Carving in leather?

[jaru-eri]

Have anybody here tried to carve patterns in thick leather like knife sheats? Will that be possible, or will it be a better choice to first engrave the pattern in hard wood like ironwood and use that for stamping the pattern into the leather instead?

[TReischl]

Stamp (emboss) it. Leather just fuzzes all up when a router bit tries to cut it. Messy.

[sharkcutup]

I second the Stamp Embossing

Sharkcutup

[Mike-S]

Cut your reverse design in HDPE with the CNC and use that to emboss.

[BigC]

Just to expand on the above. I make coasters every now and then and was looking to enhance some leather inlays



For a trial, I thoroughly soaked the hide in warm water placed the inverted relief on the face of the leather and layered with a couple of scraps of wood to distribute the clamping pressure. Amazingly it worked. A very good imprint was obtained by leaving this overnight to dry (roughly 12 hours). Two things I was concerned about, #1, Would the fact I was using a wooden relief for the plate collapse with the moisture content in the leather #2. What would be the condition of the leather after the drying process?. I'm happy to report, from those aspects, everything was fine.
I will be using this method again at some point in time for coasters and other small projects I have in mind.

NB
Originally there were two vapor plumes emanating from the coffee cup, one was small and got lost in the milling process on the Workbee. (which would have made the overall effect even nicer). No matter, this was only a test to see wither the process was a viable prospect for future design incorporation.



Regards
C

[martin54]

Originally there were two vapor plumes emanating from the coffee cup, one was small and got lost in the milling process on the Workbee. (which would have made the overall effect even nicer). No matter, this was only a test to see wither the process was a viable prospect for future design incorporation.

The wood as you discovered worked OK but it is really only suitable for small numbers of prints, it will deterioate over time which is why people who do this sort of work use other materials.
You might also want to look at investing in a better clamping arrangement, that type of clamp is generally only any good for light clamping & you probably weren't able to excert enough pressure for the other plume to show. If you are just producing a few of these then something like G clamps would work better so you can apply more pressure

[jaru-eri]

Cut your reverse design in HDPE with the CNC and use that to emboss.

Can I use cutting board of polypropylene instead of HDPE?

[Mike-S]

Yes. Only problem I've seen with cutting boards is warping with only one side being cut. Probably depends on the brand (quality) of cutting board. Also PP tends to be more "fuzzy" than HDPE.

[TReischl]

If you need to cut things like plastic HSS bits usually work better than carbide bits. They have an actual cutting edge, carbide bits are more like scrapers IMHO. Not badmouthing carbide but some things cut better when sliced.