More about Carving Leather

The last photo in the previous post demonstrated how to hold a swivel knife and carve the leather. (Included below.) It really can be that simple to get started carving your pattern. Do not hold the knife at too sharp of an angle up and down or too much to the left or right when carving sharp curves. Leaning the swivel knife back too much will reduce the control that you have over the direction the blade will cut. If the swivel knife is held at too much of angle is almost like trying to push something that you should be pulling instead. This will be more easily understood when you get more practice. Also, you will find that it is difficult to make the swivel knife behave exactly as you would like it to sometimes. I still have that issue at times, especially when a leaf or a flower petal has many sharp curves.

Another look at carving leather.

The main thing that you will need to do is to decide which part of the pattern to carve first. I like to carve the flowers before I carve any leaves or stems. That way I will have a good starting point and a good point from which to start carving the rest of the pattern. I like to carve the lines connecting with the flowers away from the flower because invariably, I will knick the flower with my swivel knife blade if I carve toward the flower. I also like to carve the lines of the stems and other items that I would like to look as if they should be above the other portions of the pattern. It is a good habit to select the lines that are complete from beginning to end and carve those before any adjoining lines.

The drawing below is of an acanthus leaf tracing/carving pattern. I placed red arrows next a few lines to indicate which lines I might carve first. Notice that these are complete lines and do not butt up against any others. The blue arrows show the lines that I would carve next and the points at which I would place my swivel knife blade to begin carving each of these lines. There are no hard-fast rules about how you need to carve your leather. The techniques that I am trying to teach you are what I have learned as my “best practices” for doing the best work I can.

Tracing pattern with arrows showing starting points.

If is always a good idea to practice using a swivel knife before you begin carving your actual project. You might have to purchase scrap leather from the same dealer where you purchased your stamps. Otherwise, if you have a saddle shop close you may be able to find some small scraps there to with which to practice. That being said, one of the most difficult parts of carving leather is to make sure that you practice rotating the barrel of your swivel knife to follow the lines properly as you proceed. The old saying, “Practice makes perfect,” should, at this point of the game actually be, “Practice makes better!”

When practicing, make sure that you are carving deep enough to cut through the grain of the leather as well. The depth at which you carve a pattern will be determined by the thickness of the leather and the thickness of the grain. The grain is not always the same thickness on every piece of leather that you might use. Always make sure that when carving thinner leather that you do not carve too deep and cut all the way through. This may sound a little tedious, but with practice, it will all come much easier.

One last thing about carving leather. Carving leather is much easier if the blade is reasonably sharp and smooth. The swivel knife blade can be removed by loosening the setscrew on the barrel and pulling it out. Although the swivel knife blade is not on the quality with a precision surgical blade, extreme care should be taken to make sure that the sides are honed equally. When you look at the swivel knife blade, you will see that it is “V” shaped. Keep the sides of the “V” as close to the same as possible. A tool is available that will hold your blade in place at the proper angle while you pull it across your honing stone. This tool can be found at or ordered by your local leather craft dealer. Do not use a file or a coarse stone to sharpen your blade. The only time that you would want to use a coarse stone is to remove any grinding marks that were left over from the manufacturing process.

For many years, I used a double-sided super fine grit hone that I purchased early on in my career. I still have that Tonsorial Gem stone but I do not use it because I learned other techniques that I like better. I got a tired of having to drag out the honing oil and coating the first side of the stone for sharpening, wiping it off, flipping the stone over, and doing the same thing over again. It was a great method for making sure that my blade was in decent shape for carving leather.

The method that I now use for sharpening my swivel knife is somewhat different from the tonsorial gem. I learned a something from the saddle makers that I worked with concerning sharpening swivel knife blades, heck, a man who makes custom leather stamps and swivel knives told me he does pretty much the same thing. A swivel knife blade does not need to be sharpened very often. Sound intriguing? The blade can be polished by dragging it, while still in the swivel knife, across the flesh side of a piece of leather that has white jewelers rouge rubbed on it. The piece of leather should be one of consistent thickness and about 1 ½ inches wide and about a foot long. White jewelers rouge comes in a small block and can be rubbed onto the rough side of the leather easily. A block of jewelers rouge will last a long time and should need to be purchased once in your lifetime. The leather should last that long or longer!

Let me know if you have any questions.

Have fun!

Transferring Patterns to Leather and Carving

In the last post, you had to read many things about what you do not want to do when getting ready to trace the pattern onto your leather. Do make sure that your hands are clean and that your leather is not too wet to work. One of the problems that you will find when you have your leather too wet is that the pattern that you traced onto the leather will not be as sharp as it would have been if you had let it case for a few minutes or in the case of heavier leather overnight.

Below you will see a couple of pieces of leather that were moistened and the patterns transferred to the leather. It is easy to see which piece of leather is too wet to work because the excess moisture makes it very dark. (I apologize that the quality of these photos does not show the in-person difference between the qualities of the pattern transfers.) Looking closely at the pattern on the left, you will notice that the lines are darker than the one on the right. One of the problems that you will find with having the leather too wet is that while carving some of the lines might disappear because the can will stretch.

Left - Damp Leather and Right - Too Wet

Below is photo of one of the swivel knives in my collection. Please do not get excited, you only need one swivel knife. I have found over the years that I wanted to try something new and that fit my large, getting older, hand better than the basic unit hands. One thing that I might recommend rather than having more than one swivel knife is that you get additional blades to fit the need of you carving styles. It is not mandatory that you have more than one blade to do your work. One of the blades that I became particularly enamored with is a hollow-ground one that seems to open the carved lines a little more, making it easier to carve.

Swivel knife with hollow-ground blade

If you look at the blade on the swivel knife shown above you will notice that the center appears to be ground out, making it thinner in the center. This is exactly the way it has been done. The center is ground out to help with carving and the trailing edge of the blade is a little wider which opens the line a little more. Again, this will make the carved lines a little wider for easier stamping with the bevelers.

Carving the leather when it is too wet can cause some problems when making curved cuts. It took me a little bit to learn that the swivel knife blade will more or less peel the surface of the grain from the outer edge of the curved line that I am carving. Countless times, I used a little trickery to hide this eyesore by lightly re-carving that portion of the line to remove the little flap of grain that I pulled from the other edge. The peeling effect can happen at other times when carving but this is one of the most prominent of which I know. The photo below does not clearly show this effect but I hope to have one later that will.

Carving leather with swivel knife

The main idea behind carving the pattern when the grain is mostly dry is that it will be easier for you to see the lines that have been transferred to the leather. It will also pretty much automatically put you in the position of stamping the leather when it is at the right moisture content. After you have done enough projects, you will begin to learn how damp you want to get a piece of leather for the best results when working on it. As far as wetting the leather before beginning the carving and stamping process, I am somewhat more in favor of using a bit less water to start with. I will explain briefly, I would rather use a spray bottle to add a little moisture to a project than to take a chance on getting it too wet and having to wait hours for it to dry sufficiently to carve and stamp.

I have had more than one saddle maker tell me that I was doing it all wrong when I applied more moisture to the leather via spray bottle or a slightly damp sponge. I actually prefer the spray bottle set so that it will put out a fine mist rather than a jet. The mist will moisten the area that I feel is too dry and put only a small amount of moisture on the areas that I may have already worked. The danger with getting too much water on an area that you have already carved is that it will cause the carved lines to close up some and that it will reduce the bruising effect of some of the already-placed stamps.

Now that I have pounded you on the idea of not getting the leather too wet, the photo below, (same as the previous), demonstrates the approximate angle at which you want to hold your swivel knife when carving. The main thing is that you want to make sure that you tilt the top of the swivel knife back enough to make sure that the front edge of the blade will not catch as you carve. Do not attempt to use more than half of the length of the blade when carving. Rest the side of your hand on the leather, tilt the top of the swivel knife back and pull it along the line while pressing down hard enough to cut the line. Be extremely careful when carving lightweight leather because it is possible that with enough pressure you could cut completely through the leather.

A second look at carving notice the angle of the swivel knife.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions or comments. I will be glad to hear from you.

Have fun!

Tracing Pattern and Preparation

Okay, for this post I promise to stay on track. I intended to give instructions on how to transfer your carving pattern to the leather. I will reiterate a few things as we go along with this topic just so that you will understand what I am trying to get across.

Here are some things that you want to do and some things that you do not want to do when you are going to get your leather wet either under the faucet for medium weight leather or with a spray bottle for lighter weight leather. Make sure that your hands are clean and have no hand lotions or creams on them. A little dirt mixed with hand lotion and damp leather will prove to be a difficult stain to remove. I have had a number of projects that required the use of a product to remove my fingerprints and those of well-meaning customers.

Rather than using the tracing pattern that comes with a kit to transfer the pattern to the leather, trace it with a pencil onto tracing paper or some kind of paper that will allow you to see what you need to trace. Do not use a pen to trace your pattern because many inks will seep through the paper and get on the leather. Two things that are very difficult to get off from leather are ink and blood.

When tracing the pattern onto the paper tape, if possible, either use some tape to hold that pattern in place to keep it from sliding around or weight it down with an object that will not get in your way while tracing. It really stinks when you find out that the pattern that you spent 30-60 minutes tracing is skewed by a half-an-inch. Guess how I know about that.

I managed to come up with an idea early into my leather-crafting career for making my copies of patterns last longer. After I had traced a pattern I would put clear tape over the top of it to make it last longer. This worked especially well for belt patterns that I had traced because most belt patterns are just repetition of leaves and flowers or leaves and acorns with a few stems and branches thrown in. One of the happiest moments I had with using the tape on my patterns was when I found out that I could just add another layer of tape to the first one without too much difficulty. What was even better was when I found clear packaging tape that is 2-inches wide. That would cover all of my belt patterns with one long, wide piece of tape instead of six strips of ¾-inch Scotch tape.

Ever since I experimented with using the tape on my tracing/carving patterns, I have taped all of them. I have made multiple items using the exact same pattern so putting the tape on it to protect the paper helped big time. I had some belt patterns that I had so many layers of tape on that I could almost rub them with a flat object to transfer the pattern to the leather without having to use the ballpoint stylus.

Okay, now if your hands are clean, the working surface is clean, and you do not have any debris on the back of your paper pattern or your leather you are pretty much ready to start putting the pattern on your leather. Oh yeah, make sure that the leather is not too wet. If it is still dark from moisture, do not start! If you are sure that it is good to go, line up that tracing/carving pattern with the edges of the leather. If you have something you can place on a corner of the pattern to keep it from slipping, please do it. If you use tape, make sure that you do not allow the adhesive side of the tape to stick to the grain of the leather. You will not like the end result if this happens.

After getting the pattern lined up with the leather it is time to start using the ballpoint stylus to apply the pattern to the leather. Simply trace over each line in the pattern with the ballpoint stylus, applying enough pressure to transfer the pattern to the leather. It is not a good idea to attach all edges of the pattern to the work surface because you will want to make sure at some point that you are able to lift one edge to make sure that you have all of the lines transferred to the leather. Let me tell you, if you miss transferring one line to your pattern, it is very difficult to get the pattern lined up in the exact place.

The picture below shows what a tracing pattern might look like. If you were using this pattern, each line would need to be transferred to your project.

Sample tracing pattern

Some patterns will have a carved border to which the pattern will run up to. In this case, it might be easier if you pre-carve your border so that you will have a ready-made stop for your stylus to bump up against. For myself, I have found that it works best if I carve my border and use a ruler to make the straight lines after marking and measuring to insure accuracy. If your project has curved edges, such as a purse, it might be better to use a wing dividers, it looks like a compass only with two metal points, to mark your border before carving.

Once you have traced the whole pattern onto the leather, you can begin using your swivel knife to carve it. Take is slow and easy and use both hands if necessary to keep your swivel knife steady.

I will have some photos available on the next post showing the techniques I use for carving leather.

If you have any questions about working with leather please take time to post them. I will be happy to help you if I can.

Have fun!