In this video, Chuck demonstrates how to add designs to our wet forms to give our projects a unique look. You can quickly and easily make your own wet forms out of leather and pattern sheeting. Try out Chuck's 5-point star, or create your own design with scrap leather or other objects, like spare washers and bolts. The sky's the limit on the creative possibilities!
For a full list of supplies used in this video, visit www.weaverleathersupply.com/c...
0:40 It is time to get creative and if you don't feel like a creative person, I think you're about to surprise yourself. Here’s why I say this, one of the classes I teach at shows is wet forming. Well the first few steps we go over a couple of utility uses like say welts or keepers or pockets. Then we step it up because now we're going to add a design onto our form. We can do it both on the pocket and the flap, really tie a project together. So let's start here. This is our cell case. We've got a good video on this so we're not going to go into great detail on the construction, but what we are going to do, let's form our pocket and a design on that pocket. So we're going to go two ways here. We're going to go with a simple geometric shape, then we're going to create our own shape. Okay right here, simple geometric shape. How many ways could we possibly go with this? We're going to do a five-pointed star. We've got a good video -Shop Tricks 11 shows us how to draw out a five-pointed star. Super easy to do and we can make it any size, but how about a heart or one diamond, multiple diamonds, a steer head. So many ways we can get creative with this, but let's go with the star, get the feel for this.
1:50 Okay, now just some background info. I've created a form here, this is simply scrap leather. It's four ply of eight to nine ounce - now make this depending on the thickness of your phone - but that'll do most phones. Now I've added our pattern sheeting onto the top of this because as we wet this, as we put wet leather on this, our edges are going to soften and round. The pattern sheeting is going to keep that from happening. Now, lifelong mold - not really, but we'll be surprised at how many molds we can get from a simple form like this.
2:21 Okay so our star. Let's do this. Let's take a scrap piece of eight to nine ounce, let's draw out our star whatever size we want. Let's take this, jump over to our main table cut some leather. We're dealing with a relatively small design here but we're just working with a cell case. It's a smaller project, but think of something like a briefcase or saddlebags, purse, bag, pouch. We can create a design that would span the entire flap, so really what I’m saying, so let's fill out our space with our design. Okay so with this we're gonna go with an eight to nine ounce leather. Well I want something that's got a little more thickness to it the thicker our leather on our form, the deeper our mold is gonna be, the better it's gonna stand out. So right here, our pattern sheeting. Now this is not as easy to draw on as i would like so let's do this. Let's take our leather, let's drop in our star, but our first step - and this is going to help us later - let's mark our center point. Okay now let's draw this in with our pen. Okay that looks good. Now our glue, this is our leathercraft cement. This is a great glue, strangely strong, but let's go ahead and glue our pattern sheeting down to our leather. Let's make sure we get glue right out to the tips. There we go, okay let's drop our pattern sheeting on top of that and let's press this down. Okay, we've got a good press, let's give that about five minutes let that glue set.
3:57 We've given this time to dry, so new blade every time, let's move some of this out of our way. Let's take a square and let's do our best to trim this right on the line. Now the pattern sheeting - easy to cut, but again a new blade. Let's make maybe two passes, maybe one more. There we go, good clean cut. Let's do that all the way around. Now one good point, I’m gonna come from my inside out. It's really tough to try to come from the outside in and get a good corner, so let's just take our time and separate a corner just if we need to. Okay we've got that, so now I can see my center point on that. Let's go with relatively small hole because we're just going to use this to line this up if we need to, but let's punch that. There we go.
5:01 Okay, let's step back to our punch table and wet form onto this. We can use the same leathercraft cement to attach our design onto our form. Again, it's a great cement but with our center mark, this bear's mentioning, so right here on my design I’ve come up a little further than half of an inch. I've come up two inches from the bottom line and I’ve dropped in a center mark, so therefore I know exactly where the center of that design is and I can see it now on a star.