Thursday, September 6, 2012

Techniques in Leather Craft

By Ethan O. Tanner


Leather craft is a fascinating hobby and many artists have taken this way beyond carving initials or embossing a logo. Leather craft requires special tools and specific types of leather. Many craft workers have taken leather craft beyond a hobby into a part time or full time business.

Embossing is art of producing a three-dimensional image onto leather. The merely type of leather you prefer to try this along is vegetable tanned leather, which possibly described as tooling leather. With leather craft embossing, you don't need extensive training since all that's required are some special tools, embossing plates or wheels, and some basic leather craft knowledge, which can be learned in a class or even on the Internet.

With stamping, pressure is created from underneath the leather item or from on top. For de-stamping, this is when the design is backward, created from the upper side of the leather, which would produce a sunken look upon the other side.

The beauty of embossing is that you don't need extended training or costly tools to produce a extraordinary leather craft piece. The commonest method of embossing involves purchasing an embossing wheel. These wheels do range in size but the one used most often is one-inch wide made of metal. On the metal wheel are various types of designs that protrude, which is what will set the image into the leather.

You'll be able to find embossing wheels with every type of design possible. There are animals, scrolling, flowers, geometric designs, and so forth. These embossing wheels are very affordable and easy to find at any hobby, craft, or leather store. Bear in mind that if you plan to emboss leather regularly, it would be best to purchase the finer quality wheel.

This type of leather work affects getting the leather wet so the design of the embossing will dry stiff and stand out more. If you don't have a exceeding embossing wheel, you'll be able to use stencils like you'd have used in primary school to trace your initials. Almost hobby stores have a vast choice of stencils to choose from, giving you a good assortment. And so, using a hammer made specially for embossing, you'd thump out the design in the stencil, acquiring the embossed design on the other side of the hide.

To give you an idea of what leather craft embossing looks like, if you have ever seen a notary public stamp on an important document such as a marriage license or birth certificate, that raised design is embossed. Keep in mind that the quality of the embossing is dependent on the skill of the person swinging that hammer. The more detailing you see in a piece of embossed leather, the more time and effort it took to achieve it.

Blind stamping is a reference to embossing surfaces that are not colored. On occasion, pigmentation may be added or gold leafing added to enhance the leather craft work. With stamping, a special press is used that looks like a rubber stamp to create the design. Additionally with leather craft stamping, the design is often not three-dimensional but contrasting colors. The results are very nice but do not have the raised effect you get with embossed leather.

Tooling is an artistic creation form that takes time to learn. This type of leather craft implies hand tools like a chisel and hammer to create intricate designs. Explore our article on "Classes" through the link below for additional information on wherever to find excellent training for this astounding fashion of leather craft.




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