leathercraft in september

September 15, 2023
Language: English

I started making leather goods in 2015. It’s been a while since I last touched my tools. I thought it might be a good idea to polish my tools and my skills.

To me, the hardest step in leathercraft is designing and cutting the pattern. Fortunately, I managed to find a shortcut to patterning - using a laser cutter. Laser cutting is precise, and the heat generated during laser cutting also finishes the edge, to some extent.

I processed my pattern in Rhino and generated two layers: cutting layer and engraving layer. The cutting layer shows all the outlines and the ironing layer directs the laser to mimic the ironing step.

In practice, I used 100% power and 8% speed on a Trotec 400 laser cutter for cutting. Then, I offsetted the focus by 0.5 in, using 20% power and 80% speed, and ‘iron’ all the exposed edges.