Menu Covers

I made these in about 1981 for the National Parks Service in Tsitsikama - The flowers are all indigenous to the area.

I later heard that these were stolen a few months after I left the National Park (I had worked there for six months to wait for my final semester at University.)

A few projects from long ago

I unearthed some old photo albums and found these pictures of some of the projects I did about thirty years ago!

This is a hand guard for ten pin bowling.  I think the cutting design was from an old Leathercrafter magazine, but it was my own first rather successfulness attempt at a tooling design.

I was in the Voortrekkers, the South African equivalent of the Scouts, and in 1981 I made these quivers that carried messages all over South Africa to a celebratory conference for the organization's 50th year.

Skull on a Book

I am binding some magazines for the local guild and decided to have fun with the carving of the covers.  the topmost magazine in this volume had a picture of a skull covered in leather so I turned it into a picture that I could carve.

After all the carving was done, I covered the design with two layers of Super Sheen and the back ground with two layers of Block-out.

After it had dried, you cannot see where the Super Sheen and Block-out had been applied.

Then I covered the whole picture with Eco-Flo High-Liter and quickly wiped the excess off with a damp cloth.  Now the difference between the parts resisted with Super Sheen and with Block-out became very prominent.  It turned out exactly as I wanted, so I was well pleased.

I followed the instructions in Tony Lair's book about getting a Sheridan style finish to a carving after being inspired by Mike Pederson.  I will see if I can get a photo of the check book Mike had done in the same way.