How to Use the Stylus in Leather Working

Video Transcript

"So, the first thing you need to do if you're going to be working on a design, is to get your design onto the leather. So, one way to do that is to start with maybe a pattern that already exists, like; you can get kits that already can have a pattern drawn out for you. Here?s a pattern where you see kind of what the basic lines are that correspond to the initial knife cuts you'll make. Then kind of some suggestions how you would actually tool it out with the tools. So, one way to get that design onto the leather is by using a stylus tool. This is a stylus tool here, it's just basically a metal kind of a point with, this point isn't really that sharp, it's a little bit sharp but it's not too bad. So, what you would do then is on your wet or cased leather, you would kind of have that leather down and then you would lay your pattern on top of it and the sort of gently you would trace over it with your stylus and then you would find that when you lifted it up, you would kind of have the pattern basically drawn into your leather, then you can go over it with your knife. You can even do it with your own designs. I mean, here I kind of have just a basic, I don't know, little clover leaf shape. I can choose to sort of hold it in place, I've already cased this leather out, I'm going to kind of go over it with the stylus gradually. I'm going to kind of do each of these leaves here. This is just kind of to be able to set up your design ahead of time on paper or you can, you can print it out from a computer or however you want to do it, just kind of get it on paper. You don't have to press very hard actually, if your leather is cased out well with water, even sort of a medium to light touch will kind of transfer this to the leather. So, now I've gone across the whole design with the stylus and you can see now that the design is in the leather, it's very faint, it's not ready tool. The next thing to do now is take the knife and cut into it. But, so that's one way you can get your design into the leather by using a stylus."