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Books on Leather Crafts

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pronghorn

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I would like to start making my own gear, and was wondering if there is any good "how to" books on crafting your own leather gear. I would like to make my own leggings, hunting pouch and other such items.
 
Pronghorn there are a ton of books out there that can show ya how to work with leather. 99% of what you will do is really pretty simple, mostly common sense n thinking ahead towards the next step.Look around at your local library n then ask them if they have interlibrary lending, that way they should have a list of all the books they can get their hands on n you can take your pick of whats available.Also here on the web there are many sites that show how to stitch leather together as well as dyeing n finishing it, hunt around a bit n I'll bet ya find most of what yer looking for.Hope this helps some YMHS Birdman
 
I bet that almost everyone who owns or has read Recreating the 18th Century Hunting Pouch by T.C. Albert will agree with me: It's the best single source. The step-by-step instructions are superbly illustrated, and there are lots of examples of bags. Best for you, the things you learn about leather and techniques will be useful for lots more than bags.
 
since you said you are "starting out"tandy leather sells a small book called the art of hand sewing leather it shows how to saddle stitch and has other helpful hints in it, might be worth a look. Duane
 
A great book to find is Leather Braiding by Bruce Grant.
It's mostly about fancy braids with factory made flat lacing, but shows a lot of ways to make leather buttons and such and different lacing stitches to join parts of leather.
Which is applicable to sewing stuff together with sinew or other hand cut laces.
Another old favorite of mine from when I was a kid is Wildwood Wisdom by Ellsworth Yeager.
It's an old book that originally came out in 1945, but just has a lot of cool old fashioned stuff in it.
I used to do a lot of saddle and harness repair, seems like I had a book that showed a lot about the right way to do good double needle stitching, building things like sewing horses, etc. I have a ton of books stored away, I'll dig through them and see if I still have that book.
Unless a frontiersman had been around saddle or harness making it's doubtful they would have taken the time or had the stuff to do real complicated stitching.
They probably would have done their sewing with awls and whatever they had for lacing material.
At least for the stuff they were making with leather and rawhide.
 
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