A new hobby

Well I haven't been around in a long time.  Many reasons, haven't been knitting, husband's health, my arthritis, been busy, etc. etc.  You know how it goes.

Trouble with me it is either a famine of a feast so this will be a looooong post.  So much to write about.

During the past few months we have come up with a hobby that we can do together.  My knitting involves me being off alone in my knitting room for hours at a time.  Added to that, my knitting room is upstairs and stairs are a problem for me.  So, sadly,  knitting has taken a back burner for now.  Usually my hips and knees get better during the hotter dryer weather so will likely get back to it when the rain stops here!  It has been a very wet year so far and isn't showing any signs of slowing down.

My husband is a very creative person but his illness has curbed his big project abilities so we decided to look for something we could do that would be small project like. That lead us to a wonderful store in Springfield, MO.  "The Springfield Leather Company"

Who knew there were so many things you could do with leather!

That lead us to many hours of internet research for ideas and tool requirements etc.

My husband's stepfather had a saddle shop so my husband was familiar with leather.  We found a few leather tools that my husband had kept from that era and we bought some more from ebay.  Many everyday tools can be utilised also so we now have a basic set of leather tools.

One of my ebay purchases had six wooden mallets.  Hey! what can I say,  they were really cheap and there were other tools included. What does one do with six mallets?  well, I can tell you they aren't going to waste.  I am down to only two spare right now.  Also they were 'buy it now'. So much less stress than bidding!

We have his and her mallets in the workshop, I have one I keep in my little toolbox that I carry back and forth to the shop and one we transformed into a tooling maul.

I saw someone doing leatherwork at a craft show using one of these mauls for stamping leather to decorate it.  I thought it would be a useful addition but when we researched it online they are $80!!!!!  That was way out of our budget!  I asked my husband if we should sacrifice one of our wooden mallets and see if we could make one.  Between us we came up with the way to do it.  My husband did the bulk of the work.

So we started off with one plain old wooden mallet.  We cut off the head.  We found a big old screw and washer in the shop and screwed the head back on lengthways.

 

Then I stitched up the piece of leather we cut to encase the head.  We cut another piece of leather to shape the handle.

 

My husband attached the shaping to the handle.

Then he covered the handle with leather.

We cut it down to size and found a little wooden wheel that I stained and varnished and he attached it to the end.

Also, to harden the leather we boiled it for about 15 seconds.  The hardening worked well but the leather shrank a little.  It is still fully functional though.  The coaster is one I made.  Not bad for a first attempt eh?

 

One thing  I can't get right yet (and believe me I've practiced) is getting the lettering straight.  Guess I need to keep on trying!

My husband is such a sweetheart.  I told him that the washer was yukky looking as it was a recycled one and spoiled the photos so he went and sanded it for me.

As you can see it has been well used already.