How to Achieve Proper Cuts in Leather Working

Video Transcript

"So, now I want to talk about proper, kind of cutting technique. First with a straight knife. You really want to hold it either straight up and down or at a slight angle, but the most important thing is to not tilt the knife kind of to one side or the other. The reason is, you want the cut you make to be a cut that's straight down into the leather. So for that reason it doesn't really matter if your knife is totally upright, I mean if it's really upright because of the tip, you have a much smaller kind of area you're working with that's in contact with the leather. If it's more at an angle, you're working with the whole edge of the blade. But you don't want to have it to an angle to the left or to the right because what that does, is that causes and under cut in one direction or the other, so when you start doubling, you're not going to be able to do a smooth even double because that cut will actually go into the leather kind of at an angle instead of straight down. So when you make a cut, you really want that knife to be straight up and down like this. I like to do a straight cut, I like to just pull it towards myself. So there's like a short cut, you can do a long cut. With a straight knife like this you can probably do some simple curves. Doing a curve is a little trickier because in that you really need to be kind of a diligent about making sure that that knife isn't tilting to the side, to one side or the other, to the left or the right. Again, I kind of like working towards myself. You kind of, you kind of have to adjust the direction of the cut a little bit in advance of the knife getting there. You see, I'm kind of twisting this, sort of, in my fingers back and forth as I'm cutting. You can do cuts of different lengths. You want the blade to go in about, maybe about half way into the leather if you can do that. So you want to apply kind of even pressure. So remember again, what we're doing is not just using the knife to define that pattern, but now we're providing cuts in the leather where one side can be beveled and then, beveled down, and then the other one will remain kind of in relief."