[0:00]What's going on, you guys? Welcome back to the channel. One of the questions I get most often is which leather should I use for which projects?
[0:07]So today we're going to talk all about leather, what you need for your next project. Let's get started.
[0:18]Okay, guys, getting into the leather craft can be a little bit intimidating just because there are so many different options with leather, so many different qualities and colors and types.
[0:27]It can be kind of confusing. So today we're going to try and demystify a lot of these terms, and that's what we're going to do first is define all of the terms when we're looking for leather.
[0:36]So first, we want to talk about quality. When we talk about quality, we're talking about what section of the leather that we're using.
[0:46]Because believe it or not, all leather comes in pretty thick hides and then it's split down into different layers, and those layers are sold at different price points because they have different qualities to them.
[0:57]And based off of the different layers, they're more expensive, they last longer, et cetera.
[1:01]So there are essentially three qualities of leather that you really want to pay attention to.
[1:06]We have full grain, we have top grain, and we have genuine.
[1:10]A lot of people think that genuine leather just means real leather, but that's not actually the case. It's actually a quality of leather.
[1:19]And most of us leather crafters tend not to use genuine leather. It's usually used in mass production because it's much less expensive.
[1:25]You can make genuine leather look really good, but when we're doing leather craft, we essentially just want to work with full grain leather.
[1:31]Full grain leather is the very top layer of the hide. It comes with imperfections like bug bites and scars.
[1:38]And this is the reason a lot of luxury brands will actually use top grain leather because they want to buff out all those imperfections and then make it look really uniform.
[1:47]But if you're like me, and you like character, and you want to know what's quality, I want to see those little bits of imperfections here and there because it just adds to the natural feel of that product.
[2:00]If you wanted something completely uniform, you can go to any cheap department store and pick up a bag for 30 bucks that looks like real leather, looks very uniform, but that's not what we're after.
[2:13]All right guys, so that's quality of leather. Now we're going to talk about tannage.
[2:19]Now, with tannage, you really only need to consider two things. There's vegetable tanned and there's synthetically tanned leather.
[2:26]And most of the time, synthetically tanned leather, they use something called chromium. So you'll see chrome tanned versus veg tan.
[2:34]Now, here at Open Sea leather, we only use vegetable tanned leather almost exclusively. I've messed around with chrome tan a couple of times, but I really don't like it for a couple of reasons.
[2:42]The reasons why vegetable tanned is so much more expensive is because it takes 28 times as long to produce.
[2:48]So vegetable tanned leather is used using tannins that occur naturally in oak barks and leaves and just natural occurring tannins.
[3:00]And because those tannins act slower, it takes a lot longer for these to tan inside of a drum.
[3:07]But they're all natural, they're non-toxic, they create a more durable, long-lasting product, they patina better.
[3:10]I definitely feel like vegetable tan leather is the only way to go if you're a if you're a leather crafter.
[3:17]Chrome tan definitely has its uses. Again, more for the industrial production of leather goods.
[3:24]I have an example of it here. This is a popular leather crafter leather. It's called crazy horse.
[3:28]And here on the screen, you can see a cross-section of that, and you can see that thin white line.
[3:36]That's how you know it's chrome tan. Now, not all chrome tan leather is going to have that line because some chrome tan leather is struck through, which is just means it's dyed all the way through.
[3:43]Um, but this one you can see on the screen is not dyed all the way through. That thin blue line is actually what the hide looks like after it's chrome tan, but before it's dyed.
[3:52]So when you're selecting your leathers, always look for vegetable tanned leather.
[3:57]Okay, so we talked for a second about dyeing. For example, struck through versus not struck through.
[4:02]Again, struck through is when it's dyed all the way through the hide. I prefer that. But a lot of thicker leathers, like belt leathers, won't have dye all the way through.
[4:10]I just think it looks better. You can always dye your edges, but I tend tend to look for leathers that are struck through.
[4:16]I also look for something called aniline dyed leather. So aniline dyed is when it's a clear or transparent dye.
[4:24]Think of like a wood finish that you can still see all of the grain. You don't want to cover that up.
[4:29]Like the example of a painted board versus like a stained board. Obviously, the stained board in my opinion looks much better.
[4:36]So this is aniline dyed. You can still see all of the grain and all of the structure of the leather.
[4:42]And something like this is actually pigmented because you can't really get a white transparent dye.
[4:49]So you can see it's got some pigment in it. That pigment tends to wear off, and you can get peeling.
[4:53]I'm sure you've all experienced that with a cheap couch. It starts to peel. That's because, well, that's for a lot of reasons, but one of it is has a thin layer of paint on it.
[5:01]This is very popular with like sneakers. They'll always paint their leather, and it's a great way to hide imperfections.
[5:05]But as leather crafters, we tend not to use pigmented leathers, although they have their place. Um, I just tend not to use them.
[5:11]So when you're looking for leather, look for aniline dyed, look for full grain, look for struck through. We're just checking off all the boxes.
[5:19]Obviously, since we're talking about leather, we got to shout out my boys, Saint Crispin, Saint Crispinian, the patron Saints of leather craft and shoemaking.
[5:28]So, get up to them.
[5:34]Okay, guys, the next thing we're going to talk about is weight. Now, weight is an interesting term because when we're talking about weight, we're talking about the thickness of the leather.
[5:42]And you think, why are they talking about weight? Why are they measuring this in ounces?
[5:46]It comes from the, like, the textile industry doing denim. So there really isn't any correspondence to like a square foot of leather equals a certain amount of ounces.
[5:56]It's not like that. It's just a system they used here in America. We've messed up all of our measuring systems. It's just the way it is. You just got to deal with it.
[6:04]But there's conversion charts all over the internet for millimeters to ounces, or even inches to ounces.
[6:08]But generally speaking, we're going to be talking about ounces when we talk about leather. So there is a whole range of thicknesses, and they all have their own application.
[6:17]You have from like one ounce all the way up to like 15, 16, something like this.
[6:26]We showed you the cross-section of this earlier when we're talking about the different layers of grain.
[6:30]Something like this would be used for like insole making, where you're making shoes and boots, or saddle, they'll use something super thick like this.
[6:36]And then you have all the way down to like one ounce where you're going to line things or do like really fine pockets like on a bifold.
[6:43]We're going to get into what kind of weight you want to use when we talk about each one of our products, but just know that the ounces is just talking about how thick the leather is.
[6:52]And that's going to help you and once you start working with stuff, you'll know exactly which weight or thickness you want to use for each product.
[7:00]The next thing we want to talk about is temper. Temper just means how rigid the leather is or how soft it feels in your hand.
[7:06]And again, there's no right or wrong answer for which type of leather or which temper to use with which project, but they're going to produce vastly different end products.
[7:16]So you have from firm to medium to soft, and everywhere in between. This is very subjective.
[7:22]So you're kind of relying on the tannery to, you know, use their judgment as to what soft and what's firm and what's medium.
[7:29]But I have a little trick I'm going to show you. It's called the flop test. Right out of Dave Portnoy's pizza review handbook, I think it applies to leather.
[7:37]Okay. So when you're doing the flop test, obviously, the thickness of the leather is going to change how rigid it is.
[7:43]But we're going to start with something firm like buttero. You can see there's pretty much no flop, okay?
[7:49]I mean, if you go like this, obviously, it's just very rigid. I would say this is firm. Then if you went to something a little bit more medium, I'd say something like this.
[7:58]Now, there's definitely some flop. This is bordering on soft, but not quite in my opinion. Something soft would be like this milled, where there's just absolutely no rigidity whatsoever.
[8:11]And then you have some stuff that's in between. This is on the firm end of medium.
[8:18]And this here would be also kind of on the firm end of medium.
[8:21]So just to review, we got firm, pretty much dead straight. We got medium firm. A little bit softer than that. A little bit softer than that. And then super soft and glovy.
[8:40]There you go, flop test. Now we're going to talk about cuts. So when you buy leather, you're going to see different cuts.
[8:48]You're going to see something like side, bend, double bend, double shoulder, belly, neck, okay? So we're going to try again, demystify some of this stuff for you.
[8:58]This right here is a side. I'm going to go through and label some of the parts of the different hide.
[9:03]So right in here is called the bend, okay? It kind of is this section here.
[9:12]This is the tightest grain and the highest quality portion of the hide. So when you're making really high-end goods, you really want to focus in this area.
[9:17]You want to avoid what's called the belly, which is about right here. And again, the reason for that is because this grain is a lot softer.
[9:27]You can kind of see it here. When it gets really fuzzy on the back, that's when you know that the the grain is kind of loose, because that's literally the little individual grains just not being as tightly woven together.
[9:37]So avoid some of the belly. The neck is decent for certain parts of things or the shoulder.
[9:44]In fact, some of the highest end leather like buttero comes in double shoulder. I'll show you one of those in a second.
[9:51]But just uh when you're buying your leather and you're buying a full side, just remember to focus on this area.
[9:56]If you wanted to buy just bends themselves, you can do that as well. A lot of bridal leathers, shoemaking leathers and things like that come in just bend.
[10:04]Um, but that's a side. I'll go ahead and show you a double shoulder.
[10:08]Okay. So guys, this is a buttero double shoulder. You can if you use your imagination, you imagine looking down at a cow from up above.
[10:18]The you have a shoulder here and a shoulder here, and then it kind of goes a little bit into the bend.
[10:25]Now, this is extremely high quality, super tight grain, and you can see all the texture in it, these natural fat wrinkles, which a lot of people love. Just that natural character.
[10:33]So a lot of high-end leathers do come in double shoulder.
[10:37]The only bad thing about these is if you want to do something like belts or straps, you don't have as much length to cut full length straps.
[10:47]Um, so that's if you're going to be making anything with long straps or belts, you tend to want to avoid something like a double shoulder and get like a full side.
[10:53]All right guys, so now we're going to go through each product, and I'll tell you exactly what I use to make it.
[10:59]But just know from the get-go, so I'm not repeating myself every time, these are all full grain leather. They're all vegetable tanned. So you can just kind of check both of those boxes off.
[11:09]I'm mainly going to talk about weight here, so how thick the leather is, the temper, and a little bit of where which part of the the hide I've cut from.
[11:15]All right guys, so first up is this new bag that I've come up with recently. Don't have a name for it yet.
[11:20]But this is Pueblo leather. This is from Italy. This is 3 oz pretty much everywhere.
[11:26]The reason I use 3 oz here is because when I turn these seams, I want to be able to do that somewhat easily.
[11:32]If these seams are too thick, it's really hard to turn the bag back right side out.
[11:36]But for the thicker areas where I needed more strength, I just doubled up the leather.
[11:41]So this is two layers of three, three and a half oz. You're getting six or 7 oz in the handles.
[11:46]All handles should be at least 5 oz all the way up to, I don't know, eight or nine.
[11:51]So if you only have three ounce, double it up, stitch it up. The temper on here, I I'd say this is pretty like medium firm.
[12:00]But the cool thing about vegetable tanned leather is the more you use it, the more the softer it will get.
[12:07]Uh, those fibers slowly kind of start to loosen up. That's why you have something like milled leather.
[12:13]This is incredibly glovy and soft, and a lot this is very popular with a lot of women's bags these days.
[12:19]If you can see this texture in it, all this little pebbling, that's because this leather is thrown into a giant drum and just turned over and over and over.
[12:28]And that's slowly breaking down these those fibers and putting all in all these little creases and characters. So this is called milled leather.
[12:35]If you want something really glovy soft, look for that on any website milling.
[12:39]All right, so next I'll talk about these little clutches. Again, this is this is Horween leather.
[12:44]Um, tanned here in the USA. These are about four ounces, and this is probably medium firm, I would say.
[12:51]This is a Dublin leather. So this has a little bit of waxes and oils in it, um, and that just adds to, you know, the character, and also it'll kind of self-condition a little bit.
[13:02]And then I use kind of three, four ounces for all of my wallets because if not, it can feel really bulky and heavy, and it won't have as much room for cards and cash and things like that.
[13:13]So speaking about wallets, these are our most popular item. This is the Hobie here.
[13:17]Now, this is again about three ounces. This is buttero. This is Italian leather.
[13:23]And this is a very firm leather. I use a firm temper leather with all of my wallets that are folded because I rely on the structure of the leather to maintain this shape.
[13:33]I can't use a really soft or glovy leather. And this just is going to wear better over time, and you really want wallets to maintain their shape, unlike a bag which can be floppy and kind of take on whatever it's carrying inside.
[13:45]Okay guys, so this is just a regular old laptop sleeve.
[13:49]So I actually redesigned it. This has some curves now in it. But this is again, that same weight, about three to four ounces.
[13:57]You could go a little thicker here that would provide a little bit more protection for a laptop if you were to drop it or something like that.
[14:03]But again, just trying to avoid bulk. We don't want to go too heavy. This leather is still very, very strong.
[14:08]You can actually see some of those natural imperfections I spoke about earlier, like this little scarring here. And this is this is just an indication that it's full grain leather.
[14:17]A lot of people love these little markings, and if you have full grain, they're very hard to avoid, so we just embrace them.
[14:22]All right. If you've been following the channel, you've seen this bag. I have a whole video on me making this bag, this actual specific bag here.
[14:30]And there are a bunch of different weights of leather in here, so it's a great bag to talk about.
[14:35]And one thing I do want to say is there aren't hard and fast rules for all of the, you know, for what when do you use what leather when.
[14:43]Just know again, it's going to produce a just a different final product.
[14:46]So if you want a softer bag, you can make a softer bag. A couple rules I would just say is something like strapping, you always want to make sure you cut from the bend or double shoulder.
[14:55]You really want to avoid belly because belly just has so much stretch in it. Those those uh those straps will eventually fail.
[15:01]You don't want to cut a belt out of the belly either for the exact same reason. You don't want too much stretch.
[15:06]So going through this bag piece by piece, you've got thick 9 oz strapping.
[15:10]For the outer layer, you have 5 6 oz right here. You can tell this is thicker than something like the gusset, which is like three or four.
[15:19]And again, because I'm going around curves, having a thinner leather allows me to make these turns a little bit easier.
[15:27]And then for all of the spots that are going to carry a bunch of weight, again, I'm going to go thicker. I'm going to go 9 oz for that.
[15:34]So in this bag alone, we have at least three different weights. We have nine, we've got six, and we've got three.
[15:41]Again, anytime you want a product to maintain its shape, its geometric shape, you want to go firm temper, and you want to, uh, go a little thicker.
[15:50]Because again, just a thicker leather is going to hold its shape a little better. So this sunglass case here, we wanted to have some, you know, we want it to protect the sunglasses that are inside of it, so we want it to maintain its shape a little bit instead of just being really soft.
[16:01]And I just spoke about belts. So here's one of our belts. I tend to use about 9 10 oz.
[16:07]Going thicker than that can just kind of feel uncomfortable. You can, you can make a super thick belt as long as you don't feel like it's uncomfortable around your waist.
[16:15]But we always thin down where the buckle goes. Um, obviously, that just helps reduce bulk here because it's doubled up.
[16:24]So, again, I I tend to recommend harness leather, bridal leather, skirting leather, any Equestrian, Equestrian application leather works great for belting.
[16:34]Because, you know, when you use it with horses, you need to be super strong, you need to have some kind of weather resistance because you're right on a horse out there in the elements.
[16:41]All right, before I was talking about how if you want something to maintain its geometric shape, you should use a thicker, firmer leather.
[16:47]So this is 5 oz buttero. This is actually from title theory. Samantha Hook is the owner of Title Theory.
[16:53]She works right about out of our space, and she sells goods in our store. We just love her stuff.
[16:59]So she sells on consignment here, and we're going to be doing a lot of projects together in the future. This is an awesome surf fin inspired clutch.
[17:05]It's available in our store and we'll be available online for anybody that wants to grab something like this.
[17:09]So she makes this, she makes this amazing barrel bag. Again, if she made this into a super glovy leather, it would kind of collapse in on itself and it lose this really cool shape.
[17:19]This very striking shape that, you know, really stands out. And she also makes this one that she calls the amoeba bag.
[17:25]I think it looks like an avocado, but it's an amoeba too.
[17:30]So she only uses, well, I don't say only, but almost exclusively uses 5 oz buttero for most of her goods.
[17:36]Just because belly, um, has looser grain, it doesn't mean it's useless.
[17:40]When we get big hides to cut for our belts, uh, we don't throw the bellies away. We make coasters out of them.
[17:46]Because these aren't like weight bearing, you know, they're not being stretched or pulled. Uh, we can cut them out of the belly or the neck.
[17:54]And they work great for stuff like this. So definitely don't waste your bellies or your necks, find some some simple uses like this for it.
[18:00]And then let's see, this last bag we have here, we have a couple of different layers again. And this is because I wanted to maintain or achieve a certain aesthetic, a certain feel.
[18:09]So this has thick kind of belting leather for the strap and also running through here. This is very like boho style bag.
[18:16]But then this is a very glovy milled Essex. So this is just like Horween Dublin, but it's actually just doesn't have the waxes and oils that the Horween Dublin has.
[18:26]Um, this is a beautiful leather. It's nice and soft from the start, and it gets even softer.
[18:31]And this is 4 oz. When it comes to bags, you know, you can do any weight you want.
[18:35]Just it's again, I've repeated myself like three times. It's going to affect the final product. So something like this, this is a pretty heavy leather.
[18:46]It's close to like 7 oz. But because it's, you know, has so many waxes and oils in it, it still feels soft in your hand, and it can still take a cool shape.
[18:55]This is an amazing boot leather, by the way. Um, and it's also, I wanted to mention, it's a pull-up leather.
[19:02]So you can see as I disperse those waxes and oils, it changes the the look of the bag.
[19:10]So I can crinkle it up, and you get this very like distressed, kind of rugged look.
[19:15]Again, this is called pull-up leather. It's very popular. A lot of times it'll be annotated on the website that it is a pull-up leather.
[19:22]And that just means it's got waxes and oils in it that when they're dispersed, they change the look because those oils are going away, and then they slowly come back, and it will be kind of uniform again.
[19:31]Okay, guys, so hopefully you know exactly what kind of leather to buy for your next project.
[19:35]If you have any questions, please put them down in the comments or DM me on Instagram.
[19:40]I try and respond to absolutely everybody. I really want to make this channel about spreading the amazing craft that that leather craft is.
[19:47]So we appreciate you guys' support. Please subscribe, and as always, if you didn't know, I'm the owner of Open Sea leather.
[19:53]If you want to support us outside of watching these videos, go grab a belt, go grab a wallet.
[19:58]If you guys want me to make something new, if you have an idea for a design, shoot it to me. I love that.
[20:03]I love the back and forth. So thanks for watching, and stay tuned.
