Making the Mini Padfolio with Maker's Leather Supply (Revisited)

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]All right, good morning. I'm Aaron Heheiser, Makers Leather Supply, and today we're going to redo an oldie but goodie. Um, the mini padfolio. Okay, a very, very simple, easy to put together design. Holds a 5 in by 8 in. I think this is labeled as notepad. Um, it might be 5x7. Give me give me a second. I always forget if they include the binding or not in the measurements.

[00:00:26]So, it is 8 in tall by 5 in and that includes the binding on it. So, the paper itself is probably 5 by7. Um, so anyway, uh, great little notepad. We brought it back to be the project box for this month, uh, the month of May 2026. So, if you get the project box, then you get a lot more than just the template, but the template is also available to buy on our website. Um, with the project box, you also get a a great tooling pattern for this. And, um, yeah. So, there it is. It's got a little pocket on the inside, another pocket for your business cards or whatever. And, um, then, of course, your your area to hold your notepad. It's a It's a fun little project. It won't take more than an hour or two to build if you're not tooling it. Now, tooling is a whole another thing. It took me like six hours to tool this cuz I'm the world's slowest tooler. Um, you'd think I'd be way better at it as much as as slowly as a tool, but that's not the case either.

[00:01:25]So, anyway, um, I really enjoyed building this one. I haven't made one since the original one. That was probably six or seven years ago. Um, and yeah, I think I may carry this one around some. So, it's a it's a great little notepad. Um, so you can get on the website. It's called the Mini Padfolio. If you just want the template, if you want the project box, then you get everything, all the leather, everything you would need to make it.

[00:01:48]exactly like the one I've made here.

[00:01:50]Let's dive into this.

[00:01:53]All right. So, we'll start by talking about the project box. Now, if you have the template, then you have the template. Here it is. There's the template and all the pieces inside of it. Okay? And we'll discuss those in just a moment. But, if you got the project box this month, it comes with a piece of um tooling leather. This is um from Wicked Craig. This is uh their russet skirting. I love tooling this stuff because I love the color variation that you get when you tool due to all the tool burnish and everything. If you can get the right moisture content in there, it really does turn out nicely.

[00:02:28]Okay, so that's russet tooling leather from uh from Wicked Craig.

[00:02:35]Um and then also the other pieces, the liner and the pocket for your your notepad and your um drawing a blank there. The pocket for your loose papers and your pocket for your business cards are all out of our matador collection. Um, you'll probably get assorted colors of brown because I doubt that we have enough of one color to cut out all the project boxes. Um, this right here is the medium brown. No, sorry. This is the chestnut.

[00:03:08]Anyway, great lining leather. Um, you'll get a tooling pattern provided or drawn by Matt Wner of Burns Sery. Okay. He is the head of production over at Burns. He is a very, very talented saddle maker.

[00:03:22]He's a dang good floral uh tooler. And uh, don't tell him I said this, but he's also a pretty good guy. Okay. Now, we'll talk about the template itself. Okay.

[00:03:33]What pieces are in the template? Now, this is one of those that we puzzle piece together so that we can make things easier for shipping. So, these two pieces right here make up the cover piece and the liner piece. Okay. Um, and then this is the pocket for your notepad. And then this is the pocket for your loose papers. And then this is the pocket for your uh business cards. And really the business card one is kind of optional. Um, and the shape of it even optional, of course. You could, you know, make that into an actual rectangle instead of that very difficult to cut out, um, top part of it there. Okay. Um, but anyway, all of your lining pieces, we suggest you cut out of like 2 to 3 oz leather. And then your uh, your main body, cut it out of anywhere from 5 to 7 oz leather. Okay? And I believe this is 56 that we're uh, sending out with the project. Possibly 67. I didn't I didn't gauge it.

[00:04:31]So, all that being said, we're going to get busy uh building this thing. Um, as you can see, I already toled mine. Um, I'm a very slow tooler, and as much as I wanted to make a YouTube video on the tooling aspect of it itself, I um I I did not make one. Um, I'd like for you to leave a comment though if that's something y'all want to see and y'all want to uh want me to tool more on videos. Um, a lot of the time I don't.

[00:04:57]There are some great tooling instructors out there. And while I feel like I can do a pretty good job of tooling and teaching tooling, I uh it's not my my specialty, I would say. So anyway, leave me a comment in the on the video if you would like to see more tooling type videos out of me. Okay?

[00:05:17]I'm always looking for cool things that we can post. Um so yeah, we're going to go ahead and get busy assembling this.

[00:05:25]So, I'm going to rearrange the camera a little bit. And um this thing's pretty quick and easy to make. So, we're gonna get her done.

[00:05:35]Okay. So, my exterior piece here is is cut to size. Okay. It is uh the same size as the template already. And it's like that because I needed to tool on it. Okay.

[00:05:47]My interior lining piece here is oversized cut. All right. A little bit too big. And that's actually going to help me have cleaner edges and stuff like that when I glue it all up here in a little bit. Okay. Um, but we're going to do something kind of tricky when we assemble this thing. Okay. How this will go, there's my my cover piece. My tooling when it closes will be on the front. Um, that back there.

[00:06:15]But the pocket for the for the notepad, I only want to sew it to the liner and not sew it all the way through the notepad. Okay? And it just keeps the notepad or the the the padfolio itself having a cleaner exterior that those stitches don't come through on the back side. And this is the only place that I have to do this. So, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to stitch this piece to this piece right there. Then I'll line the entire thing, trim off my excess, and then add these pieces right here. Okay. Um, I will be cheating today and using a sewing machine just because this is all very simple straight line stitch stuff. Um, and um, I don't uh I don't really feel the need to bore youall with another here's how I do my hand hand stitching video. Um, so I will be cheating and using a sewing machine. Now, I don't actually feel like it's cheating as far as doing leather work using a sewing machine. I feel like it's cheating as in I'm not giving you everything I could. um when making a video because maybe somebody out there needs some help with their hand stitching or you know even a where to start with their hand stitching and um you can watch lots of my other uh small project videos. I've got lots of hand stitching stuff out there. Um but anyway, so the very very first thing I need to do though is burnish some edges.

[00:07:52]Okay. So, I need to burnish this outside edge here, this top edge here, and this top edge right here. All right. So, I'm going to grab my tiny edger, and we're going to get busy doing that.

[00:08:08]And I actually I' I've already lied to you. Um I need to sew these two pieces together as well, but only on this outside edge. And then that'll be before I burnish that whole edge as well. Okay.

[00:08:20]So, there's there's a little bit more to it. I wasn't wasn't thinking right. I haven't built one of these in about five years. Um the the original video is out there that we uh we made one of these.

[00:08:31]Um this this is not a brand new template for us. It's an older one, but we thought we'd kind of rejuvenate it, come out with a new video, show people, you know, it's a pretty awesome template.

[00:08:49]All right. The good news is these are all clicked out on a clicker. And so the when they're this thin, um, using an edger on them is almost not needed on the front side because it's already a little bit rounded due to the how a clicker works or how a clicker die works, I guess you could say. So, I'm just kind of hitting it up a little bit here. Not much.

[00:09:15]And I'm going to grab my burnishing stuff right quick. I apologize for not having it on my desk.

[00:09:30]All right.

[00:09:34]Now I am going to glue these two pieces together. Very first thing out of the box. Let me adjust the camera up a little bit.

[00:09:46]That that.

[00:09:51]Okay.

[00:09:53]I am going to glue these two pieces together just right along.

[00:10:06]Okay. Just right along these three edges right here. Okay. And then I'm going to go ahead and burnish that outside edge.

[00:10:14]as long as it's glued down nice and well. Um, but I will go again that needs to be stitched and often times I would stitch before I burnish, but I'm not trying to make 15 trips to the sewing machine and back with the camera. So, yeah.

[00:10:35]All righty.

[00:10:37]So, little dab of glue will do.

[00:10:43]And I'm just gonna go along and put glue around the very outside edges of this pocket.

[00:10:53]Little bit of leather dust on there from the clicker press.

[00:11:01]Okay. And when I say glue, I'm talking about contact cement. I uh I do that a lot. Um, unfortunately, and I have people that get a little bit confused because I continue to use the word glue when what I use is contact cement.

[00:11:14]Contact cement works really well by putting it on both pieces that you're going to stick together, waiting a few minutes for it to dry, and then actually sticking them together.

[00:11:27]And an old saddle makers trick or leather workers trick or whatever from forever. um I actually started doing recently, but I'll even start hitting it with a hammer to really get it good and stuck before I do anything else with it.

[00:11:45]And I don't really know why I wasn't doing it before. I've always known that it's something people do, but I uh I usually would just use my heavy roller piece and that would suffice.

[00:12:00]All right. So, I'm going to give that just a second to uh set up while I find my good hammer. And um there's no All right. Sorry about that. So, this hammer is a Jeremiah Watt uh Horseshoe Brand Tools hammer. Um their website is ranch22arena.com.

[00:12:44]Um anyway, I have got several leatherworking hammers, but this one is by far um just my favorite one. Not only is it pretty, of course, I really like the shape of the handle. Um, I like the shape of the head when I'm doing my my sneaker making and stuff. I um, this is the hammer I reach for. As a matter of fact, I had to cut the video to find this hammer because it took me a couple of minutes to find the one I wanted and not just the one that was laying on the bench. So, hopefully I remembered to go back and cut that out. Otherwise, you just hear me out there looking for a hammer.

[00:13:19]All right, so that has set up and now I'm going to glue these pieces together.

[00:13:25]and get them nice and flush with each other.

[00:13:29]That way I'll have pretty edges when I burnish.

[00:13:38]All right, get those suckers good and stuck.

[00:13:48]Now again, I'm going to burnish this edge right here, the rounded edge right here. Okay. So, I've got my magical burnishing solution, which is 1/3 Elmer's glue, 2/3 water, and uh yeah, going to burnish that up right quick.

[00:14:11]Piece of canvas. Now, this is very thin leather, so I'm just lightly rubbing on it. Okay. Okay. And you're just kind of getting that glue to um I don't know, settle down, set up, whatever, whatever glue does when it's not actually sticking things together.

[00:14:28]Okay. And when I say Elmer's glue, when I say one/3 Elmer's glue, I am talking about that stuff you used to eat when you were a child. Just kidding. I mean the stuff that you would put on your hands and let it dry and then peel it all off because that was entertainment when we were kids.

[00:14:42]So, all right. And then I usually will go back and just kind of burnish along the top side there to get that nice rounded edge on that. Now, I'm going to set that piece aside because again, in a few minutes, I'm going to have to sew that little bitty seam right there. Okay.

[00:15:04]So, now I'm going to burnish the top of my notebook uh holder here.

[00:15:26]I need to trim my burnishing cloth. I keep getting all the fraying and everything on it keeps getting under the leather. When you're burnishing leather this thin, that'll actually affect the edge. So, don't want that.

[00:15:40]Okay.

[00:15:43]All right. Now, what I'm going to do, um, once again, this this piece was clicker cut out. Let me zoom out of here a little bit.

[00:16:01]All right. This lining piece was clicker cut out. Okay. Um, one more time, I'll set it up how it needs to be. Like imagine that the liner's on top of this.

[00:16:11]This notebook needs to be right here aligned with the outside edge and the bottom edge. And then this one needs to be right here aligned with the bottom edge and the outside edge. But in between these two pieces will be that lining piece.

[00:16:25]All right.

[00:16:27]I don't put it on there right now because it would just cover up the tooling piece and you couldn't really see where everything is. Um, so anyway, what I need to do is place this on the liner and then sew that to the liner only. So that when I glue the liner to this, that side will be nice and secure, but yet there won't be a stitch on the outside of my notebook. Okay? Hopefully, I'm explaining that in a manner that um is understandable because I have a problem sometimes with explaining things how I know that they're going to work, but not necessarily how you know that they're going to work. Now, I explained while ago this is clicked out, okay? And that means that its edges are a tiny bit rounded. All right? And I want them to be nice and squared off edges.

[00:17:19]Um, so that when I glue these layers together, I'll be able to get a good clean burnish on them all later. So, I'm just going to trim the tiniest little smidge off of the bottom and left edge or sorry, right edge of my lining piece.

[00:17:39]Okay. And again, it's because the the when you use a clicker dye, which is a giant cookie cutter, basically, um, it kind of rounds off the edge of the leather. All right? So, like where it's clicked, it's almost like an edger has already been used on it because that blade pushes that down as it cuts through it. And I want it nice and square like this one. Um where it's freshly cut so that when I glue another layer on top of it, I'll get a cleaner cleaner edge because then I can use an edger and create my own rounded edges and I don't have rounded edges stacked on top of each other. And I've almost gone crosseyed trying to think of the words to explain that. So hopefully it makes sense.

[00:18:21]Okay. Now I'm going to take and put my notepad piece on top of here.

[00:18:32]Okay. And I'm going to take a ruler. Now I've got it nice and squared and flush with these two edges that it needs to be squared and flush with, which are the outside right side edge and the bottom edge. Now once I've done that, I'm going to take a ruler and butt up against it. All right. Then I'm going to remove it.

[00:18:58]I'm going to draw a line where that ruler was. Well, first I need to mark also where the top of it's going to be.

[00:19:07]There we go. Now I'll remove it. And I'm just going to take a a stylus or an all or something and mark that mark. Now, I didn't just take a stylus or an all and mark that mark here because then it would actually show on the outside of my my leather when I get it glued down if I get it in the right spot. Since I did it this way, that line is now underneath this, but just barely. I mean, it's just it's just right there. Okay.

[00:19:38]So, one moan. I need to put a bead of of contact cement right there. Put a bead of contact cement on the underside of this piece and then stick those two together. All nice and perfect and prettyl. Like, okay, easier said than done sometimes. Oh, and I guess that means we probably should go ahead and burnish this one side too since it's going to be stuck down right here. I didn't think of that before. I apologize. We are going to do that real quick cuz finished edges are pretty edges.

[00:20:15]We like pretty. Pretty means you can charge somebody more for it. Just so you know in case you in case you're new to this game.

[00:20:32]All right.

[00:20:39]Okay, good and burnished.

[00:20:42]Crisis averted.

[00:20:44]So, once again, put some glue on this bad boy.

[00:20:54]Okay. And I'm just putting glue just to the right side of that line. Just a little bead of it. Doesn't have to be much. Um, that notepad's got to fit in there. So, we can't do a 1/2 inch wide glue line here, you know.

[00:21:12]Um, a lot of people ask me about roughing things up before you glue them.

[00:21:17]And especially on a leather like this, it can be a good idea to uh take a rougher or emery board or something and and just sand the top coat of this leather back. And what that'll do is it can help the glue to adhere a little bit better. Okay. Um even though it's kind of like the shoe hammer, um I I know that it people do it. I know there's a reason they do it.

[00:21:43]I know it's a good reason that they do it, but I've just never gotten into practice of actually doing it too much.

[00:21:49]So I was already laying a bead of glue when I thought, "Hey, I should probably tell these people this."

[00:21:56]Which side did I do? that side. Okay.

[00:22:02]Okay. So, the same bead of glue on the back side of my little notepad holder.

[00:22:25]There we go. We'll let that set up for just a minute. And uh while I clean this giant glob of glue off my glue jar, glue can, glue thingy. My vessel. My glue vessel. Everything's a vessel now.

[00:22:39]There's water vessels. People used to carry water cups, water cans. Now they carry vessels.

[00:22:49]So anyway, all right. So what I'm going to do is you know what? I've got a handy little brass jig for this thing somewhere somewhere.

[00:23:02]This is one of the coolest tools I I own and I don't use it too often. Um, but I have a little brass piece that's like 90°, but it's being looked for right now, but not found. Anyway, whatever.

[00:23:18]Um, so it's it's just a 90 degree called a bump jig that you would throw up there and then you could bump these two pieces of leather up to it and it would square them off to each other.

[00:23:32]So, I'm going to take and make sure that my outside edges line up just perfectly.

[00:23:44]And then I'll stick that glue down. Then I'll take that trusted hammer we talked about and do the thing. Okay, now I need to go to the sewing machine. We're already at that point. I'm going to sew that little line down and I'm going to sew that little line down and that'll be that.

[00:24:07]Um, so this is that brass jig I was talking about. Um, I don't remember where I got it, but I got it somewhere.

[00:24:14]Woodworking stores have a lot of things like this. But I can bump it up against this, bump the other piece of leather up against it, and now they're all going to be square and flat with each other.

[00:24:24]Okay, so pretty handy little thing. It doesn't have to be a fancy little brass one like this. Um, but they are handy.

[00:24:32]So, I'm going to stop the camera. I'm going to go to the sewing machine. And, uh, when I come back, we're just going to stitch those two little lines and then we'll bring the camera back here for more assembly. See you soon.

[00:24:45]All right, folks. So, here we are at the sewing machine. Okay. Again, on this, I'm just going to sew that little side right there. And then on this one, I'm just going to sew that side that I glued down. Um, this is a Cobra class 18 sewing machine. Okay. Um, by far my absolute favorite sewing machine. I am using size 92 thread and a size 18 needle. All right. I I've recently started using a little bit smaller thread. I I've been using 138 for a really long time and I do like 138, but um I don't know, the smaller the projects, the more I keep refining my stitch and getting it a little bit smaller and stuff. And now that I've been making the sneakers especially, like that's really turned me on to um 92 and even 69 size thread. So, um, going to start out, uh, a little more than a quarter inch, I guess, away from the top of that that little pocket. I'm going to start out in reverse and just do a couple of reverse stitches here till I get back to the top of that pocket. And then I'll go forward.

[00:25:59]And then about a quarter of an inch from the bottom, I'm going to stop again and reverse it again.

[00:26:10]and do a couple of back stitches. And there we go. First piece is already sewn. Again, I feel like I'm kind of cheating you by using a sewing machine cuz I realize not everyone that uh watches my videos owns sewing machines, but um this is very easy to hand sew.

[00:26:27]It's just more timeconuming and time is the one thing I don't have. um packing up all my tools and stuff to go to the Sheridan Leather Show and teach some classes there and uh so I just don't have a whole weekend to uh to build this on on the video. Okay, so there's that stitch right there. And now we're going to come over here to this piece and we're going to stitch it too. Now I'm starting at the bottom because when I'm using my sewing machine, it has a left toe presser foot on it here. Um when I'm using my sewing machine, I like to keep my presser foot on the thick part of my leather. Okay, that one the the presser foot's the one on the edge. The center foot's the one there in the middle. And um I like to keep it on the thick part of my leather. If I spun it around, I would need to sew so close to the edge that my presser foot was hanging off the edge of the piece that I'm sewing down.

[00:27:16]So that's why I'm going this direction on this one. Sewing from the bottom up.

[00:27:22]Okay. So again, bring it in a little more than a quarter of an inch. Do a couple of back stitches and go forward.

[00:27:38]I'm hoping I remember I um when I toled that piece up yesterday, I did not put my makaker mark on it. And I really want to remember to do that when I get back over to the desk. I'm not sure what made me think of it, but here we are.

[00:27:54]I have a bad habit of that since I make a lot of things on videos and and stuff like that. I I have a really bad habit of not using my makaker mark and I love my makaker mark. So, I want to use it more.

[00:28:10]Okay, easy peasy lemon squeezy.

[00:28:17]So, that's sewn on. Okay, real simple stitch. And uh we'll go back over to the desk and do a lot more assembly. And when we come back over here in a few minutes, I mean, we'll be sewing around the perimeter of this whole thing. And I mean, quick and easy project, especially if it's already cut out in the project box. We'll be back.

[00:28:36]All right. And we're back. And I did go ahead and um That looks kind of splotchy now cuz um I used Duff's leather conditioner on this. And it doesn't completely waterproof this leather, but it does a really good job of um kind of water resisting it a little bit. So, I just spray the water on there and kind of rub it in a little bit to get it through that duff so that I can put my uh my makaker mark on there. Okay. And again, it looks all splotchy, but it'll dry out nice and even. Um I get questions about my makaker mark. Um and I guess I should have done it on camera, but this is one of the two that I have.

[00:29:12]Um, this is the smaller one that I just used on here. My other one's quite a bit bigger for larger projects. Um, but anyway, it was made for me by Steel Stamps Incorporated in Boise, Idaho. Um, Tim Perty over there is a really good guy and I like to mention him anytime that I can on my videos. He doesn't pay me to do it. I don't get any perks other than Tim's a good man. He's a good friend and he has an amazing product.

[00:29:38]Now, keep in mind if you ever want a steel stamp like this, they are not cheap. They will last you forever and they are very, very well made. Um, but keyword there, they are not cheap. So, make sure you've got a logo that you love. Once you have your forever logo, give it a forever home.

[00:29:58]There's my speech about that.

[00:30:02]All right, so that's drying out more and more as we talk. Looks good. happy with it. All right, giggity. So, um I don't know why I didn't think of this, but I could have just glued this entire piece down while I was gluing that one side.

[00:30:21]Again, I I there's no reason I didn't do it. Um so, if you were watching that part of the video and following along and you were thinking, why wouldn't he glue the whole thing down? Well, it's because he doesn't always think clearly and sometimes just works that way. Okay. So, do that little ad thing, you know, kind of like on if you're watching uh America's Got Talent or something, you know, they're always drinking out of like Dunk the judges are always drinking out of like Duncan cups with the logo always facing the camera. So, there you go. My makaker's contact cement.

[00:30:55]All right. Um, so I'm going to take and put glue along this edge and this edge and then the bottom sides of these two in the same manner that I did before.

[00:31:05]Um, if you use one of these little spatulas like I do, one thing I've learned is once that glue kind of dries a little bit and it feels rubbery, I just rub it on my my desk and that stuff comes right off. It's amazing.

[00:31:18]It works so good.

[00:31:21]Clean and ready to go. Now, if you leave it for a week and it gets really hard, it'll still work, but not near as easy and fast as what you just saw there. Um, it's kind of like I tell people if they spill glue on their desk, wait just a couple of minutes for it to get nice and rubbery and then just roll it off. Don't don't try to rub on it while it's still getting wet because it will smear everywhere and get into the pores of whatever your desk is made out of, whether that be stone or um wood or cutting surface.

[00:31:55]I should do a video where I just spill glue on my desk and like, "All right, let's figure out how to clean this up.

[00:32:00]Let's talk about why we do it this way and not that way."

[00:32:05]The problem is I'm scared and then every video after that I'll just have glue all over my desk.

[00:32:18]All right. So on those edges now on the backs of these edges. And again this would have been easier if this were laying flat on my desk. But no, that's not how Aaron rolls. Aaron likes to do things the hard way.

[00:32:34]I was very upset one day when I learned that every lesson doesn't have to be learned the hard way. Like for the first 45 years of my life, that was the only way I knew. And now I'm 46. And even though I know a different way, guess what I'm still used to?

[00:33:00]Glue, glue, glue.

[00:33:08]We're going to stick this down and then we're going to get real messy as we just slather glue all over the back of this piece and the back of our toled piece.

[00:33:20]Okay, we're going to give that a couple of minutes. I'm going to pause the camera. We're going to give that a couple of minutes to kind of set up and and get ready to stick down. And when I come back, we'll stick this piece to the back of our tool piece. We'll be back.

[00:33:34]All right. Gave this a couple of minutes to set up. Now, I'm just going to lay it down.

[00:33:40]Stick it down. Take my favorite hammer.

[00:33:48]Tapity tap tap. Okay. Also, the roller is really good. Here in a second, I'm about to glue a much larger piece together, and I'll be using the roller for that.

[00:33:59]All right. So, what do we do now?

[00:34:06]Now, this piece and this piece are going to just straight up laminate together.

[00:34:12]Okay? This entire piece will be covered by this piece. Okay? And this piece is larger than this piece.

[00:34:20]And so, I'm going to put glue all over both of them. And then, I'm going to come back and I'm going to use that fancy bump jig that I found a while ago.

[00:34:27]I lied. Someone found it for me. But anyway, um I'll bump those two corners together really nicely and lay all this together. And it laid perfectly this time, but it's also not covered in glue. Once it's covered in glue, I promise we'll have more problems than that.

[00:34:45]That's the way the cookie crumbles.

[00:34:47]Okay. And we'll just glue those two pieces together all nice and pretty like.

[00:34:52]So, all that to be said, we got to spread some glue. Um, it's going to take a while. I'm going to record it, but hopefully in my editing I will remember to go back and like make it go faster, you know. We'll see.

[00:36:27]All right. So, I got a little bit crazy with the glue, as you may have seen, even though I've fast forwarded the video. Um, I got a lot crazy with the glue. I uh on this this liner piece, I decided I'm just going to pour a bunch of it on there and spread it out while I poured too much. So, um all that to say, it's all under control now, but it does take longer for it to set up and dry when we do that. Now, once again, I'm going to make sure this thing's orientated right. Okay, I've got my toolled cover here, my makaker's mark at the bottom center over here. So when I turn this over and set it to it, then they should be properly orientated.

[00:37:05]Okay. Now, again, I've only got one shot at this. If this sticks too good, um, this glue is really good stuff. And once it's stuck, it's stuck.

[00:37:29]Not bad. Not bad. Okay.

[00:37:34]And I want to make sure that tooling there is going to try to not be flat. So I want to make sure and flatten it as I glue it down. And then I'm going to take my roller tool also and uh roll on it because it actually looks pretty rough.

[00:37:47]But I think some of that's also the globs of glue I put on it. Sorry.

[00:37:59]Yep. It's definitely the globs of glue.

[00:38:02]Oops. So, like I said, I got a little overzealous with the glue and that does stink and it will show on the final product, but not way too much cuz most of that's going to be covered up with this. And so, anyway, it's just a little bit bumpy under there. So, be careful with that, guys. Okay. I've been doing this a long time and I still make mistakes. It do happen. I promise you that. Six, seven, 10 times a day.

[00:38:32]Um, all right. Now, now that I got those two pieces stuck together, I can go ahead and trim my lining piece.

[00:38:44]All right. So, I'm going to take a ruler here and put up against the edge of my my veg tan very, very carefully.

[00:38:58]And then take my sharp knife, cut that excess liner off about like so.

[00:39:11]Go ahead and get that off my desk and in the trash since it's still got glue everywhere now. Same thing over here.

[00:39:19]Let's do it again.

[00:39:35]There we go.

[00:39:38]Another good trim job right there.

[00:39:41]Now, I noticed when I was gluing it up that due to the stretch and everything of the tooling piece, this is not square right here. Okay? It just it stretches down just a little bit right there. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to This is a snap blade knife. And I'm going to put a snap the last part of the blade off to get a fresh part of blade because that's it's very thin, very difficult to trim something so thin right there. So break that off and then just lightly trim. Okay. And since it's so sharp with its fresh blade, it makes it almost effortless.

[00:40:28]All right. And aesthetically, I can tell that it's much nicer there now. So it's more pleasing to the eye.

[00:40:39]Okay, now that we've done that, we need to glue this part over here.

[00:40:50]And then once we're done with that, we're going back to the sewing machine and we're going to sew a per perimeter stitch line all the way around it. And we're going to call her done. I mean, that's where we're at, guys. That's uh that's how easy this project can be. Now granted, I spent several hours tooling it yesterday, but again, I am an extremely slow tooler. Um, I get very easily distracted. I bounce around from tool to tool. PE, there are much more efficient people out there at tooling than me. Um, I do enjoy tooling. I used I I don't do near as much of it now as I used to do, but I still do enjoy it. All right. So, I'm going to take and I'm going to put a little fingerprint impression just underneath the two corners here of where this thing's going to be so that I'll know where to put my glue.

[00:41:41]And then, just like the other pieces that we've done, just a very thin bead of contact cement.

[00:42:08]there and there. And now also on corresponding corners here and here.

[00:42:13]Okay. So that way we put here and here with there and there and smash them.

[00:42:32]Love the smell of contact cement in the morning. I tell you what.

[00:42:41]Kind of excited to get this video finished because my son wants to come do some leather work today. He is 14 and anytime he actually wants to do leather work, I'm like, heck yeah, buddy. Let's do this. So, he saw something I had made recently that he really liked and he wants to try to make it, too. So, not too many 14year-olds going to junior high that are wearing shoes that they made, but he is.

[00:43:12]All right, that was pretty thin on the glue, so I'm not too worried about how long it needs to set up.

[00:43:19]So once again, I'll just grab my little bump jig here and bumpity bump.

[00:43:28]Kachchow.

[00:43:34]Okay. And then just for the fun of it, hammer, hammer, hammer.

[00:43:45]All right, one more last thing and then like I said, we're going to the sewing machine and we're going to put a perimeter stitch on this. But first, I'd like to make it to where the corners are not square. I like a little bit of a rounded corner.

[00:44:03]All right.

[00:44:06]So, I'm going to take this little corner punch and I'm just going to barely round the corners of this thing because square corners um fray for lack of a better word. Um they don't hold up too well. So, I like a little bit of a rounded corner. And it doesn't have to be completely round by any means. You can just kind of knock off that sharp point and you'll have a better project after a month of use than if you'd left it sharp and square.

[00:44:38]Guaranteed.

[00:44:48]There we go.

[00:44:50]So, I didn't round them too much. Just a tiny bit. All right, we're going to go back over to the sewing machine and um sew the sew the perimeter of this thing.

[00:44:59]So, here we go.

[00:45:02]All right, guys. We're back over here at my trusty class 18 sewing machine here.

[00:45:08]All right. Um I'm not going to use an edge guide or anything like that. I've got plenty of experience on this machine that I can keep a a nice uh stitch line close to the edge and parallel to the edge. Um, yeah. So, we're just going to start stitching. Once again, this is size 92 thread with a size 18 needle. And, uh, here we go. Round the outside. Round the outside.

[00:45:45]I'm using this kind of golden color thread that we started using on a few projects here in the shop. And uh I really like it. And then the funny thing is it really actually blends in with this uh russet leather here. Um I don't even remember where I got this thread. I bought it to make a certain pair of sneakers. That's the other thing about getting into the shoe making thing is I've got a lot more thread than I ever had before. I never thought I'd need so many colors, but it's like every project I'm like, "Oh, I need new color thread."

[00:46:19]So, yeah.

[00:46:25]If you notice, I'm just keeping this my my pointer finger of my right hand just right here on the um table next to this the uh project. And that's kind of my edge guide. I do have edge guides for all my sewing machines, but most of them are usually not actually on the machine.

[00:46:43]Unless I'm doing a lot of strap work or something like that, that's just going to be just tons of straight edge work.

[00:46:48]I'll put them on there for the convenience factor cuz then I can use that right hand to drink coffee while I sew or something important like that.

[00:47:04]So, we're just going all the way around the edge, guys. There's nothing to it.

[00:47:07]If I was hand stitching, I'd be about 15 stitches in already.

[00:47:13]But since I'm machine sewing, I'm 3/4 of the way around.

[00:47:26]So pretty.

[00:47:40]I have to find a notepad that's going to fit in this thing. I don't know that I have one. One will come with the project box. I failed to mention that, but uh yeah, I forgot to grab one um when I grabbed all the stuff to make this kit.

[00:47:55]So, I think I have a halfused one in one of my other notebooks.

[00:48:28]All right, back to our first stitch.

[00:48:30]Now, I didn't back stitch when I started because we're going all the way around the project. So, we just come back to our first stitch and then do a couple over stitches here. And boom, we done.

[00:48:46]It's always, of course, a little bit of a prayer set as we turn it over to make sure that all the layers got caught nicely and we didn't do anything crazy.

[00:48:57]And I'd say that that looks pretty good.

[00:49:00]All right. Again, in the glistening of the light there, you can see the the bumps from all my glue. That is that was totally preventable. That was my bad. I did that wrong. I poured way too much glue on this thing and I hate myself for it, but I'll get over it.

[00:49:15]All right, we're going to go back to the desk. We're going to finish our edges and then I'm going to show you how I'm going to fold this thing closed for the first time.

[00:49:23]All right, back at the workbench. This thing's turned out just fine. I really like it already. I've got a Berry King um grooved edger size number one and I'm going to just edge inside and out with it right quick. And then I'm going to burnish just as I did before using my special little glue and water mixture.

[00:49:48]And then I'm gonna sit and stare at it and talk about how pretty it is and be mad at myself for the lumpy glue job and, you know, kick myself for the rest of the day about it. I got a 20our drive to Sheridan in a couple of days. I bet I think of it more than a dozen times.

[00:50:06]Like, dang it. What was I thinking?

[00:50:15]All right.

[00:50:28]I think I need to sharpen this edger. It sure acting a little rough on me. And that's not how it should be.

[00:50:41]But I'll be real honest. I'm not super great at sharpening edggers, so I don't do it a lot.

[00:50:50]I'll be right back. Somebody's knocking on the door.

[00:50:54]All right. Sorry about that. I was expecting my son to come up here, but not this early. But he's here now, so that's why there was knocking on the door. Um, so anyway, we uh we're just edging this interior cover here.

[00:51:14]And we're done with that. Now I'm going to do the burnishing. All right. Um, again, same exact manner as I did before on the other smaller pieces. Um, just put my magical burnishing solution on there and give it a rubby rub with my uh my canvas.

[00:51:36]Okay. And I'm going to do this one edge on camera and then I'll save some video time. Do all the other edges and you'll just know that you know I did it.

[00:51:51]I love how this russet leather burnishes. It burnishes so nicely. And then again, after I've done the edge, I'll put it down and I'll burnish just that top corner. I'll flip it over and I'll burnish that bottom corner just to really complete a nice looking edge on it. Okay. Not sure how well you can see that, but it is a handsome edge.

[00:52:14]All right, I'm going to pause the video.

[00:52:16]I'm going to do the rest of those edges and then um we'll come back.

[00:52:23]All right, got my edges nicely burnished. Now, what I want to do is I want to create a little bit of a fold here and I want to very lightly get that edge damp.

[00:52:37]Okay, I'm not soaking it, but I'm getting it damp so that it'll stretch a little bit better so that I can fold this thing closed.

[00:52:47]I'm going to line up my edges and my corners and give it a good first fold so that it always knows where it needs to fold.

[00:53:03]Okay.

[00:53:04]And this is where if you use too thick of a liner, you can uh have problems because it won't want to fold and stay folded.

[00:53:16]But there we are. Now, I'm going to take some weight and put on this and let it just dry like that.

[00:53:25]And uh maybe a little bit of hammer action. Not hitting it hard. I don't want to break the surface of the leather. Okay.

[00:53:37]Just want to stretch it a bit. So anyway, there it is, guys.

[00:53:42]She done. And she looks great, I think.

[00:53:46]Minus that lumpy glue thing.

[00:53:49]All right.

[00:53:51]So, there it is right there. I'm going to put it under some sort of weight or something. See, we did a really good job gluing that. And so, therefore, there's not giant wrinkles right there. You want glue all over that thing. Um maybe not as thick as I did it.

[00:54:06]All right. So, um again, uh this has been the mini padfolio.

[00:54:13]It is a absolutely great project. I really love these things. Let me find my little notepad that's in another notebook here.

[00:54:25]Fits that little 5 by8 notebook right there. Okay.

[00:54:30]um to put it in there. I'm going to try it at first and if it doesn't seem to want to go in, then I may use a ruler or something to uh break those glue seams.

[00:54:39]No, it's just fine.

[00:54:42]Look at that. Looks like it was made to be there, doesn't it? Okay. And again, this is just an old used notebook. It's got a few pages missing out of it, but there should be right there. Um again, I'm going to put some weight on it. Let it dry and then that'll be that. So, I uh it's a great little project. It doesn't have to be toolled if you don't want to tool it.

[00:55:10]Sorry. There we go. Great little project. Doesn't have to be toled if you want to make it out of uh nice leather that you um that you're not tooling or maybe you're just not a tooler, which is more than fine. Um, yeah, but it's still a nice little project that can be uh can be made um fairly quickly. Even making it as a video, uh, minus the tooling, of course, I've only been at it for about 2 hours. Um, and if it wasn't a video, I'm very sure I could have gotten it together way quicker than that. But I like to talk a lot. I like to overexlain things. I like to make sure that hopefully there's no questions left uh unanswered when when we're done. So, till next time guys, I'm Aaron Heheiser of Makers Leather Supply and I hope you have a great day.