This article is reproduced from "One Leather a Day", a tutorial on making a beautiful key bag with vegetable tanned leather. This is not to flatter, it is really beautiful! Friends who like to do leather art, come and learn together~
To count, I have made no less than 30 key bags. Most of them were given to friends around me, but in the end I still don’t have one =W=
What to do, make one for yourself!
Let’s talk about the material first. I used sandpaper to simply polish the surface of the treated vegetable tanned leather. I didn’t need to polish it very evenly. This is the effect I want. After sanding, draw lines with a mercury pen according to the cardboard.
Remember to clean the dust off the surface after sanding. Then start applying oil, use a small sponge or pure cotton cloth with a little horn oil and apply it evenly until it is absorbed by the leather.
After the oil is almost absorbed, I start to treat the back. I use bed surface treatment agent. I heard that using CMC is better. I don’t have a scraper and use a triangle ruler instead. This thing is quite expensive. Try to save as much as possible. Start from the middle. Just scrape it out evenly.
After it dries a little, use a sander to polish it. As for the extent of polishing, please see the picture below. It will be enough if there is obvious reflection under the light.
Start cutting the skin. Remember not to be impatient when cutting the skin. Hold the knife firmly and steadily, and cut back slowly. If you are worried about making a mistake, you can cut outside the silver line and then use an edger to trim it.
The skin is cut
Oh my God! I forgot a piece of leather, which is used to protect the key on the inside. It is best to choose a softer leather.
The next step is to start trimming. As for the extent of trimming, you can control it yourself. I usually use a two millimeter bevel.
Adjust the distance between the stitches with the spacing gauge and start creasing the stitches
Then use a trencher to start digging along the pressed lines. The domestic trencher I used didn’t feel very easy to use, especially because the blade was not sharp enough. You also need to be careful when using the trencher, it must be slow and steady, otherwise all your efforts will be wasted if you drive out of line.
Okay, the trenching is complete!
Fold the small piece of leather in that shape and glue it together, leaving a little space in the middle without gluing it completely. I use quick-drying white latex, which is sold on Taobao for a few yuan a bottle.
After gluing, press it with something or clamp it with a small clamp like me and wait for it to cool.
Remember to measure the distance and glue the piece of leather to the leather surface.
After the glue dries, use a diamond chopper to drill holes along the dug wire trough. The holes should be made as vertically as possible, otherwise the back side may not be straight.
Sew the small one first, with two needles, one thread, and cross stitches. Because I used wax thread, I skipped the wax application step. If you use ordinary leather suture thread, remember to coat the thread with wax first.
How to calculate the length of the thread? Fold a thread into two strands and wrap it around the thread groove to be sutured. Generally, 1.5 times the circumference is enough. The thicker the skin, the longer it will be.
The small shape is sewn and polished a little. Make the corners look more rounded.
Clean the polished corners, and then apply bed surface treatment agent like oil on top.
Then use a sander to grind along the edges and corners, grinding one edge back and forth a hundred times.
After polishing, it is already very smooth, but it is not enough. It needs to be coated with a layer of wax for better protection. I don't have professional edge wax, so I used beeswax instead.
Just polish it until it looks like the picture below. There appears to be a distinct haze of wax.
Drill a hole in the middle of the shape to install the decorative buckle.
By the way, make the holes where they need to be drilled
Starting to sew the noodles
I ignored the small piece of leather in the middle, the line was almost not long enough!!!
The treatment on the side is the same as before, apply bed surface treatment agent and then sand it.
This edge is relatively soft, so it is not easy to polish, but take your time, and slow work will produce fine work.
This is the end of the leather work. Let’s start installing the key row. This is too simple, so I won’t go into details.
After the key row is installed, install the bottom buckle of the four-button buckle. I used the 201 four-button buckle.
I use decorative buckles on the front, which are screwed. Let’s start assembling!
Assembled complete! This is for yourself!
This one on the outside is mainly for the sake of appearance, but has little actual effect.
