Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Leather Hat Bands

I'm a small step closer to opening a Custom tooled leather hat band store. You might think the rivets connecting the straps are intentional but that is what happens when I cut the leather flat and the whole thing doesn't fit right because the crown of the hat leans back. It would take some engineering to cut a one piece leather band. But I like the rivets because they can be adjusted.

Oggy's Spirit Symbol

The straw sombrero is from El Paso
I guess the idea is to practice cutting and tooling leather for my dashboard, which is a daunting project. I managed to find a leather gouge tool but I was too impatient to practice with it for any length of time. I dove into the project without any tracing or idea of what I was going to carve, inadequate lighting, no hard surface to work on. I'm not a big fan of the flowers that are typical leather tool designs. I considered burning it with my solder iron but I think chemicals were used to tan this big shoulder of leather, Guatemalan chemicals, so they are double bad and burning Guatemalan chemicals near your face is no bueno.

 I heard a sad story while in Guatemala that the humane society was dumping 60 dog corpses a week into a nearby river along side a pile of car batteries and used motor oil. Actually, another story was the terrible algae blooms in Lago Atitlan, because there is no sewage treatment and all sewage runs into the lake. So, some scam company says they have a chemical that can treat the algae. First off, there is no way in the world a Guatemalan chemical company is going to be based off of tested science, so that's the first red flag. The second red flag was some family relation between the company and the official who decides it is time to clean up the lake. The final red flag was the chemical was some god-awful untested cocktail of death. Did they test it on another lake, or even in a bathtub? Oh, no. Nothing. Did they even test a small amount on the lake first? Oh, no. The Guatemalan way is to dump the entire inventory into the lake, untested, without warning, take the money from the scam official and buy a Land Rover...wait until all the fish die and unexplained rashes appear on locals...and then a real biological chemist determines the "cleaning chemical" is ten times worse than any bacteria or algae or human shit that was in the lake to begin with and this was the worst thing they could pour into the lake. Lago Atitlan is one of the highest volcanic lakes in the world and god help you if you drive there.
The chemical company mysteriously disappears, the official vanishes, maybe beheaded, the lake water deteriorates further and that is the cycle of insanity in Guatemala. That's not related at all to leather hat bands but I thought I would share it anyway.

They have fancy leather stain, but I use $1 Guatemalan boot shine


Up close at Oggy's leather craft skills. Symmetry is not a strong point. Note the Eyelet.


Oggy is on a leather craft spree. Plusera and another pick holder

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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.