Random Work

OK, so after a frustrating amount of time spent wrestling with the new Blogger interface, I've finally posted some photos of recent work. First up is a good illustration of my recent obsession with whip making, which was sparked oh so many years ago by Indiana Jones. This is the second leather whip I've made, and is a bullwhip. It's about 54" from the butt of the handle to the end of the braided portion (thong), and if you include the fall, cracker and wrist loop it's right at seven feet. As this definitely counts as a learning exercise, I've been using oily utility leather for all the strands. It's not very strong, especially when you start tapering the strands, and I had to splice a bunch of strands that busted while plaiting, but I'm nowhere near confident enough to attempt this with kangaroo.

There is a wooden dowel in the handle, which then tapers down to a core, which extends all the way down to the end of the braiding. Here is where I deviated from the normal method of construction - usually this would have another plaited core inside, but the leather isn't strong enough to get a good, tight braid with the thin strands. I had another core laying around from a paracord whip project that never got started, so I used that instead. It's a length of canvas that was tapered, rolled up and glued, and surprisingly it worked perfectly.

It's much tighter than my first whip, the stockwhip, and it unrolls smoothly and is much more precise. However, the wrist loop at the end of the handle seems to me to be unnecessary. It's not quite long enough to fit around my wrist and still allow for wrist movement, so it ends up slapping me in the wrist whenever I crack it. 

Up next is a tool bag that I made for my dad. He recently had a birthday and, due to the immense amount of tools he owns and uses, I thought he could use a burly leather bag to lug tools around.

 It's the same utility leather as the bullwhip, and the bag has one large compartment and two side pockets. I'm hoping this will look better and better the more beat up it gets.

 

There's a project in the works that required a braided leather wrist loop (more to come on that later), and I ended up cutting the strands way too long. I couldn't let them go to waste, so just for fun I made them into this, which is sort of a quirt:

 

It's a little too floppy to be of any practical use, but it was fun to crank out.

And finally, I recently saw My Neighbor Totoro for the first time, and was inspired to carve a brass acorn for my girlfriend.

A cycling bag for Persimmon

For the birthday of my lovely girlfriend I decided to make her a cycling bag. She commutes to and from work by bike and needs to carry clothing, food, tools and sundries, and has been resorting to strapping a purse to the rear rack with bungee cords. I thought that a design with the least amount of removable parts would be ideal, but it would need to be easily installed and removed. I also wanted it to double as a purse while off the bike, and she's a sucker for giraffes, so the following bag was born:


The strap is removable, and can be carried in the bag while it is strapped into place.

Continuing the giraffe theme, there are giraffe heads at both ends of the bag for the purpose of mounting a rear blinking light:


The underside serves two functions - to hold the bungee cords and also to carry the u-lock. When in place on the rack, the hooks can be snaked under the rack and hooked onto the d-rings, providing a simple and secure method of holding the bag to the rack. As they're attached to the bag there isn't any chance of losing them:

The u-lock in place. It slides into a slot on the underside of the bag and eliminates the need to carry it elsewhere:


The bag in place on her bike, Persimmon:


This better illustrates how the bag attaches to the rack. It doesn't matter how much gear is stowed in the bag, as the low attachment points will keep it firmly in place no matter what:

A better shot of the u-lock in place. The bungee wraps around it and keeps it from sliding out:

Camera case and edge braiding

Here's a recent project - a case to protect an Argus Argoflex 75 camera. The straps are built into the camera, so all that was needed was a case to keep it from getting scratched. It needed to allow access to the tripod mount, shutter advance, attachment points for the flash, the film indicator and the shutter. Of course, the lenses needed to be easily exposed without having to remove the case, so when the flap is opened there is access to the viewfinder and the lenses and the case stays in place.





Current project - making a replacement wallet for one of my favorite clients. He loves the fact that the bright blue of this robot wallet sparked so many conversations, but unfortunately the original wallet was misplaced. Luckily I hang onto all the designs and patterns from previous jobs, so replacements are a snap. Here's a couple of shots of the edge braiding in progress:

New works and the endless creation of key fobs

Lots of work happening in my little kitchen workshop as of late. First up is a commission for a bifold wallet birthday gift. The recipient is a big fan of the George R. R. Martin series " A Song of Fire and Ice" and the wallet was to reflect imagery from "A Game of Thrones." Full disclosure - I haven't read the series yet and don't know if this is from the series or just the first novel. The images were the request of the client, and no matter where they came from this is the result:



Next is a pocket case for 3" x 5" index cards. I've done this type of wallet before, where tabs on one side enable someone to keep a piece of paper for quick and easy note taking, and more cards can be stored inside the case:


My first attempt at a sunglasses case. Well, I lie - I kept the first attempt for myself but didn't photograph it as it's a much sloppier version of this. Soft chrome-tanned leather on the outside and vegetable-tanned leather for the interior should wear well, and the case closes with a magnetic snap. My first version had a glove snap, but it's kind of a pain to snap shut when the glasses are inside:


I've done quite a few key fobs for a local hotel, the Hotel St. Cecilia, but now they want to change things up and make a different version. The ones I've made before were intended as giveaways, but these are destined to be used for the room keys. The one on top with the key is the mockup I was given, and below are some variations I presented to them. These are also meant to be stamped with a small logo for the hotel, but they haven't gotten one made yet:

Finally, the Tentacle Restraint Unit. My lovely girlfriend has a nest of dreadlocks atop her head, and it's been quite a while since the high temperatures dropped below the triple digits. She wanted something to restrain the "tentacles" and keep them off her neck, so I sewed a simple leather strap and made a hairpin to go with it:

The hairpin was once a rod from an old wooden card catalog drawer. I cut it short and carved the brass end into a skull:

Experiments in traditional and newer materials

Up first is an experiment in synthetic materials. This is the second whip I've made and this time I set out to create a snake whip in paracord. It's a lot smaller than the first whip and has four feet of thong (the braided section), no real handle and with the fall and cracker (the black single strand and the white twisted cord at the end) the total length is right at six feet. There are four layers, three plaited, at the handle and the number of layers reduces as everything tapers towards the tip. It took some getting used to, as it's much stiffer than my stockwhip but doesn't have a solid handle, but once I figured out how to handle it the crack is pretty nasty.

Up next is an idea that got stuck in my head and simply had to be created. Instead of tooling and carving an image, I wanted to really play with the properties of leather and create something more 3D, something that stuck out from the surface of the item. This tentacle wallet is mostly constructed with raw vegetable tanned leather. Most of it is 2-3 ounce , but I cut out holes for the suckers and inserted 4-5 ounce leather in the shape of suckers, covered it in dyed doe kidskin and stitched them into place.

Just a minimal amount of tooling to give the shape of the tentacle, which continues off to the side to be the strap that keeps the wallet shut.

Six card pockets, two currency pockets and one coin pouch make this a fairly thick wallet. This will probably fit better in a purse or a bag than in a back pocket.

The dye used to color the doe kidskin ended up nearly matching the tarnished brass of the anorak snap used as a closure - lucky coincidence!

As always, hand stitched.