Ever since making leather wraps for the grips of my Skyrim War Axe and Assassin’s Creed Tomahawk props, I’ve wanted to learn some leather crafting skills, both for practical applications and to use in prop-making projects. I got some tools, hide and dyes from Tandy Leather, and with some project ideas in mind, I set to work. I practiced the basics of cutting, dying and stitching on a simple, practical belt design before moving on to a belt with more complex pattern as a showcase piece. I based the design on Boromir’s belt from Lord of the Rings and picked up some belt hardware to match.

The belt was cut out of 6oz. vegetable tanned tooling leather to match the width of the buckle, with the other end rounded to fit the end cap. A section was cut out of the leather on the buckle end to fit the bar of the buckle and allow it to move, leaving enough of the leather protruding to double-over and secure the buckle when stitched together. I made the belt loop from a thin strip of leather, allowing enough clearance for the end cap to fit through, and punched stitching holes into the end of the belt to hold the buckle and loop in position.

Using screenshots and references from the Lord of the Rings, I drew up the design for the pattern and printed it off. I transferred the pattern onto a sheet of styrene, cut it out and cleaned it up with some files. This was mounted on a sheet of styrene backed with a block of MDF.

Using this stamp, I wet the leather, aligned the stamp and clamped it down between blocks of MDF. Once the section of leather had dried, I removed the stamp and continued the process down the length of the belt, ensuring that the stamp was always aligned correctly with the previous pattern.

When the pattern was complete and I had punched holes to allow the belt to be buckled, the leather was dyed, using Angelus Leather Dye’s Dark Brown. After the dye had dried, I burnished the back and sides with Gum Tragacanth and an edge slicker, and buffed the front with some extra virgin olive oil and a dry cloth. Mounting the end cap and stitching the buckle and belt loop into place finished the belt.

For my sister’s birthday this year I put my burgeoning leather working skills to good use, making her a leather-bound book. I started with an A5 hardback notebook and cut an outer cover and inner sleeves out of 4oz. vegetable tanned leather, with a border 15mm larger than the book to allow clearance for stitching. Where the cover folded at the spine, I cut grooves into the flesh side of the leather so that it could fold at a 90 degree angle. After carving a simple border and stamping in stitching holes, the leather was dyed with Angelus Leather Dye’s Brick dye, and the edges burnished with Gum Tragacanth and an edge slicker.  

The stitching was where the real work was. The piece was hand-stitched with a single length of thread using a saddle stitch. With a saddle stitch, the thread has a needle at each end, and both needles are passed through each stitching hole from opposite sides and pulled taut:

Where the inner sleeve overlaps with the outer cover, the stitching holes were aligned and the two pieces of leather were stitched together, with the cover of the book between them. This took many hours of hard work pulling the long lengths of thread through hundreds of stitching holes, but the result was well worth the effort.