Every Man A Cobbler 12; Tools And How Cobblers Re-Make Stuff Part B

[thecapgunkid]

The “Cobbler 12  Part A” post  took  a toy saddlebag and  cut it up to turn it into a viable belt bag that might have served either an 18th Century militia man/ hunter or a modern day variant.
It started off like this;


Re-making, repairing  or re-purposing leather goods is what a Cobbler did for a living.  It’s also what the average Joe did because one consistent theme in Colonial Era sources is the fact that materials  were scarce and often repaired
Now  it’s time to carefully reassemble this pouch.  Here are some of the tools that prove handy.

THE TEMPLATE.   
It is hard to think of a template as a tool rather than a  pattern.  Yet one of the Cordwainers in Williamsburg cited tin templates for  uppers and one of them in Sturbridge Village cited thin wood templates for the same.  I tend to define a template as a pattern I will use more than once, so it requires sturdiness.    “Cobbler 11” showed a wooden form made from a manila folder template.   Here, that template is  used again to downsize this pouch.




I betcha there are several craftsmen on this forum whose exquisite bags are repeated with templates.

THE STRAIGHT OR CLICKING KNIFE
Find a chunk of thick band saw blade and some electricians tape.   Grind, shape and maybe heat  treat the blade into a fine tool with a tapered and fine point.  The short blade is easy to keep razor sharp and the  tape handle can be tailored to fit your hand.     The dull knife will make a rubbing, friction sort of sound.  The sharpened and polished knife, especially on dampened leather, will make a clicking sound.  Hence the name.



THE ACID BRUSH
It’s hard to find a craftsman who doesn’t use acid brushes somewhere or  thinks of it as a  tool.  I have not glued a seam without one for twenty years.  IN fairness, that’s because I don’t make  enough volume to justify one of those combined brush and glue pot thingies that cost a million bucks.



DIVIDERS, WHEELS, PRICKING IRONS, GROOVERS, UGLY PATCHERS  AND  STITCHING CHISELS
If you think that some of the craftsmen on this forum who produce exquisite pieces  without some form of regulating their stitch spacing you are  fooling yourself.

Granted, a primitive, wilderness or First American piece should show a corresponding stitch.  That’s usually done with one needle and shoemakers refer to it as tacking.   You can walk a divider along a seam to mark stitching spots, you can guide it along an  edge to mark an even stitching line and you can measure with it.  Irons, chisels and a variable grooving tool are readily available in any retail craft store




As much as I hate to admit it, one of my favorite tools to enhance stitching has been this awful piece of junk sold on the web as a …”Chinese Cobblers Sewing Machine”.  It will mark stitching so evenly that I trust it over my own eye and years of experience to get the back side of my stitching as even as the front side.  Working with it has caveats.  IT’ll cost up to $100.00.  Unless you work a lot with leather and sew by hand, it will not be worth the expense.  I  stripped it of anything connected to thread.  With the little bottle of pegging awl blades you can get off the web ( shown in the pic) I have been able to discard the needles, grind AND  POLISH pegging awls to fit reliable in the machine.  If  shaped, the awl point  will walk as even a set of holes along your seam line as can be achieved.   Taking off all the stitching apparatus also made cranking this bad boy a lot easier.   I oil the  who-hit-john out of it and have it mounted on a special bench.  All it does is  stab holes, from shoe soles to uppers to hunting pouches



BROKENNOCKS STITCHING PONY

I'm kidding.  Don't search on that.  Broke found ( and posted) a stitching pony at Weaver Leather that sells for $18.00.  It is simple, easy to work with and a good price to value formula.  If you are serious about stitching you almost have to use two needles and a pony.  Tacking ( one needle) has a lot of charm and is very appropriate if your piece is representative of something made in a primitive setting, but it should be remembered that a lot of folks were cobbling a lot of leather back in the day and the two needle approach was very widespread.
This  pony has plenty of length in the base, can be clamped to a bench or seat, has a reliable  tension bar that can be adjusted slightly and has jaws set far enough apart so as to hold most pouch projects.


I always considered edges on cowhide as a big enigma, partly because My Master stressed the importance of finish and partly because it seemed no matter what I did edges always wore too fast.  Most of the originals I saw over time had only remnants of the care and time put into edging .

FOLDERS, WHEELS AND EDGING TOOLS
In “Cobbler Part 11”  I posted a burnishing process for the edge of a cowhide bag, and most leatherworkers I have talked to advised me  they used more than one tool.  Invariably when you work on cowhide you’ll wander into moistened edges and these items;
Fine grit sandpaper on dry edges
An edging tool to trim the corner of the edge
Combining dampened edges  with wax or edging chemicals or dyes
Wood, bone, or denim rubbing tools and vigorous rubbing
Patience and repetition.
I’m partial against the smelly chemicals that produce a glass like edge, so I keep a chunk of beeswax  on hand and use a wooden edging tool made from a piece of trim sold in Home Depot that I cut down;


Almost everybody who taught me something spent more time on their edges that I could because of my inherent lack of patience, so I threw this wood into my rollers ( or even a drill or drill press) and used 220 and 400 grit to get it smooth.  Then I loaded up all the grooves with wax that I refresh a lot when working on and edge.
With moisture I can  get a smooth edge with  a satin  finish, in this case consistent with the wear and patina on this piece;



Once I put the Singer Patcher on the seams of this bag and hand stitched the flap across the top it proved easy to work with on the range.



Well, Sports Fans, now I am about out of airspeed and altitude.  I got nothin’.  Hope these …”Every Man A Cobbler”…posts have helped.  Now I’m gonna shut up and keep an eye out for some of the great work you coyotes have posted here.

Godspeed

Greg Geiger
The Capgun Kid

[Brokennock]

Thank you. I definitely learn something with each of these posts. Haven't been able to apply it all,,,,, yet, but I'm getting there. I'm copying all of these, including some of the helpful responses, to "Word" files and saving them for easy future reference.