06/11/2009 by Paul Carpenter.

Apologies, since starting back to school have had little time for posting or even making any leather stuff, so thought I would talk alittle about some past pictorial leather carving.

Have been carving leather for about 5 years now, started off easy with some Al Stohlman designs and then progressed to other projects as dictated by past customers, family and friends. Most of the carving was based around the A4 size which is good practise for saddles, books etc as shown above but as my skills got better, so did my carvings.

from the start I only used the contours created by the carving to give my pictures that 2D look but after 2 years or so started to push the leather in from the back to help improve the look of various subjects giving them more of a rounded feel such as the horse in the plain Indian scene at the top. It also help improve my portrait subjects.

Only did a few portraits but I do not apologise for using the great John Wayne as my favourite subject - I used the pushing out of the leather from the back method on both these carvings of him and they did improve their feel, look and texture, especially the poster size one which otherwise would of had alot of flat surface on it.

Probably seems strange to mix the old with the new, but I include the bike carving because apart from the pack horse carving above (A5 size) this bike carving is probably the most technical I have done mostly due the small area I was trying to carve alot of detail into.

The last big project I did was the shield for Robert Low and that was about a year ago - I think if I tried to do some of the carvings above again they would not turn out so well - like everything it is practise, practise.

Paul

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27/09/2009 by Paul Carpenter.

This a project I did a few years ago after making a few just like it with peoples names on them instead of ‘Scotland’. This was the first as way of a sort of trial which to the trained eye is evident by the uneveness of the braids - turned out to be more differecult to try and keep 28 strings in-line at once. Got there in the end with the others as shown in the second photo but it is a shame that the patterns did’nt quite turn out as expected on the string one.

I could only find a photo of the top of the last one - apart from the pine cone carving, there was also some braiding below it.

Since doing these I have done a few others and are very enjoyable to make - unlike with making braided belts or whips or if using rawhide, I can take my time, need very little force and can leave them for weeks or finish quite easily in a day - plus with fid work they are so much easier to alter incase of mistakes, unlike knots.

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19/09/2009 by Paul Carpenter.

After messing around with the cow and Buffalo horn in the making of the armor, I thought it would be great to try something more traditional - hence the drinking horn. The one shown can hold 1 1/2 pints of whisky (or any other beverage). After a day scraping and filing the outer layers off this great looking black streak revealed its self.

The two knots are a sort of heel knot with a 6 string strap attached, probably about as much viking as the western style concho I used to attach one end of the strap, but I,m not viking either!

Lastly I finally managed to one, get my son in the armour and two, have a nice warm day (a rare event indeed in Scotland this summer) to get a photo of the finished piece. I did enjoy making it but am also very glad that it is finished, I do plan at some point to write a tutorial about making it but it will be a biggy so will wait awhile until I have a few days free.

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07/09/2009 by Paul Carpenter.

I guess it must seem as if I’m having a quiver bing at the moment, but it’s probably just a spert of energy - or some may hope going by some of the idea’s I’ve had thus far. Unfortunatly the wierd and wonderful idea’s just keep coming, this new quiver being the lastest.

I have decided in my wisdom to call it the ‘Fanorientern’ mainly because their are eastern, western and fantasy elements or influences within it. In regard to the materials and design, the horn is from India, the leather from Italy and the design just poped out of some where! As for the carvings, well they are obvious, a chinese archer on pegasus figthing a dragon! could’nt be more unlikely a situation.

Also managed to finish the boots for the black armour, which prtetty well means that project is finally over and done with - After this mini monsoon we seem to be getting is over I might have a chance to get a photo with my son wearing it all - but for now here are the boots - Not totally perfect but they fit and did’nt work out to bad for my first attempt at boot making.

Paul

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27/08/2009 by Paul Carpenter.

As part of the Armour, I made some horn clip piece’s which when sewn onto the Quiver enabled the bow to be attached unstrung and strung. I am not sure if this could be done with other types of bows which have profiles but with my horse bow which is rectangular with flat widths and covered in leather, the horn pieces seemed to work very well keeping hold of the bow when not in use but still allowing quick removal when in use.

I liked the idea so much that I used the same idea on my hip quiver for field archery - only this time I just used one longer horn piece and still holds the bow quite firmly. Below are pictures of the these horn pieces in action on the armour quiver and my hip quiver.

I can upon the idea for these horn pieces after much thought of how to attach the bow on the armour quiver - regardless of the fact that the armour is for a kid who may never actually ride a horse let alone use the bow while riding (despite the enthusiam of such a thing from one of our horse owner friends) I tried to see the attaching of the bow from the perspective of a mongol archer or more importantly from my perspective and how I might like the bow to be stored enabling not only a secure way to keep the bow while not in use but also when it may be called into use.

Leather straps were of course the first idea but they would mean fasteners in some fashion or loops of leather both meaning that the whole quiver would have to be removed or someone else would have to remove it for me, so hence the horn clips, could use plastic or metal but horn seemed more in keeping with the whole armour.

I did try stream bending the tops of horn (which are fairly thin) but the result kept breaking, so in the end I just sawed rectangular blocks from the tips of horn then using a wood drill bit the same diameter as the thickness of the bow limbs, first drilled a hole then sawed out a groove, smoothed down and polished. On the armour quiver I attached the clips by rawhide, but on my quiver I used leather lace. Quite simple really, probably not unique but they do a great job and leave both my hands free so I still use them to alaberate on all those high tales of adventure! 

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20/08/2009 by Paul Carpenter.

After much deliberation, I decided to fix on a leather handle to the knife below by the use of a rawhide knot and not just any normal small knot but a whopping 32 bight one - I could of very well just sewn a strip of leather on but thats just to simple for me. Plus have’nt played around with rawhide lace for awhile now and it was good practise.

The first photo is of the blade and horn sheath, the second of the finished article with the knot tigthen on, the third photo is of the knot striaght off of the mandrel that I used to tie it on.

Thge mandrel is 2 inches in diameter and the nails were placed 4 inches apart. Lace was 3.5mm wide and the length about 8m, altho it is best to just wind the lace around all the nails to get a better idea of length ( I forgot to measure it!!). I just used the 13 bight 12 part pineapple knot pattern shown in one of my tutorials - fid work and braiding knife handles plus lace prep - After following it for awhile you should see the pattern being formed.

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18/08/2009 by Paul Carpenter.

Amazing how you can spent weeks making odd bits of something while trying to visualise what the finished article will look like or even work and then within a day the whole thing comes together - still got a few fitting prob’s to sort out but over all I’m quite pleased with it. Now just the boots.

Oh and if you ever make something like this for a kid and the new stiffness of the leather makes them stand like a robot - put on some spice girls music - got my kid dancing!!!!

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13/08/2009 by Paul Carpenter.

This is an old design I used to make years ago, was quite popular back then and only stopped making them as I was making my own rawhide at the time. Since then I have no found a new source and thought I’d try these out again.

Here is the tutorial in case anybody fancy making one their selves - Rawhide quiver tutorial

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06/08/2009 by Paul Carpenter.

Finally started my kids new armour. Just hope he has’nt grown another 2 inches by the time I’ve finished it!!!

managed to finish the helmet and body piece as seen below. As with most plans, the finished product is near enough to what we had planned, except the helmet was supposed to resemble the facial features more but the thickness of leather prevented to much moulding - not to worry, my kid still likes it so no worries. The body piece is adjustable slightly to allow for proabaly a few months growth knowing him, but at the moment it slides onto him thankfully eliminating the need for countless buckles.

The body piece is made from 6 individual pieces of saddle leather - I had never tried this type of construction before but the results I think are not too bad, they could of very well been worse. The carving especially is a real achievement in managing to actually get them all to match up and resemble the bulls head and horns.

Next I need to do the arm guards, a different type of upper leg guards and high boot to finish it all off. Should be fun - if only the mistake teach me a few more lesson I’ll be happy. That and my kid has’nt grown too much by the time I finish!!!

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23/07/2009 by Paul Carpenter.

Got a few examples below of where I have used different materials to achieve a variety of textured and asfectic looks.

First I will discuss the differeance I found between buffalo and the long cow horn - The cow was alot softer and lighter in weight, plus like the long buffalo horn they are hollow until about 10 inches from the ends. Unlike the buffalo which has no distinct differing layers, the cow has a white outer which is easily scraped away with a knife and then finially with 120 - 300 grit sandpaper (useing high grade paper is best because of the softness of the horns material) under this layer is a much thinner translucent layer which comes up to a very nice sheen once polished - the buffalo being of much harder material should be sanded with 80 grit upwards to first get rid of the grooves.

The methods I use to carve or smooth these materials is discussed in the http://blog.mtn-m.co.uk/__oneclick_uploads/2009/06/knapped-steel-knife-and-buffalo-horn-handle.pdf tutorial. The only differance with these horns was that I used an electric plain sander fixed into my vice using like a belt or disc sander - saved alot of time and in some cases produced a better finish.

The sambar stag horn is much denser then deer stag antler and has a much smaller amount of soft interior - all I did with this was clear out debris from within its folds and polish, then drilled ahole to take the knife tang.

The buffalo sheath was cut to shape then sanded with 60 - 120 - 320 grit paper followed by the polishing materials - lastly it was drilled with a long wood bit (8mm) to take the knife - you may notice the hole created at the bottom of it where I misjudged the depth the bit had gone in, it was a mistake but later thought that it was proabaly a good idea to allow any water to escape instead of rust the blade.

The cow horn as discussed eariler was scraped then sanded and polished - these are quite inexpensive horns to buy but for a job like this you really need to be able to pick them yourself as I was able to from http://www.highlandhorn.com/shop.asp. The hole part way up it was put in using a dremel grinding bit then smoothed with the sand paper.

Both of these items are going to have leather straps sewn on around their circumferance to act as belt holders (for the knife) and two loops placed top and bottom of the cow horn quiver to take the straps needed to go over the shoulder. I will probably post these once finished but thought that others may be interested in these initial and uncommon uses for horn.

Paul

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