Another Leather Project

[BrokenolMarine]

I thought I would give this a try, it didn't turn out too bad, but I need to go bigger if I want the logo guy to turn out better. I scanned the bumper sticker and .... then traced the scan.

00a.jpg (94.62 KiB) Viewed 3523 times

Once that was done, I used a pencil to transfer my pattern to the wet leather. (Called "cased" leather.) I transferred everything but the circles around the logo. THOSE I drew with a compass to get them as perfect as I could.

01a.jpg (182.58 KiB) Viewed 3523 times

Once the pattern was transferred, as carefully as I could, cut them in with my swivel knife. Then cut in a border after laying it out with the compass, and stamped a rope pattern.

03a.jpg (228.2 KiB) Viewed 3523 times

Because of the Henry Colors, I decided to put an orange wash in the background of the logo. I didn't want to paint it however. So I put one DROP of orange paint on my plastic ice cream bucket top I use as a pallet, then spritzed it with water. I mixed it with the brush, thinned it to my liking and painted the background with this thin orange wash. A second coat gave me the tint I wanted.

04a.jpg (184.14 KiB) Viewed 3523 times

Once the wash dried, I stained the piece with the medium brown dye and let it dry for a few minutes then treated it with Mink Oil. I allowed this to dry for several hours.

05a.jpg (237.7 KiB) Viewed 3523 times

I came back in after that dry time and antiqued this piece. I will allow it to dry overnight and see how it looks in the morning. It's a first attempt. I think I need a bigger format to make the logo work for tooling. OR, a clearer start to trace.

06a.jpg (225.52 KiB) Viewed 3523 times

Watch this space, I might give 'er another go.

** Yes, I know it ended up just a bit crooked. It's practice. My "Henry" guy looks like a zombie.

[BrokenolMarine]

The more I look at it, the more improvements I see for the NEXT one. If anyone has a "sharper image" available, I would be grateful if you would share.
Practice makes perfect, and all I have is time.

[Sir Henry]

I thought it turned out great. Good idea with the Orange as it adds color and contrast.

[RetiredSeabee]

Looking good, getting detail on a face that small has to be difficult. He’s lucky to look like a zombie.
Maybe just letting the face be a silhouette would work better. Or work with much smaller tools.
But hey it is much better than I could do. Henry dude would just be a stick figure.

[BrokenolMarine]

I'll give er another shot. I really like the way the rope border turned out. Would a barbed wire border be better?

[daytime dave]

That is awesome! Great job marine!

[markiver54]

Looks great! I think the rope border is perfect. It goes very well with th logo.

[BrokenolMarine]

AS promised, I am giving it another shot. I remembered my backlit tracing board and dug it out to start this process. I printed a slightly larger image, and taped the tracing medium down to the paper and placed them on the screen for tracing. Slow and steady wins the race.

2a c.jpg (161.81 KiB) Viewed 3464 times

I took my time and made sure each line was true to the original Henry Image. As you can see, even this just gives you a HINT of what the image should be. A lot will depend on the way I shade and stamp the leather. Could be another coaster.

2b c.jpg (147.7 KiB) Viewed 3464 times

I hope to begin working on the new leather project tomorrow, and am excited to see if I can bring this one to life.

Watch this space if you are interested. DON'T click here if it bores you, as this will be boring as all get out in that case.

[Hatchdog]

Boring HA! The only boring would be if I tried to do what you are accomplishing. I don’t have the patience or skill to do what you are doing so that makes following along with you that much more fun. Keep it up and I will keep “clicking”.

[BrokenolMarine]

Out in the shop this afternoon for an hour or so, and transferred the stencil to the new leather. This time I found an 8 ounce piece. (Heavy leather, like holster grade.) I cut it 7-1/2" by 13" so you'll have an idea how much bigger the new stencil is. I took my time and was as careful in the transfer as I was in the tracing. I also used the compass for the border of the logo as I did before.

2c.jpg (143.7 KiB) Viewed 3428 times

A closer look at the logo, now that it's cut in. This let's us see the details of the logo in the outline. You can "see" it's a cowboy, a hint of a cowboy, but the effect of the cowboy will depend a lot on the shading brought out by the carving and stamping in the leather. Wish me luck here.

2e.jpg (175.98 KiB) Viewed 3428 times

I was very careful as well in outlining the border here. This time, rather than square corners, I rounded them, as if they were laid out with a lariat.
I hope it looks good once it's tooled in with the rope effect. We'll soon see.

2f.jpg (177.91 KiB) Viewed 3428 times

I may not get back out tonight, we had a busy day on the farm. Working on the calving pasture. We need to wean the calves off mom before they bring her too far down. Everything is getting so expensive, we can't afford to put up barbed wire to do it, so it will be electric.

05.jpg (288.69 KiB) Viewed 3428 times

We didn't set those posts today. We did those yesterday, but it wasn't too bad, we used the tractor to set them, pushing them down with the bucket. With one holding and one running the tractor we set 25 in just over an hour. The fence was run in two. We'll have power to it in a day or so, waiting on a couple things from Amazon. The calves will have a half acre and access to the barn, but not to mom. She can recover and Tina will be back to milking every day.

[BrokenolMarine]

That 1/2 acre just fences in a corner of the existing pasture, fenced with barbed wire. It has sections that will need attention this year. Fence maintenance. Sheesh.

[dave77]

We didn't set those posts today. We did those yesterday, but it wasn't too bad, we used the tractor to set them, pushing them down with the bucket. With one holding and one running the tractor we set 25 in just over an hour. The fence was run in two. We'll have power to it in a day or so, waiting on a couple things from Amazon. The calves will have a half acre and access to the barn, but not to mom. She can recover and Tina will be back to milking every day.

Good idea using your tractor to set the posts, it's hard work using a post driver. I've found with electric fence you can't have too much ground. I originally had 3-8 foot ground rods spaced about 15 feet apart. Since enclosing one side of my pasture with field fence I just attached the ground wire to it so every fence post is a ground. I do need to get the weed eater out and and knock down the weeds and grass on the electric side. The goats actually prefer some weeds and other vegetation (Cottonwood leaves are their favorite) to grass so weeds on the other side of the fence can be very tempting.

Don't know about cows but when we weaned Ruby and Heather (horses) from their moms they both managed to get over or through the fence the first night and went down the road about a ½ mile to where their moms were. We had to take them to a friends place quite far away, he also had a very secure paddock.

[BrokenolMarine]

I don't know about the cows... they are pretty stupid. We haven't connected the electricity yet since we are waiting for a couple things from Amazon. The young steer walked right thru the tape to get to the pecan orchard. Sister followed. I want to be there watching when they try it when the fence is charged. If they aren't deterred with the 2 mile charger on the 1/2 acre fence, we'll step up to a bigger one. I remember when we put the pup in her little small electric fenced play area, to keep the bad things out. I was sitting up one morning about 2 am watching out the back window as a fox creeped up on the back yard ... sneak sneak sneak... freeze, watch. sneak sneak sneak... freeze, watch. It's about forty yards from the edge of the woods to the fence line, and about eighty to a hundred to the back of the house. Sneak sneak sneak and his nose touched the fence. I had been holding my breath. He LEPT into the air and twisted 180 degrees, landing for a quarter second and made three bounds and was back in the woods. He might still be running and it's been about three years.

I swear I saw a fox outline hanging in the air in red hair.... like the roadrunner cartoons.


We had a ground on each end of the fence and a good charger. Didn't want something stealing the little dog when she was outside playing.

[BrokenolMarine]

Got back out to the shop to work on the project this afternoon. Raining all day, nothing else to do. I cut in the lettering on the HENRY, and the border for the logo... SLOWLY and carefully not to ruin the arc. Then I cut in the border around the edges where the "rope' will go. Looks good.

2g.jpg (202.4 KiB) Viewed 2487 times

I began the stamping and shading. This time I was negative stamping, stamping the background to bring UP the foreground. I used the color sample to know which areas to stamp back for accent. LOTS of black. I have the overnight to think this over. Do I do the orange wash again? I'm thinking yes, but a lighter wash. Just a touch. I can also do a black wash to accent the "black" areas. I plan to finish this in a natural oil, no stain. We'll see how that works.

2h.jpg (192.02 KiB) Viewed 2487 times

I'm thinking the rope border works well.

[markiver54]

I agree! I like the rope border.

[BrokenolMarine]

A couple hours this evening in the shop. Paint accents done. I am not ashamed to say my butt was a bit puckered. A slip, paint in the wrong place and I would have been starting over, or rethinking how this thing would have been finished. You can't remove paint as far as I know. There are some MINOR slips, but no drips or dribbles like on some other practice pieces I just turned around and tossed.

2i.jpg (207.17 KiB) Viewed 2477 times

I'll let this paint dry overnight and then apply a natural clear finish, or maybe a yellow dye, then a finish. I want to try a watco oil finish, but I have yet to apply watco oil over painted leather. I might have to paint a sample and try it FIRST... I would if I tried it here and all the paint ran.

I was going to wash the rope, but when I mixed the yellow wash, I couldn't get a tint I liked... so... nope.

[markiver54]

Looks excellent!
Better to hold back on the rope for now. You can always think about it more, but can't reverse something already done.
I can see already that it's going to look great!! HRA might want to buy it from you!

[bikeridertim]

That looks fabulous!!!

[Hatchdog]

Looking great, can’t wait to see the finished product. No, yes I can wait, remember slow it fast!

Loved the Fox story, I can just see that outline in thin air. What a treat to get to witness that event.

[BrokenolMarine]

Drove an hour to Sulfer OK to the dentist this morning. It was a consult with a new dentist. Nice visit. I am looking forward to working with the office. I drove an hour and a half when I was in VA to see the dentist at the Veteran's Hospital in Richmond. I liked him a lot. He retired just before I left.

Back in the shop this afternoon. I had snuck out last night just before bed and painted a test sample to check the staying power of the paint against the Watco Natural Oil. I cut a rope pattern in the sample pattern this afternoon before testing, just because.

2j.jpg (191.51 KiB) Viewed 2460 times

Sample paint was stable, even when I rubbed off the oil. Then I thought, I should have tried dying the rope with yellow dye rather than painting. Duh.. So, I cut a sample rope pattern again, and dyed it yellow, then coated IT with watco to see how IT looked. I was pleased as punch with the look ...

2k.jpg (229.99 KiB) Viewed 2460 times

... you know that meant I had to CAREFULLY stain the rope border on the piece before applying the Watco oil. Slowly I worked my way around the border, inch by inch, ridge by ridge in the border, the pucker factor was high. I got 'er done. Larry the Cable Guy would have been proud.

2l.jpg (196.76 KiB) Viewed 2460 times

It was time. I applied a good coat of Watco and let it soak in. There were a couple spots along the edge of the leather that didn't darken, but I have a solution in mind. They could have been caused by several things that I know I can avoid in the future, or they could be leather defects. Still looks pretty darn good. I have a plan or three for this piece. Don't guess I have to burn it.

2m.jpg (220.05 KiB) Viewed 2460 times

So, guess we aren't quite finished yet. Almost, but not quite.