When you take up leatherworking as a hobby, you’ll quickly learn about all the leather-making tools you can experiment with. Your leather stamping tools are some of the most important ones in your kit. They can help you create unique and beautiful patterns on your leather projects—here are a few beginner tips for using leather stamping tools.
Working With a Leather Stamp
You’ll use tools like mallets and sponges alongside the actual stamping tool. The stamps themselves come in a wide range of shapes and patterns so that you can make any design you want. When choosing a stamping tool, pay attention to its durability to ensure you’re buying a high-quality product.
Using the tool is simple, but knowing how to use other tools with it will help you make your patterns shine. After dampening the leather with a sponge or cloth, but not soaking it, use the mallet to tap the stamp’s handle and ensure the pattern is thoroughly pressed into the leather.
Acquiring Leather Stamp Sets
A great beginner tip for using leather stamping tools is to invest in leather stamp sets to help you form a full kit. These sets have pre-designed stamping tools that are commonly used and often work well with each other, and will guide you until you’re more comfortable with the craft. You can also expect leather stamp kits to be of good, reliable quality, with the only limit being the quantity of tools you have access to. The absolute best quality stamps available, from what we have seen, are from Barry King. If you are looking to buy Barry King stamps though, be prepared to spend a pretty penny, or several!
Stamping the Leather
Lastly, the kind of leather you’re stamping matters just as much as the tool itself. In particular, you’ll want to make sure to use only vegetable tanned leather. Stamping leather requires that you case, or soak the leather, with water, and only vegetable tanned leather will take water and accept molding or tooling. Chrome tanned leathers will either be entirely water resistant, or will not hold the stamp or mold you set it to after wetting the leather.
