Cutting leather

[Pappy Hayes]

I am curious what you pards have found best to use for cutting out your leather projects. I do not always get clean edges on my cuts.

[cowboywc]

Howdy
I use a head/round knife for almost all my cutting.
WC

[Dalton Masterson]

I use a sharp utility blade in a fixed handle. For curves, I use a hooked carpet utility blade in a fixed handle.
DM

[Slowhand Bob]

I use one of the craft style angled head utility knives for most of my cutting and a concave hobby knife for the really tight turns.  Another favorite knife is the carpet knife for any long straight cuts such as belts.  For those rough edges I use a sanding machine or a sanding sponge.

[Ten Wolves Fiveshooter]

    I use several types, for straight cuts I use my Round knife, or one of the two black angled head utility knives at the top of this picture, the angled utility knives are also used for mild curves too, for really tight curves, I use the trim knife or I'll punch a hole at the bottom of the curve and the cut  from the punched hole on up, I keep an Exacto knife handy too for intricate cuts , the silver utility knife on the bottom, I use for cutting out patterns on white poster paper.


                                       Hope this helped, as you can see we all use similar knives for this task


                                                                 Regards

                                                            tEN wOLVES 

[FEATHERS]

I use the same as Ten Wolves & as my Doctor is also a friend I grew up with,I get an endless supply of surgical scalpels.Feathers

[willygene]

I use many different knives but they are keept very sharp pluse i use a numkeg sander to smooth up the edges before and after the project is done if you are building many different things a day you realy need one to speed up the prossese and keep up with demand with the same amount of quality, it took me fifteen years to figure this out but i wouldn't want to work without it now.

[Marshal Will Wingam]

I use three knives for almost all my work. I worked for a saddlemaker when I was young. He used one he had made from a power hacksaw blade. The top one is a copy of his. The next one is what I use for tighter curves and skivving. It's not an original design, it's basically like one that you can buy but I had some hacksaw blade left over so I just made it. The bottom one is what I use for other work, especially in tight places. I made a round knife but don't feel as comfortable or competent as with the top one. The round knife won't cut as tight a radius as it will, either.

[JD Alan]

Howdy Willygene, could you tell me what a "numkeg sander" is? Thanks a lot, and thanks guys for all the cutting info. Tomorrow I'm heading to Oregon Leather to pick up my new Weaver Master tool round knife and bag punch. I'll let you know how it goes.   

[willygene]

The numkeg is just an electric motor with a round convex head on it that you put sand paper on to use smoothing up very thick edges works real well for glued leather like the edge of thick belts. if i can get some pics on ill put a pic of the numkeg on, also i use a hand crank 3 in 1 cutter for cutting thick bulk patterns out, both of these tools come from shoe and boot repair.

[JD Alan]

Well, now I'm looking forward to seeing what a "Hand crank 3 in 1 cutter" is too! Thanks willygene

I picked up the Weaver round knife and bag punch today. Having so little experience with round knifes it's hard to make a decent evaluation, but it seems pretty sharp to me. It's not as sharp as the one I used in Chan Geer's class, so maybe it could use a little work yet. The bag punch is phenomenal! Talk about sharp right out of the box.   

I took the guards off my 6 inch grinder and installed the paper sharpening wheels today, but I've run out of time to do much with them yet, Sunday being Easter. I'm looking forward to working with it. Thanks again WC for the generous gift