Roughly a decade later we moved to a new home with a large workshop & plenty of room for my old woodworking tools, as well as a second-hand laser cutter! We have big plans for this machine. We’ve already started offering acrylic templates of our holster patterns and belt slot templates. Logan (my son) even made our 2018 Christmas ornament with it!

I’m still learning all the settings and exploring the capabilities of this machine and will be the first to admit I’m by no means an expert with this thing! That being said, I wanted to create a video showing my process of coming up with the initial (very simple) design of a plywood phone stand. The video shows the initial sketch, modeling it in SketchUp (not really a necessity for such a simple design), refining and adding an engraving design in Adobe Illustrator (click here to download the vector artwork), then engraving & cutting on the laser cutter. The mandala vector engraving design is from Vecteezy.

I hope you enjoy watching these videos as much as I enjoy creating them.

Take care,
Eric Adams

Please note that this video is not intended to be a teaching video, as I’ve added very little instructional text over the video. This is mainly intended to be a demonstration of my process. I intend to produce instructional videos of specific steps as time and necessity arises, as there’s already loads of great videos on YouTube explaining the various steps in more detail.

Please note that this video is not intended to be a teaching video, as I’ve not added any instructional text or voice-over audio. This is purely a demonstration of my process. I intend to produce instructional videos of specific steps as time and necessity arises, as there’s already loads of great videos on YouTube explaining the various steps in more detail.

https://www.adamsleatherworks.com/premium-tutorial-videos/

Basically, I begin by sanding the edges flush on my drill press. I use small sanding drums I picked up at the local hardware store. Once flush, I dampen the edges (and faces too, since I hammer my stitches flat at this point), then bevel the edges. If necessary, I quickly dampen the edges again, then sand the edges (in one direction) with 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around a foam sanding pad (which helps the sandpaper to conform to the shape of the edge). You should be able to tell when you’ve sanded all the edges as they’ll already begin to look more smooth.

From here, I move to 400 grit Wet/Dry sandpaper and I sand in both directions (left, right, and even diagonally). Keep rotating to fresh pieces of sandpaper so the grit doesn’t get clogged up. One sheet of sandpaper should last a very long time – at least a dozen items. I think one sheet probably handled 50+ holster related items. When you’re done sanding, rinse the paper off and let it dry to use on another project.

Your edges should now be smooth enough to take dye very easily. I like to “cut in” my edges with a permanent marker. This helps get nice, clean black edges. Once the edges are cut in, I fill in the rest of the edge with a wool dauber. The marker doesn’t penetrate very deeply, or I’d use it on the entire edge. Be very careful in this step, as the dye can very easily get on your fingers and transfer to your piece. I will usually dye one half of my piece, then move onto another item while the dye dries – in assembly line fashion.

Once the dye has completely dried, I dampen the edge again and apply a 50/50 mixture of beeswax and paraffin to the edge, then heat burnish the edge with my wooden burnisher (from Pro Edge Burnishers). I don’t know off-hand what speed my drill press is running at, but it’s running fast enough to build up heat in the leather, but not so fast that it instantly burns the leather.

Buff the edge with a canvas cloth to remove the excess wax, polish the edge, and remove any excess pigment from the surface. If necessary, touch up any spots by either repeating the previous step, or with your hand burnisher. If any areas on the edge are showing un-dyed leather, I find the permanent marker works best at this point. Then buff the spot and the color should blend right in with its surrounding.

That pretty much sums it up!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/LeodisLeather

http://ianatkinson.net/leather/videos.htm

Anyway, I made a change to my site to remove the 60 minute hold on orders. If you placed an order on my site and payment was indeed processed and deposited into my PayPal account, please, PLEASE contact me and I will (after confirmation) send your pattern to you as soon as possible and manually mark your order as complete so you’ll have access to the relevant instruction guide.

My sincere apologies for not catching this earlier.

Take care,

Eric Adams

http://www.proedgeburnishers.com/holster-patterns.html