Embossing Leather

I’m putting together a site with lots of other leather work, which I’ll share here when I finish it.

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Cool pattern! :grinning:

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Nice work!

@dan this is an excellent example to illustrate your question about the difference between leather tooling vs embossing. With carving and tooling, the leather has obviously been “worked” to create a textured effect. With embossing, the raised elements are more like a pattern in the leather vs a pattern carved on to the leather.

@emilycarolinemiller1 or @morganstanfield may be able to provide a better description.

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Wow, impressive! Can’t believe you hand carved all of that pattern–whew! A Glowforge in your hands is going to be something else.

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That is supercool!! Thanks for sharing- another technique to add to the list of things to try!

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very nice! Love the way that turned out :smile:

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Amazing! And thanks for the tooling vs embossing explanation.

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Yup… New wallet in my future.

How do you do the embossing? Is it a big press? I am just trying to figure out leather working, it is something I never thought I would get into.

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they mention using the fiskars fuse, which looks like a small rolling press. i’ve seen online that some use pasta machines, even.

The embossing just requires pressure. I’ve used several different methods. I’ve used a hammer to apply pressure to one side of a stamp at a time, but it doesn’t work very well. I’ve put the leather and the stamp sandwiched between two boards and then pressed in a vice clamp. I think a hydraulic press would work well but I don’t have one. They make a roller device (fiskars fuse) but it’s really limited in width and the height is not adjustable so you have to build up the base to match and the substrate has to be a consistent thickness. I really want a hydraulic press roller and have almost decided to build one.

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me too.

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Any links to DIY ideas? I keep finding hand rollers or just hydraulic press, usually involving a car jack.

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If you’re just doing a one off, I’d consider trying to press it with a vice clamp.

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You might also be able to make something non-hydraulic where you would just set the distance between rollers, like an old-fashioned mangle.

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or maybe even something crazy like using an old beaten biscuit maker. :slight_smile:

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Not sure how well it will hold up with repeated bending. I’m a little concerned the paint will chip away, but I’ll let you know after some use.

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Cool and awesome. I am definetly interested. I’ve had a few people reach out to me for leather working recently. Which is really odd since I am wood worker and HAVE NEVER HINTED AT working with leather. So I am hoping the forge will will fill an untapped income source. Or just give me a really cool wallet…

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any tips you have or instructional for using an acrylic cut out on the glowforge for embossing? And how long will the emboss last, any presteps needed?