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- Leather Crafting Tools and Machines
How Our Products Are Made
We make all of our leather products in-house in Topanga, CA. With the right tools and machines we can cut out each piece with more precision, craft products with higher efficiency, and ultimately reduce overall leather waste. Below are highlights of some of our workhorses.
A press that likes to work under pressure
All projects start with cutting out leather or canvas pieces. This can be done manually with hand cutting tools, but we prefer to use our eight-ton press to die cut the material with precision. Die cut produces consistent cuts every time but it can be expensive for the dies, so it's better suited for higher volume productions.
In addition to cutting, the press also stamps out logos and designs on the leather using metal stamps. We like to be creative and use different objects such as bike cogs to imprint the cog teeth on some of our products for that unique look.
Burnisher for the perfect edge
To give finished leather products that glossy and smooth finish on the edges, we have a burnishing machine that does it perfectly for us. One side of the machine is a sander that sands the edges flat and removes extra unwanted material. Then we use the burnishing side to "burn" the edges so they come out super smooth with a shine.
This burnisher is a huge time saver because the spindle rotates at such high speed that a hand tool simply cannot match.
Skiver is a real helper
Skiver is a machine that reduces the thickness of the leather based on the product type so that the skived part becomes more pliable, thus easier to work with. Our amazing skiving machine has many adjustments and can trim down a piece of leather in seconds instead of minutes by hand.
The skiver is a game changer because it allows us to sew super heavy-duty leather and still be able to fold the edges when we need to. It opens up the possibilities for all types of leather that we work with.
Bonnie and Clyde sewing machines
We have two industrial leather sewing machines that can tackle just about any project we throw at them. Clyde is the bigger of the two that can sew through 1" thick leather with ease. It's a very impressive machine indeed. We use Clyde to sew the thick leather bottom to the heavy-duty canvas body of our popular tool bag.
Bonnie is the smaller stitcher of the two and she's great for more intricate items like the leather menu covers we made for Sophy Hotel in Chicago.
We also added a third sewing machine called the Sheriff, made by Juki, to handle thinner and more delicate items.
