Tools, Cutting, and Skiving

Leathercraft suppliers sell hundreds of tools, but you need very few to start. Tandy Leather’s beginner list is a good one ¹.

The starter kit

• A sharp knife or rotary cutter, a metal ruler or straightedge, and a cutting mat for clean, straight cuts. Plastic rulers don’t survive a knife ¹.
• A strap cutter for long, even strips for belts, straps, and handles ¹.
• A wing divider (or stitching groover) to mark a stitch line parallel to the edge ¹.
• Stitching chisels to punch evenly spaced holes, and an awl to make or enlarge holes ¹.
• Harness needles, blunt needles made for leather, and waxed thread ¹.
• A non-metal mallet, so you don’t damage the tools you strike ¹.
• An edge beveler to round the corners of cut edges, and a burnishing tool to smooth and seal them ¹.

Stamping tools, rivet setters, and specialty gear can come later ¹.

Cutting clean and safe

Lay a paper or cardboard pattern on the grain side, trace it, and cut along a straightedge with the knife held upright. On thick leather, make several light passes rather than one hard one. Tandy’s safety rules are simple: always cut away from your body, and remember that sharp blades are safer than dull ones, because a dull blade needs force and slips. Wear safety glasses when hammering or punching, and protect the table with a mat or scrap board ¹. Keep your knives and bevelers sharp by stropping them often ².

Skiving

Where two pieces overlap, at a fold, a seam, or a strap end turned back on itself, the double thickness makes a lump. Skiving solves it. A 1929 British textbook defines it two ways: beveling an edge by paring it thinner, or splitting a skin horizontally into thinner layers ³. Pare the flesh side of each edge into a gentle taper with a sharp skiving knife, so the overlapped joint is no thicker than one layer; “provided the skiving has been well done,” the old book says of a covered box, the joints “will hardly be visible” ³.

Old advice that still holds

The same 1929 book has two warnings for anyone working damp vegetable-tanned leather ³:

• Never use a steel straightedge on it: the stain it leaves “cannot be removed.” Use a non-steel rule on damp leather, or cut it dry.
• Dampen the whole piece, not a patch: if only a small area is damped, its edges dry and leave a mark.

Try it

Cut a key fob, a strip about 1 inch by 8 inches, from 6–8 oz veg-tan with a knife and straightedge, using several light passes. Then skive one end so it folds back over the other without a lump. It’s Tandy’s suggested first project for practicing cutting and edge work ¹.