#leather braiding

[punchspeedchunk]

WIP TIME: major piece for the upcoming Easter Show competition, I'm making a bag from my Bodhrán drum that features a scaled down carving of the design on the drum.

I've finished the main carving, I still have to carve the shield which will be a separate piece I stitch over the hole. I used this piece because my instructor had it lying around and gave it to me for free, because she didn't want it to go to waste but didn't know what to do with it. It's fabulous quality for carving and tooling, so I super appreciate it.

The fur is rabbit, and I am stitching leather frames on the pieces which will then be laced together and laced flush around the carving. Then all of that will be the back of the drum case.

I have cut out canvas for the case body, which will have leather panels attached for fixing hardware to close it and a handle and bag feet. Still so much to get done before it's due on the 21st of March. I am going HARD on this.

I'm also entering two other categories, one with a dice bag, and another with this Dog Collar.

[swordguybuilds]

I've been playing around with handle shaping a lot lately! In this case I bolstered up the base of the handle with cane, but you can achieve the same effect with extra leather. You can also remove material instead of adding it to change the nature of the contour.

See it in the shop here!

[punchspeedchunk]

Today I finally conquered my Dad's Father's Day present...

That I promised him like 3 years ago lol.

I thought when I said I'd make one initially that it would be easy, and to be fair, it doesn't take more than like, 2-3 hours to plait, probably less once I'm practiced again (Even despite the arthritis).

The PROBLEM I always faced was I didn't have the right lacing to be doing things this small. And you just CANNOT finish the end-weave if your lacing is too thick or too wide on an 8 strand. I'm not even sure I could make a 6 strand successfully with this 2.5mm lacing, there's a point at which the layering in the weave gets too unwieldly.

The other issue was finding the right hardware, I chanced on that buckle in my workshop's bargain shed. It's the perfect size, but I did have to work out the need to split my flat plait into two four strand plaits and then bring them back together to go around the buckle anchor properly.

And getting the bit where you feed the ends of the strands back into itself to finish it was a KILLER to learn, and the good quality roo lacing made it so much easier.

But hey! Finally, success! Now I need to make more of them and then make myself a new stockman's belt, because mine is OLD and very folded over (I didn't make it, but I doubt my craftsmanship will be much better lol).

[punchspeedchunk]

Some of the braided leather cuffs I have been making to improve my braiding work.

The Black one is basically a mini Stockman's belt.

Done with 2.5mm Kangaroo Lacing. Anything wider or thicker doesn't weave into itself well enough to finish these things I've found.

[swordguybuilds]

It's always a challenge to do patternwork in the thong that matches the patternwork in the handle because the number of strands is different; in this case I just did some birdseye in the thong, since it pretty much goes with everything!

Check out the shop here

[swordguybuilds]

A 4' 16 plait Main Gauche snake whip in natural tan and black. These can be ordered from the All Models page here!