/diy/ - Do It Yourself

When the first pieces were done cooking and cooling the next stage is to condition the edges of the leather. I applies a little gum tragacanth/tracaganth/whatever, see the picture, to the edges of the leather carefully. It's not dangerous but I've found out to my cost before that it likes to reject the oil dye used later on. Once the edge is coated then using a slicking wheel the edges are rubbed to build up friction heat, until the leather fibers mash together and form a smooth shiny edge. Because this leather is so thick, my slicking wheel didn't properly get all the leather on the edge. To fix this I used the smooth handle of my edge beveler to smoth out any areas the wheel missed.

Here's a pic of the stuff I used, including the correct spelling of the gum. It's worth mentioning here that I get most my leather from LePrevo leathers in the uk, but the tools I have were bought from Tandy leather, available in the UK and USA.