Drafting patterns for leatherworking

Note: This post isn't really about 16th century methodologies.

I've shared a few of my favorite "hacks" (as the kids say) for making leather items with a bit of improvisation in the tools department. We've used flower pots to build mugs, we've used butter knives for skiving, and my favorite cheap woodworking chisels for cutting.

So let's talk about pattern making.

If you've ever followed my maskmaking tutorial or done any other leatherworking without a pre-printed pattern, you've noticed that there's often a size discrepancy between any paper pattern you've created by wrapping the item in paper and marking seams (as we did with this shoemaking post) and the leather you're going to use.

This can cause some real fit issues.

The problem stems from the difference in thickness between paper and leather, combined with the fact that paper doesn't stretch around a form and leather does. You could use some math to account for the thickness, but the stretch is a bit more difficult to guess at, which can result in some wasted materials.

Here's my Not Even Remotely Period (NERP) approach to leather patterning that saves me a lot of time and leather when I'm winging it with a pattern: craft foam.

In the image below, I am preparing a knife sheath for one of my carving knives. I've wrapped the knife in paper and marked the seam, but to get a better handle on the actual shape of the final piece of leather, I made the pattern in the back on thin white foam which I purchased from a local Michael's craft store.

It's not quite as thick as the final leather, but it's close. More importantly, it stretches a bit in a manner that is very reminiscent of damp leather. And since this is a pattern where the fit is precise and the seams have to just meet with no seam allowance, fit is so very crucial.

It's NERPy, sure, but it works a treat.

- Scott

Tools of the Trades: If you can't inherit them, buy them

Without a doubt, the best way to get tools is to inherit them. Not because it means you lost a loved one, but because inherited tools usually (hopefully?) come to you after years of tutelage in how to use and take care of them. Which is also to say that tools inherited tend to be in better shape than antique tools tend to be when you find them for sale somewhere.

A sad old Bailey No 5 awaiting rebirth as a usable tool. Rescued yesterday
for $12.00 from the shelf of an antique store.

I really feel you should mourn and doff your cap when you find a pile of old tools in a state of disrepair at a thrift store or in a flea market. It is the sign of a craftsman who failed to pass on his craft to the next generation. Rusted tools given away are the spoor of a dead craft lineage.

Then put your cap back on and buy them.

Apply some elbow grease to rejuvenating these treasures and apply them to keeping the craft alive in new hands that will appreciate them.

For me, this has been especially true with hammers and hand planes.

As you'll know if you've been following along for awhile (or will find out shortly if you're new here) I am something of a tool addict. From the antique stores, thrift shops, and flea markets, I have added to the hoard of 19th century tools I inherited. Or as I see it, I have given new life to tools that were destined for premature retirement on the walls of some kitschy restaurant or the shelves of some "Flea Market Chic" home.

Nothing annoys me more than to see tools used as bric-a-brac except maybe books abused in the same way and for the same reasons. I think tools are beautiful too, but as functional art, not inert sculpture to molder on your shelves. Use them or by God, give them to someone who will.

If you are a crafter, I hope you feel the same way when you see elements of your craft on the shelves at the local Goodwill. My wife supplements her inherited sewing implements with the same fervor I apply to woodworking and leather tools.

As always, the fall of one noble line gives room for new houses to rise and replace them. A quick tour of woodworking blogs will tell you beyond the shadow of doubt that the pursuit of handcraft is alive and thriving. While an increasingly mechanized world has undoubtedly managed to drive many to set aside the love of good tools meant to last generations in favor of ease and speed, the rise of the internet has also brought together communities of those who are fighting to keep their handcraft alive.

I mentioned Ravelry the other day as a gathering place for knitters both historical and modern. For the carpenter and joiner, there is LumberJocks and Sawmill Creek, for leathercrafters there is Leatherworker.net and for other crafts there are many more besides that I've forgotten or just haven't found yet. One of the great elements of these places is the sharing of resources and advice on rejuvenating these thrift store finds.

The wood body hand plane you see to the left is one of many that I've rescued from oblivion. The seller didn't know what they had. They'd duct taped the throat of the thing for some reason (without actually covering the protruding blade, so I've no idea what it was supposed to accomplish) and jamed the blade in backwards with enough force that it took some doing for me to remove it.

Because I do my research before heading out to go looking, I identified by its maker's marks right away as an English-made mid-nineteenth century Varvill & Sons plane. The plane iron (that's the blade) was original and in decent shape with plenty of good steel under all the rust. The tote (that's the handle) is solid with no cracks, a common flaw with antique planes, and just needs to be tightened a bit. It's a bit rough, but where weren't any cracks or splits that went deeper than a quarter inch, which meant I could fill them during the restoration and have a perfectly sound tool to leave to my heirs and they to theirs.

All of which ends with me buying it for $14.00.

If you look hard enough, these things are out there. Even though I really do live out in the middle of nowhere, I can drive less than thirty minutes and find a trove of antique tools. In fact, the closer to the middle of nowhere you get, it seems, the more likely you are to find these things. I've done this all over the United States, and I can tell you that these tools are to be found everywhere if you're looking for them.

I think it's definitely worth noting that if you don't want to restore antiques you can buy new ones that are being lovingly handmade by modern toolmakers. Specialty retailers like Lee Valley and Woodcraft are filled to the rafters with historically-inspired tools. If you want to talk to people making their own, there's St Thomas Guild, and if you want to buy them, there's even a group in England called Daegrad Tools that has begun reproducing museum-quality tools for the reenactor market, based on archaeological finds. I don't have any of their tools yet, but I'm hearing great things about them.

The toolmakers are really the unsung heroes of the craft guilds and the modern crafts movement.

One of the "projects in the background" for this blog has been to procure and restore almost all of the tools I haven't built myself.  At some point I'll do a full series of posts on 'how to evaluate antique tools you intend to use' but I haven't the time to devote to really doing it right at the moment. So you have that to look forward to.

Two important notes, however, that I do want to mention:

1. Antique blacksmith hammers are best avoided. While I do use antique hammers in wood and leatherworking, a hammer intended to use metal-against-metal can be over-hardened by years of use, and thus prone to chip or crack and throw the broken bits in your direction. You'll note as we go forward that all of the metal and forge work I do will be using new hammers.
2. I tend to avoid buying planes that don't have blades unless I'm ready to add $40-$50 (or more) to the purchase price to get a decent replacement that will fit.  When we get to the Worshipful Company of Joiners, we'll discuss what goes into making our own plane blades, and you'll get a better idea of why they're so expensive.

In the meantime, the sun is out and my workshop is calling. I've a tankard that needs hooping and some horns that need to be cut and shaped into useful items. Not to mention a workshop in dreadful need of clearing-out before I can hope to do any joinery worthy of the tools I inherited.

~ Scott

I've a bone to pick with my butcher...

"What I really need is a bovine metatarsus," I said.

The butcher was silent for a moment, staring at me as if sizing me up for a styrofoam tray and wondering if he had enough shrinkwrap to do the job.  Finally, he said, "You want a what?"

"A cow's metatarsus. It's the lower leg bone," I explained. "Any is good, but front is best because they'll be a bit more manageable."

"Soup bones are over there." He gestured vaguely toward the meat cases.

"All you have are ham bones and ox tails. I need a meta... a leg bone,"  I insisted. "From a cow."

"Why?"

"Can I just come back there and look?" I craned my neck around the corner toward the door of the walk-in cooler, just out of reach of curious customers. "I grew up on a farm. I'll wear gloves, a mask, whatever I need."

"We don't do that kind of thing here; we're a grocery store."

"It's for a project." I gave him my best academic look on the off chance it would make a difference. "It's educational."

He shrugged and averted his gaze, obviously hoping the strange man with the cow leg fixation would just go away. Finally I did.  No use asking him to direct me to a proper butcher. I knew when I'd been beat.

This was going to be harder than I thought.

The part about growing up in farm country is true. I'm from a small town in rural Missouri. The part about growing up on the farm was stretching it a bit since it was my grandpa's farm, but suffice to say that I was around a lot of cows and a lot of dairy farmers from an early age.

If I needed a cow bone in Missouri, I'm pretty sure a couple of phone calls would get me one without too much fuss. May be true here too, and I just don't know the right numbers to dial.

Tacoma, Washington (where my wife and I work) is not in dairy country. It's a city, urban by any definition, and the butchers around here don't get whole sides or ever really see the whole cow. They're mostly in the backs of grocery stores. Which more properly categorizes them as meat cutters, I think (feel free to check me on that) as opposed to butchers in the classical sense -- their meat comes precut into primals from the packer and they slice it into steaks or grind it or whathaveyou.

All of which means no legs.

No pinner's bone.

I should explain. As I explained yesterday, a pin maker used a bone as a sort of specialized tool bench for making pins. The metatarsus of a cow or sheep were preferred because they are large and dense and can be grooved in many directions to allow for different dimensions of pin.

In all honesty I have no idea whether or not it matters whether I use a pin or a block of wood or the anvil of my vise. They used a bone, so I want a bone if I can get one.

One of the biggest obstacles to period crafts as a general rule is the simple fact that modern urban-dwellers do not have the access to the same materials as our early modern predecessors. Now, as then, every part of a butchered animal is used from hoof to moo, but that doesn't mean I can get at it. At least not very easily.

So I called around and discovered what happened to all of them. It's the dog's fault.  The first pet store I called said "Yeah, we have cow leg bones. C'mon over and take a look!"

Frickin' dogs.

So after work, to the pet store we go. There, I find a display of procine and bovine bits sawn down to manageable sizes for all walks of dog. About half of them are bleached white and filled with some sort of meaty corn syrup goo (yes really) and I didn't want anything to do with those. The rest were apparently smoked with a bit of the meat still on them and I bought a selection to experiment with.

A lot of things in the Elizabethan world were made of bone and horn, so this is going to be a learning experience that will pay dividends later on.

I bought two sections of a sliced-up joint because the pinners apparently liked to slice planes off the bones to make a more stable work surface (one of the reasons they favored the lower leg bones, no doubt) and a hunk of a bovine metatarsus, just because I could.

They cost me about $6.00 and I didn't even need a dog to share them with.

Tomorrow evening I will go outside and see if I can clean them with a nice, gentle boil or if I'm going to have to try something more drastic. It's going to be cold, but the Engineer insists that bone boiling is not an inside task. Bother.

I'll let you know how it goes.

In the meanwhile, here are some resources on pinner's bones:

• A pinner's bone cataloged at the UK Finds Database: http://www.ukdfd.co.uk/ukdfddata/showrecords.php?product=24059
  
• Another pinner's bone at the Museum of London, probably turned up by a Thames mudlark and recorded at the Portable Antiquities Scheme: http://finds.org.uk/database/images/image/id/230498
  
• An article about bone objects - including pinner's bones - posted by the York Archeological Trust. http://www.dighungate.com/content.asp?id=176

- Scott