Horween American Football Leather

Well, sort of... And then not quite

I just purchased some new leather and I have been wanting to show you pictures of it. Unfortunately the weather hasn't been friendly lately, so it has been impossible to take some pictures in good, natural lightning.

The leather was bought from a very friendly man in the US, who got the leather from his job. Now this isn't the regular football leather, that the American tannery Horween supplies to the likes of Wilson (check this video out), but it was specially tanned by Horween, according to this man. Knowing the relationship between Horween and the company, that he worked for, I do believe him.

Like I said, the leather was specially tanned for a very special project. Somebody got the idea that if the grain of the leather was inverted, then the ball would float better. Just like it is the case with the golf ball and its dimples. So instead of a convex grain, the grain was concave. The idea was patented - along with a lot of other things - but when the final project was realized, nobody seemed to care. They were all pretty satisfied with the regular football. This meant that the whole project was scrapped pretty quickly and instead the man, I finally bought the leather from, took it home with the intention of making leather aprons, but that didn't work out either.

I should probably have thought twice about buying two large hides of a leather, which were used in not only one, but two failed projects. But I loved the story and I love the colour and the grain of the leather. It is a bovine leather, but the grain texture is unlike anything I have ever seen. It could give the impression of an exotic leather, or possibly fish or bird skin. But it isn't and I have to say that the leather feels very hard wearing, although it is slightly thinner than the leather I normally work with.

If you have any good ideas to, what this leather can or should be turned into - not footballs, please - then please share your ideas in the comment section or send me and e-mail, I would love to hear from you.

Crafts - Key Wallet - Quick Proto

The weather has been horrible today. Overcast and constant showers. I was hoping to spend this day taking some pictures of a new acquisition (in natural light that is) and some other good stuff, but that couldn't be done. So instead I stayed in the basement making a proto type of a key wallet, that I have been meaning to make for my brother-in-law for too long.

I say that this is a proto because I made it very quickly and I didn't have all the right hardware for it. For instance I could have used some smaller snaps and surely also some double capped rivets. And lastly I busted my leather scissor some days ago because I managed to use it on some metal, which is a stupid thing to do. This meant I couldn't round the corners, as well as I'm normally able to do. Anyways, enough with the poor excuses for being a bad leather worker.

For the wallet I used a new, very special leather (from Horween...) with a great story, that I'll tell about some other day and all brass hardware. The inside was treated with Tragacanth and the outside was just brushed over with some Neatsfoot oil, which is also why it seems a bit stained or uneven in the colour. But please go to Flickr and see some higher resolution pics - blogger portrays pictures very poorly.

I sincerely hope that it will get some good use and I sincerely hope that the political party, that my brother-in-law is so involved in, will get a lot of votes at the election this Thursday.

Lastly I would like to thank everybody for the great response that the laundry bag got. I will definitely be making more. Tomorrow I'll be going to Copenhagen to visit friends and family, but I'll still be blogging, albeit not as much.