Leather scraps

[MTViper]

My younger brother is a leather worker. I asked him to punch some holes in some scraps and he came through. Attached is the result. There are about 30 layers of leather, sandwiched between two pieces of blackjack oak to give something solid to press against. Glued everything together one day and turned it the next. Put on 6 coats of thin CA so the leather was solid enough to sand smooth. Then another 8 coats to finish it. This is a prototype, Going to try another one on a different pen and see if I can get a "K-Bar handle" look to it.

 

[Woodchipper]

Nice. I bought a leather punch with different punches on a "wheel" that you rotate. There is a shoe repair shop in town. Might stop in, give him a couple of bucks for scraps. That is a nice pen and thanks for sharing how you did the leather blank. Where did you get that particular pen? Looking at the decoration on the nib end. BTW, what did you use to glue the leather pieces together?
My wife looked at the photo and it has her stamp of approval.

 

[wolf creek knives]

This is the second interesting thing I've seen done with scraps. And I create a lot of scraps from leather after each sheath. Very nice looking pen and a very fitting tube construction idea with the KA-BAR knife handle look.

 

[TonyL]

There is only going to be one of those. Nicely done!

 

[MTViper]

Thanks for the kind words. My brother brought me his leather punches and a bag of scraps. I think that's a hint. The next one I do is going to be a PSI Knurl GT.

This kit is the PSI Bald Eagle Bolt Action in Antique Brass. I glued it up using Loctite GO2 Glue. It's billed as being a multipurpose glue that will glue anything. I usually use epoxy for gluing tubes into pens, but I needed something that did not have a short open time. I knew I was going to clamp it overnight so I put glue on both sides of each leather layer and a little around the tube with each layer to make sure I got everything stuck.

Tony is right, each one will be unique.

One interesting side note, as I turned the leather it felt like the roughing gouge was getting sharper. I was taking off long strings of leather that was very thin with no pressure at all. I think the leather was stropping the gouge as it cut.

I'm going to try to get pictures of each step of the process when I do the next one.

Steve