Learn What a Camo Stamp is in Leather Working

Video Transcript

"So, most tools like the texturizing tools and the double acting tools, if you look at them closely, you can the tip isn't exactly the same thickness all the way through and I don't know if you can see this, but this tool is actually a little bit thicker here than it is on this side, okay. So we have a word for that. The place where it is thicker is called the toe of the tool, and the place where it is thinner is called the heel of the tool. Just some terminology to keep in mind and you can get different impressions working with the toe of the tool verses the heel of the tool. This one in particular is called the camouflage tool. Actually I've got two different ones and slightly different, slightly different shapes here. This one's a little more narrow here and this one's a little thicker. It's basically kind of a crescent shape where the toe of the tool that is the thicker part is kind of by the crescent and the heel is the rounder part here. And again, these aren't used really so much for that design as much as they're used for texturizing. For example, in a lot of floral patterns or patterns of plants and vegetation that kind of thing. One way you can do it, is just kind of start doing them kind of in a sequence right next to each other like this. This leather's already been cased. You can start even overlapping them somewhat, and so if you see really, it's not so much the design of the tool itself that I'm interested in, as it is kind of the texture that I'm developing by doing multiple overlapping strokes kind of over a larger area. I'll do a couple more like this and turn it up and you can see. Remember this is a single action tool so I'm, I am moving the tool between strikes but I'm not allowing it to move as I strike. So I'll do a couple more. So, now if you look, I mean now I've kind of created a texture here that looks like it could be any number of things. It looks like it could be a pine cone; looks like it could be maybe the scales on a fish, maybe even feathers on a bird. That's kind of where the artistic decision comes into play, what sort of tools you want to use for what design element. It's just kind of an example of things you can do with the camouflage stamp to kind of get different kinds of textures. Of course you'll get different textures if you hold the tool straight up and down like I was doing or for example, angle it. In this case, we can use just the heel, and we can see this is giving kind of a much kind of rounder kind of look here. You're not really getting as much of a crisp definition between those different strikes the way that we got before. So you can see this texture, it's not as crisp but it's still really neat. I mean this now kind of maybe looks, I don't know, like hair, or I don't know maybe little brushy plants or something like that. I got that by having the tool angled instead of straight up and down."