I've been working on my bifold wallets for the past month to try and achieve the following build: - 6/8 Card slots - Use of softer chrome tanned leather + edge paint - Fully lined with leather/fabric - Slimness (~< 3.0mm thickness MAX) These might sound like silly standards to uphold especially for a beginner like myself but I've always had a strong fantasy of creating this perfect elegant dream bifold wallet when I started leathercraft 😉. After doing tons of homework and "prototype" wallets I'm pretty comfortable up the the point in how I make and line the interior and assemble the card slots. I mostly struggle when it comes to make the stitching holes for all the combined layers. In order to keep the edges thin I usually end up having a deep slope towards the edges caused by thinning out different layers within the wallet. This makes it difficult to make my stitching holes parallel without proper use of an awl which I'm not too comfortable with at the moment. Is the solution here to keep my build flatter overall or is this just unavoidable and I need to apply stitching holes better with the use of an awl? You can see the big curve towards the edge of the pockets in the pictures and the awkward stitching as a result of the poor stitching holes. I'm also struggling with gluing components perfectly. I feel like half the battle with bifolds is precise cutting and bonding. Is there some magic technique or jig that people use for this?

2nd from the left. Really like the pattern. Looks like it has quite a tight grain from what I can see.

Finished the lizzie handbag course - Thanks @Leathercraft Masterclass! This is my first bag or anything with a gusset. I've never made anything bigger than a wallet so far so this was quite fun. Excited to learn and make more

What causes these lines when skiving? Recently noticed my bell skiver leaves more emphasized lines from each pass. This is soft french goat skin that started at 1.3mm~ skived down to around 0.8mm-0.6mm.

Been grinding restless on watch straps the past 2 weeks and I've finally made something I'm happy with. No bad cuts, no bad stitches, edges are satisfactory, no icky stuff running on the side, hugs the lugs (yay!) :) and I quite like the look of the caviar. Materials used: Exterior is calfskin caviar 1.0mm Velodon Reinforcement/Non stretch tape reinforcement on overlaps Zermatt calf lining 0.8mm 1.0mm veg tan filler I'm still very new to the craft but I'm very satisfied with the improvements - here's my takeaways and greatest learning from all my failures in the last 2 weeks: - Let the glue dry!! - Let the edge paint dry!! - Overlap a ton of teeth when punching holes with pricking iron - I overlapped 4-5 teeth on an 8 teeth iron. I think this was the single greatest change I made in improving my stitching and alignment of my stitching holes. - Take your time especially on the simpler things. I learned that the smallest of mistakes in the beginning would really trickle down and affect every process to the final result. I really learned to enjoy each step of the process no matter how repetitive things got - you really have to be a perfectionist with this craft or at least with tinier projects like watch straps. - Learn your leather!!

Hi guys, I started learning about leathercrafting a month ago with the main goal of creating high quality leather straps for my watches. This is my first project and I'm very pleased with the results. Here to share my thoughts and hopefully gain some valuable knowledge and advice for my next one which I plan to start right away! The strap is made using a green goatskin for the top and tanned goatskin for the lining. I definitely got a little lazy and started rushing towards the end on the stitching and making the keepers. Aside from my horrendous knife skills I think some of my biggest difficulties were: 1. Stitching - Just so many errors here. Kept splitting the thread, I think I had to use 4-5 threads for this (Philip uses 2 in the video). Didn't backstitch on one of the sides. 2. Pricking - maybe my lighting is terrible but I had a hard time using the line made by my wing divider to guide me to a straight and consistent line for pricking. I caught myself several times during this phase where I went off the line. Also noticed that my holes were not aligned from each side which caused some trouble when it came to gluing down the buckle flap on the lining (holes didn't match well) 3. Skiving - I struggled with this throughout the project but started getting the hang of it. I generally thought I didn't have to be as precise with my surfaces for the parts I needed to skive but in the end it made quite a difference on the lining side. 4. Edge painting - I had no idea what I was doing here, I used an edge paint roller I bought from amazon and just painted the edges. You can definitely see it bleeding over the sides and some finger marks here and there on the actual strap xD. 5. Keeping my work station clean - I'm not the cleanest guy, but I recognize and value that a clean workspace = cleaner product..but boy was it difficult to keep a clean work area. Just so many tools and scrap pieces of leather flying everywhere. Overall, I was a harsh critic to my initial work but upon fitting it on a watch and wearing it, didn't look too bad at all and I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process! Thanks for reading!