As a precursor to making the tool boxes for the Model A, I'm doing a few leather work jobs in order to learn some new skills. This first one is a key wallet for a couple of keys that I carry when working on the railway.
Here are the two keys in a cardboard mock-up of the wallet I'll be making:
The cardboard form is laid out on a sheet of 2.5 mm vegetable tanned leather. I've learned that vegetable tanned leather is stiff and makes good boxes and holsters, and that chrome tanned leather is softer and is used for clothes and gloves.
We'll cut the leather out with a craft knife.
When the leather is wet, it's very easy to fold and form the shapes the wallet will need. This wallet has a double fold and additionally it needs a strip stitched to the back to form the belt loop. This means that the sequence of stitching is important because effectively the belt loop stitching becomes inaccessible once the front pocket is folded over and stitched but on the other hand, the belt loop covers up some of the front pocket stitching.
What we have to do, is stitch part of the belt loop, then the pocket, then finish the belt loop.
Here's the belt loop in place. It's stitched at the bottom, where you can see it, but it's also got two rows of stitching behind the loop one of which was stitched before the front pocket and one after.
Here's the front pocket. The leather was formed around that T-shaped key and left flat for the smaller brass key. I stitched the T-shaped key pocket first though I had already fitted the press stud.
Long after I had finished this wallet I got some Tokenole leather buffing compound which I used with a wooden buffer to finish the edges.
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