to really dial in the exact minimum amount of glue. The less glue you use, the better adhesion you get, and the better the edge is that you’ll have to edge paint or burnish. I’ve noticed a lot of the folks that say this primarily edge paint rather than burnish. The nice thing about a burnish is you can see exactly what is causing imperfections in the edge, and looking at my edges through a jeweler’s loupe I realized that a divot down the center is from excess glue beading up and spreading layers apart. Less glue, more pressure, and trimming after stitching has drastically improved my edge work and because I just prefer that method, I find it’s more efficient for me personally. It’s not necessarily wrong and certainly not pointless.
In conclusion, don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
Well, thanks for reading if you’ve made it this far! I think overall, don’t believe everything you read on the internet. This one was a bit spicier because I find it a little hard not to share some of the “tough love” nonsense I’ve heard over the years, and for the folks newer to leatherwork I’m sorry some of these are kind of deep cuts. I am happy to explain anything in a future blog post if there’s anything “my readers” might find useful.
