To help kick things off, here’s a fairly limited and brief walkthrough of a stingray cardholder being made. I hope to do something a lot more in-depth later on with a full bag construction, but this should get some appetites satisfied until then…
So:
Prep your materials and get everything ready. Stay organized!
Cut your pieces out. Stingray is tough. A knife won’t do it, so you’ll have to mark it carefully and then cut it using something like serrated tin snips.
Next, we glue.
We’re going to apply glue to interlining. In this case, I’m just going to use some cheap veg-tan. We’re going to want to glue this interlining to the kangaroo inner. A common error is to cut out the inner first. This makes things more difficult. Trace your pattern onto the underside of the leather, as shown two pictures above, and apply glue to the whole area, going about 1/4″ over the lines.
The glue takes around half an hour to set, so let’s prep our card slots while this happens.
We’re doing folded edges on these card slots, so for the final product to have as even of an edge thickness as possible, we’re going to take our skiving knife and thin the edge down by hand. With thicker leathers, the entire folded edge would need to be thinned, but kangaroo is very thin already, so this isn’t necessary.
The next step is to prep the edge for folding. My way is to mark exactly where the edge should be when folded. I then apply double-sided tape to the edge, put my ruler down along the marks I’ve created, and then…
Fold the edge!
It’s common to have a folded edge with no stitching. In this case, you’d replace the double-sided tape with glue, being sure to cover the whole area where the leather will be in contact right to the edge. Tape is just being used as a placeholder, so that stitching can be done in a moment!
Use an edge crease to mark the distance from the edge that needs to be stitched, then use a pricking iron of your choice to mark the stitch holes
Prep your needle…
Place your prepared card slot in your clamp, and begin stitching!
Card slots completed.
At some point, half an hour will have elapsed, so we’ll go back and do the inner and interlining glueing from earlier. Go ahead and press those pieces together, cut them out of the hide, and repeat the applicable above steps to stitch the inner to the interlining.
Now, you’re left with your remaining piece: the polished stingray outer.
Repeat the glueing step to attach this outer piece to the completed inner piece.
Edge work comes next, and we’ll skim through it pretty quickly.
Broken glass is used, in the same style as a traditional bespoke shoemaking would use it, to shave down the edge until all layers are aligned as closely as possible
To be brief, varying grits of sandpaper are used to smooth the edge
Leather hardener is used in this process, too.
When ready, an edge paint is selected and is applied to the edge…
using a heated edge tool.
The maker’s choice of wax(es) are applied to the edge, and further burnishing is done.
Some more finishing touches and cleanup are applied, and we’re all done!
Again, this short tutorial was quite brief, and doesn’t really show the hours spent to make such a small item, but it goes give you an idea as to what ‘handmade’ really means. Too often we see this term being used, and it’s a shame, because a guy using a sewing machine isn’t making a handmade anything. I believe there’s a balance. Technology is useful! Sandpaper is invaluable, and the heated edge tool works very well to maintain a constant temperature.
Also, people may wonder why the stingray outer was not stitched to the inner section. The nature of the stingray’s hard skin makes straight stitching impossible. It can be done, but a tool like a dremel may need to be used to shave a channel into the skin for sewing to take place. I decided not to do this, since it’s really not a process used very often in this craft. Stitching is always preferable in my opinion, though, there is something to be said about the elegance and simplicity of stingray skin with no stitching to give any visual ‘break’ in the pattern across the whole cardholder.
Stay tuned for more in the future!
