I've been trying to make some more generic but customizable projects that aren't egregiously time consuming to make, so I took the bottom half of the solid leather box project and decided on its own when made rather shallow it would be a desk tray. After taking a ride on the struggle bus when attempting to cut the 45 degree angles via Phil's method, I decided to use some math, the edge of my granite slab as an index, and a skiving style approach to cut those 45's and was met with a significantly higher success rate.
Also I ordered a die cutter in the shape of the Helldivers 2 skull, a video game I have played absolutely too much of, and used an arbor press to punch the skull out of yellow to give it some nice design elements. Challenge 2: A 1 ton arbor press does not do well with a 9sq inch/58sq cm die cutter. It gets it done, just not well.
The tray structure is ChahinLeather I got through Weaver Leather. Single 12/13oz shoulders were (are) cheap, so I figured I'd order some to chop up and like most times I buy something cheap, I have some regrets. The backside of it is impossible to work nicely, and instead of sanding smooth I find it really just shreds, even starting at 320 grit. When I make more (as long as I'm using up this Chahin) I'm going to heavily taper the edges as it approaches the top and line it with something a bit more refined.
The die cut design in the tray is two different leathers, the black is 1.2mm Buttero, and the Yellow is 1.2mm La Bretanga's Lemon Pecos. I was trying to make some coasters out of these two and the die cutter but discovered when you get them wet, the black slowly bleeds into the yellow. I probably need to apply resolene to the edges of the lighter color to avoid this but the coasters already take too long to make to be anything other than personal coaster projects. I found out the best way to inlay the whole design into the tray requires measuring the tray once assembled and making final fractional trims on the panel you're laying in. I have another tray with a tooled inlay where I tried to make the tray the size of the tooled piece, and the fit does not look nearly as clean or professional.
And of course, I managed to dent the piece in several places with a can before getting nice photographs. Whoops!
