Week of Weave

[Eaglestroker]

Very nice work.

It looks like the same stamp was used on all those pieces that you've shown. Do you know the maker and size of the stamp? Also, do you do any sort of layout to keep your stamps straight, or is it just a lot of practice?

Mike L.

Mike - I looked last night for you on the stamps. The border is a D636, Weave is a X511 both Craftool. When I lay out a weave unless it's a very large project or find myself wandering, I lay out an initial line and build off of that trying to split the project in half on holsters. It is easier for me to weave one side then border it and continue down the barrel until I'm finished. Here is an example of the cut stamp:



You can see here I did a self critique on a holster last winter when a few folks on another forum asked how it was done. It isn't perfect but neither is my work. This example is worse than my normal work though.

http://s961.photobucket.com/user/Ssthis07GT/library/1-Leather/Stamping Critique?sort=2&page=1

Deep, crisp and precise, things you always want to hear

Nicely done!
G2

Gary - thank you for your kind words!

eaglestroker, thank you very much for sharing your work. really amazing and also always nice to see something different from a knife sheath.

VP - thanks for the kind words!

Fantastic work! Especially the second pic on your first post!

Thank you sir!

Eagle I know and try finding a 5" with a roundbutt! With 10's its great, with .40s its simply the most accurate handgun I've ever fired, period. See if I can find a pic of it.

Found a couple:

Hey Dave, I have tried! I nearly scored one for $900 last year from a local IDPA shooter but he sold it out from under me. Would call dibs but sounds like you know what you have there! Had a 310 for some time but really want to try a 10mm S&W with more barrel.

 

[logem]

Mike - I looked last night for you on the stamps. The border is a D636, Weave is a X511 both Craftool. When I lay out a weave unless it's a very large project or find myself wandering, I lay out an initial line and build off of that trying to split the project in half on holsters. It is easier for me to weave one side then border it and continue down the barrel until I'm finished.

You can see here I did a self critique on a holster last winter when a few folks on another forum asked how it was done. It isn't perfect but neither is my work. This example is worse than my normal work though.

Thanks for the craftool numbers. I have an X510 which is very similar in size and shape.

It appears as if you sometimes use varying levels of overlap between adjacent stamps. In your stamping critique, the adjacent stamps are overlapped almost as much as possible. On some of the work that you recently posted, the stamps look to be spaced a little further apart, to where the "over-weave" strand is longer. I think both of these techniques look better than what I've mostly done which is place the stamps virtually, end-to-end.

In any case, I noticed that Al Stohlman says to "slightly overlap the ends of each tool" in his Craftool Tech-Tips book. I'd never given it too much thought until now, but I'm wondering how much overlap others typically use while weave stamping.

I hope you don't mind: I posted a photo from your critique to illustrate the heavy overlap that I mentioned.

 

[Eaglestroker]

Michael, how much to overlap is definitely personal preference. As you can see in these two examples when first getting started I would really drag the legs out for an elongated look:





That second sampling was my first gun 'rig' and I thought I was hot stuff for getting a $140 order.....Now 'days just the belt would cost a little more than that. What I found was the closer you get the 'legs' of the stamp to the center portion the easier it was to track straight. When dragging the stamp out there were two big problems:

1) It is easy to twist the stamp minutely throwing the whole pattern off. On the elongated weave that curve is more noticeable.
2) It is next to impossible to put the stamp in the same place on the elongated stamp, stamp after stamp. You end up with again more noticeable variations in length that ultimately looks worse to me.

All of my stuff done in the past two years is pretty close to full overlap. Some don't make it but most are close. Looks better to my eye as my tastes / processes continue to evolve.