Leathercraft Article and Videos by Bruce Cheaney
Leather Carving Tutorial
This leather carving tutorial shows you how to freehand draw your own oak leaf and acorn pattern onto a piece of Hermann Oak saddle skirting with step by step details with Bruce Cheaney. This is something you can have fun as well as hone your skills as a leather crafter and learn how to fill a space with a leather design.
The tools used for this leather carving tutorial are a pair of C.S. Osborne 6″ dividers for marking the border and a vintage saddlers awl for scratching and drawing the design onto leather.
This leathercraft tutorial shows you how to cut in your hand drawn oak leaf and acorn pattern with a Barry King swivel knife. The leather for this leather carving tutorial is Hermann Oak Leather tanned in St. Louis Missouri and it is a very fine tooling leather.
Carving leather for fun and practice is a great way to hone your leather carving skills.
The piece of leather for this demonstration measures 2″ X 5 1/2″ and has been cased for a short period of time and is now ready for the design to be cut in. The swivel knife I am using has a 1/4″ hollow ground straight blade and is sharp and ready to cut the design.
Leather Carving Exercise
This carving exercise started off by cutting in the border and then lightly scratching a design of two oak leaves and two acorns within that border next I took my Barry King swivel knife with the 1/4″ hollow ground blade and cut the oak leaves and acorns into the Hermann Oak saddle skirting. Next I beveled around the leaves and acorns with Craftool B802 and B803 bevelers and then bruised the oak leaves with a older Craftool number P221. The background work was done with a Craftool 888 and then a few decorative swivel knife cuts were put onto the oak leaves and acorns to finish up the piece.
Bruce Cheaney
Gainesville, Texas. USA