indigofan

Went to Leffler leather to get some things to make a postal bag.

I got a side of beef, a mallet, an awl (has an elliptical cross-section – not sure if this is better, but I thought it might be easier to pierce the leather with), some hole punches, and a buckle for the front strap.

I’ve done more research online and the proper postal bag construction also has rivets and articulating clips on the shoulder strap. I don’t think I’ll go to the trouble of re-creating the original. I’ll essentially be trying to make a shoulder satchel. Perhaps if this project goes well I will go to the effort of finding all the hardware needed to make a proper US Mail Postal Bag.

The staff at Leffler talked me into getting a thicker/stiffer leather than I first selected. This is vegetable tanned, and I could imagine it being used for the soles of shoes! The theory is that you can always soften the leather up, so don’t get something too soft.

Anyway, I’m quite excited to start, perhaps in a couple of weeks I’ll start planning out how to cut this.

btw. tools which I haven’t got but I think might be handy if I can locate them are: stitching measuring tool which marks out even stitching marks before you use the awl, and a leather clamp to hold things while you sew.

(Note: I know very little about leathercraft, so there’s a good chance this project will fail)