Hand Carved Leather Shield - with Celtic knots

This piece is quite a bit different from a lot of my other work but it really was a lot of fun to make. What made it so fun was that I was really branching out into something new. I've done a lot of leather work before but not something like this.

First off let me say that the pattern for this shield is not mine. I got the pattern as a free download from Tandy Leather. All of the work on this shield however is mine. This is by far the largest leather piece I had done to that point, the shield is 24 inches in diameter, so it's full size.

The tooling work on it is quite extensive as you can see. It took me close to 40 hours to make this, but the end result made it totally worth it.

I made this shield as a special gift for a sword and arms collector.

The back of the shield is covered in a buck-skin suede with some strong leather strips for the arm straps. The core of this shield is 3/4 inch plywood rather painstakingly cut into a circle.

Here is a close up just for the fun of it. This way you can see the leather tooling better.

Oak End Table with Stained Glass Inlay - Craft Tips on Joinery

There are lots of different joinery techniques when it comes to woodworking. Some of them are very inelegant like broad-headed nails while others are the complete opposite and the joinery is one of the nicest features of the piece, like hand cut dovetails.

I am certainly no expert on joinery, although I have tried a number of techniques.

On this end table with the stained glass inlay I used two kinds of joinery. To assemble the table legs to the aprons I used the biscuit joiner my brother gave me (thanks Scott!). I also used the biscuit joiner to join the table top together. The biscuit joiner is an easy form of joinery, but creates strong joints, plus they are invisible which makes for nice clean pieces.

If you'll notice in the pictures of the table, the aprons have a slight recess from the table legs. This element adds a bit of shadow and gives the piece some additional character versus just having the aprons flush with the legs. To achieve the recess is simply a matter of offsetting the biscuit joints on the legs and the aprons by the amount of the desired recess, in this case I believe I did 1/8 inch. That means the holes for the biscuits on the legs are 1/8 inch further from the edge of the wood on the legs than on the aprons.

The other type of joinery I used on this piece was to join the table top to the leg assembly. In wood working one thing you need to account for is wood movement in opposite directions. The stress movement creates can split joints apart. In this case it wasn't much of a concern because the table top itself is small and also because the table top isn't comprised of a single slab of wood. Still it's better to be cautious than to have a piece not hold together, so I used glue blocks. I took small pieces of oak (less than 1 inch in length) and glued them to the underside of the table top and the inside of the aprons. I also pined them in place with brads so they'd stay in position until the glue dried. Again this is a fairly simple type of joinery but it's invisible (unless you are looking at the table from underneath) and will allow for wood movement if that were to become an issue.

By the way, the glass top on this table (not the stained glass inlay, which I made) but the single piece glass top, was very expensive. It cost as much as all of the rest of the materials combined, I had to have it custom made. If anyone knows of a good source for glass with finished edges please let me know. Thanks!

Oak End Table with Stained Glass Inlay - Craft Technique

The aprons on this oak end table are all curved, which in addition to being a nice design accent helps to keep the piece from feeling too blocky.

There is a fairly simple technique for making sure all of the aprons have the exact same curve so the piece is nice and even. To start out I took a piece of MDF (medium density fiberboard) cut the same length and width as the table's aprons will be. I use MDF because there is no need to waste good wood for a template part. On the MDF I trace out the curve I want (using a large compass to make it nice and even.

The I take my MDF template to the band saw and cut out the curve. Band saw cuts are fairly rough so it's necessary to smooth it out afterwards. Once I am satisfied with the shape of my MDF template I then trace the curve from the template onto all 4 of my oak aprons. I cut all of the aprons on the band saw as well. It's important to cut a little bit proud of the curve line - in other words leave a little extra, don't cut right to the line. Once I have all of my aprons cut I can then match them up to the MDF template one by one.

I clamp 1 apron to the template at a time and use a flush trimming router bit to finish the apron curve. The router bit uses my MDF template as a guide and cuts the actual apron to an exact match of the template. By doing this with all 4 aprons they end up being an exact match of each other.

Oak End Table with Stained Glass Inlay

I like this piece for the bold color in the stained glass, yet the practicality in its use. This is a fully useable end table, with a 1/4 inch piece of glass over the top to protect the surface. I really like making useable pieces, this way my work isn't just decorative, it's also functional craftsmanship.

I visualize this as being the perfect piece to site between a pair of arm chairs and having a lamp sit on top of it - preferably a stained glass lamp :) The table top is 19 inches by 18 inches and the table stand 19 inches high.

The stained glass piece is focused around the center bevel cluster. It may be a little hard to tell but all of the clear glass, which in these pictures appear white because of the background, are all beveled glass pieces. The pattern is a fairly simple geometric pattern that I designed that I feel makes the piece beautiful without being too busy.

The legs are tapered on two sides to keep the table from feeling blocky. Also the table aprons all have a gentle curve to keep the table looking light as well.

The oak table is finished with tung oil to bring out the natural grain of the wood. Tung oil is a great finish for pieces where you don't want to add stain but still want the wood grain to really stand out.

Victorian Stained Glass Light with Tooled Leather Crest – Craft Technique

The tooled leather sunburst on the top of this piece is also in a Victorian style. I actually got the idea from a Victorian Stained Glass pattern. I adapted the pattern to work for leather and then expanded on it.

One of the big differences in working with leather versus stained glass is the level of detail. The detail in stained glass comes from the glass itself, whereas the detail in the leather comes from the artist carving and tooling the leather. So I created an outline for this leather crest using the stained glass and then came up with a design to fill it in.

What really brings out the designs and patterns in tooled leather is the texturing you put in it. Tooling leather is actually very much like bas-relief carving. Whether a pattern is very detailed or very simple it doesn't come to life until you add the tooling that gives it it's 3 dimensionality. The play of light over the leather is what gives the tooling it's shadow. This shadow creates the depth to the piece.

Victorian Stained Glass Light with Tooled Leather Crest - Craft Tip

One of the unique challenges with this piece was the assembly of the stained glass cylinder.

A typical stained glass panel is easy to assemble. You just use a flat mdf board with push blocks or tacks to hold the glass in position and then you tack solder the glass. Tack soldering is a technique where you apply small beads of solder to the joints in the stained glass piece. You essentially are creating small spots where the pieces of glass adhere to each other. Well really, you are creating small spots where the copper foil on the pieces of glass adhere to each other, because the solder wouldn’t stick to just the glass alone.

Anyways, when you make a piece that’s 3 dimensional, such as a lampshade or in this case a 2 foot plus half cylinder you need to have the glass assembled in it’s end shape. In other words, before I could start soldering any part of this piece I had to have all 300 plus pieces of glass already in place and in the shape of the half cylinder. That’s not particularly easy since the glass isn’t inclined to just stay whereever you put it, gravity being what it is and all.

The form for my half cylinder was a piece of 4″ diameter PVC pipe cut lengthwise into 2 halves. So I needed to find a way to have all of the stained glass pieces sit in place over this PVC pipe, but also be able to remove the piece easily from the pipe once I had soldered it. My solution was electrical tape. Lots and lots of electrical tape. I laid all of the stained glass pieces out flat in the proper pattern and then ran many strips of electrical tape across the piece until I was sure I had every single one of the pieces of glass partially covered by the electrical tape. Then I very carefully picked the whole thing up and transferred it onto the PVC pipe to give it the half cylinder shape I wanted.

Once I had it on the pipe I was able to start tack soldering pieces together and gradually removed strips of electrical tape until I finally had all of the joints tack soldered together and no electrical tape left. Only then was I able to start doing the full soldering of the stained glass cylinder. Yes, it was very time consuming but the end result I think was well worth it.

Victorian Stained Glass Light with Tooled Leather Crest

This is one of my favorite pieces to date. It integrates all 3 mediums I like to work in, wood working, stained glass and tooled leather. It is also pretty substantial in size, standing in total just over 3 feet, which makes it fairly dramatic.

The wood for this is oak, with a decorative moulding and a dark stain. The piece is hung via a french cleat and the moulding makes it flush with the wall. The stained glass actually sits in a routed curve on the base which helps hold it in place.

The tooled leather top is done in something of a sunburst pattern, which ties it in with the light below. The leather makes it look either as though the sun were illuminating the stained glass or the whole piece is a candle, which is kind of fun.

With this piece I moved into working in 3 dimensions with stained glass, the entire stained glass piece is actually a half cylinder about 4 inches in diameter. This roundness of the stained glass brings it out and allowed me to backlight it with a string of LED lights (very energy efficient and have a life span of about 50,000 hours). The are over 300 individual pieces of glass in the stained glass cylinder which is done in a Victorian style.

During the day time all 3 elements of the piece work together, the wood craft, the tooled leather and the stained glass. At night the backlit stained glass really glows and changes the dimension of the piece into something even more dramatic.

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Welcome to Robert’s Workshop

Welcome to my workshop blog. The blog will feature the work of Robert Golden artist/craftsman. I work in wood, stained glass and hand carved leather. My goal with my pieces is to create functional art, that is both beautiful and useable. I try to blend the wood, stained glass and leather together in my pieces to create truly original work.

As you’ll see from the different pieces I share I don’t limit myself to particular styles of work. I really like to explore the creative boundaries of what I can come up with that incorporates these 3 types of medium.

In the posts in my blog I will talk about individual pieces. I will share tips & techniques, talk about the tools I use, even have some videos of me working on pieces.

Thanks for stopping in and I hope you enjoy my work!

-Robert Golden