What started as a piece of 3-4 oz veg tan ended up as a shiny black card wallet. Today, I wanted learn more about two new additions to the workbench and see if I could easily integrate them into the hobby.
The first thing I wanted to figure out was how to import the physical template for the card wallet into xTool's Creative Space project dashboard. The process was pretty simple overall. Trace a heavy line around the template on a piece of white paper, take a pic of it, import it into the software, and then use the software to draw out a vector cutter template. Boom! After that, I timed myself to see how long it would take to cut out 4. Cutting a large piece to hold all 4 and running the job took 7 minutes!
The second thing I wanted to try was the airbrushing. I went with black since it's hard to mess up and just wanted to get a feel for the device. It wasn't bad at all and the finish looked great after applying neetsfoot oil to deepen the color, punching and stitching it up by hand, adding resolene to seal it, and burnishing the sides with tokonol and paraffin.
Overall, it was a great day of tinkering and learning!
I laser cut stitching holes in vegetable tanned leather for a ren faire bag last year using a Glowforge 40W laser cutter. It turned out really well. It's significantly easier than punching the holes by hand.