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Martin CarswelI
Dec 01, 2020
In General Chat
For when you catch fire, you don’t have to worry about your key holder getting damaged. Do people really fall for this crap marketing? Apparently so.
I saw this ad on Facebook and cringed.  content media
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Martin CarswelI
Jul 14, 2020
In General Chat
I thought you guys might appreciate this. I messaged my croc leather supplier today asking about a certain colour leather and he said he only has one skin left in that colour. He said it might be a bit big, and a little expensive though. He said the croc was 70+ years old and over 5 metres long. He quoted me $10,000 for it. That’s £5,500 or €6,110! For a second I actually thought about it. Haha. Let me know what you would make out of this skin. I’d make a suitcase I’d say. It’d be wide enough to cover it easily!
Beast of a croc.  content media
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Martin CarswelI
Mar 24, 2020
In Share Your Projects
This sheath was a test for myself to really try something different. You do enough knife sheaths and it gets dull and hard to find something new. I decided to make the welt a feature and came up with this design. I'm calling it the 'Carswelt'... haha It's a series of stacked kangaroo leather. Inlay is a saltwater crocodile backstrap, the most difficult of all leathers to inlay neatly. Let me know if you have any questions. I know some of you have seen this on my instagram. If you haven't, I have a few more pics on there. @carswell_leather The knife is made by a friend and one of only two master bladesmiths in Australia, Shawn McIntyre. He made the damascus fitting for the front of the sheath.
My most intricate sheath to date content media
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Martin CarswelI
Oct 22, 2019
In Share Your Projects
Hey everyone, I know a few of you follow me on Instagram and would've already seen these, but I thought I'd share my latest custom sheaths I made last week. I have a knife collector that brings me work regularly typically in the form of custom sheaths. He brought in these two knives from a knife maker in Sydney that are pretty Japanese style, so I came up with this design. It's basically a leather version of a saya, normally made of wood. I did an inlay to look a little like the handle of a katana. So stingray leather cant be skived really, unless you sand it down from the top. but I needed the top intact for the look of the inlay, so I had to recess the leather under the stingray leather in the inverse shape to what I would've skived off the stingray leather. Basically cut a groove and scoop out some leather so the rayskin sits flush with the leather surface. I then split some calf leather down to 0.4 mm and then turned both edges of a strip to make a 12.5 mm wide strip with no visible cut edge. these were then twisted and glued into place. I then cut out the inlay window, and sewed that over the top. I stitched it all with 0.4mm cabled polyester thread from Wuta. The poly for strength, cabled for the looks. 3.0mm stitching was the finest I've ever done on a sheath. Because I do all of my sheaths with an awl, it was a challenge to get every stitch nice and straight through 11mm of leather. I managed to do ok, but there were a couple of stitches on the rear that would've been closer to 2.0 than 3.0. but oh well. My elbows are sore from the effort of burnishing the edges, but I think these sheaths turned out ok. There's some videos on my insta if you want to see more of them. Here's a link. https://www.instagram.com/p/B3vzxVCA2sU/?utm_source=ig_web_options_share_sheet Thanks for looking! Martin
Custom sheaths I made last week content media
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Martin CarswelI
Aug 05, 2019
In General Chat
I made this quick video today not only because I was curious, but because there may be some people on here that find this stuff interesting. I break down linen and ramie thread, literally, so that we can compare fibre length. If you don't have time to watch it, basically, the linen thread has an average fibre length of 25-35 mm with the longest I found being 65 mm and the Ramie has an average thread length of 120 mm and the longest I found was 165 mm. That doesn't necessarily mean ramie is better, as the cabling of the lin cable is more effective and advanced, with three cores comprising two tightly wound cores in each of those cores. The ramie on the other hand has three cores but each core was less tightly wound and only the one core.
Lin Cable vs Ramie comparison video content media
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Martin CarswelI
Jul 28, 2019
In Say Hello Before Posting
Hi Everyone, I've had my leather business up and running full time for 18 months or so, and I've been doing leathercraft for around seven years. I have done some training in traditional Japanese style leatherwork in Hong Kong. Since then I've tried to incorporate more French/European techniques into my work. Briefcases are my favourite thing to make. In the future I'd love to make some attache cases or trunks, and maybe some Gladstone or Dulles bags. I'll see if I can attach some pictures of my briefcases. I've already posted my Instagram name on the relevant thread, but here it is again. @carswell_leather Thanks for looking, Martin Carswell (Carswell Leathergoods)
Hello from Melbourne, Australia content media
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Martin CarswelI

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