Plague Doctor Mask

Greetings friends,

Well, we're in the midst of a global pandemic... The coronavirus has halted the economy, reached 3 million cases worldwide, and exposed which world leaders are capable of handling this type of outbreak, and which aren't...

I thought it would be wonderfully fitting to share an old project of mine, made in the fall of 2018. This was my first dive into the world of leathercrafting, and it was loads of fun to make. This will probably be a relatively short post since the majority of the project involved stitching, which let's face it is not riveting... 😜 Lets dive in!

I found the plans for this mask on Etsy. There were many choices available, but since I was looking to create the most traditional looking mask that I could, this one looked the best to me. For the sake of authenticity, I also opted to use undyed leather in the hopes that over time, a patina would develop as the mask is worn and a more weathered appearance would result. I used some dark thread as an accent for the light leather.

Working from the pattern, I cut out all the pieces required for the mask. I used a surgical-grade scalpel for cutting which created nice clean edges on all the pieces. Once everything was cut out, I punched holes along all edges that would become seams. The following pictures lay show the progression of stitching seams together one after another. Each piece builds on the one before, and the whole mask comes together rather nicely.

This piece becomes the bottom of the "beak." The holes 

punched on the sides of the seam are vents for breathing.

The two halves of the face of the mask were each stitched to their respective side 

on the bottom piece, then folded over and stitched along the top to close the beak.

The forehead piece was stitched to the top of the beak first, then connected at the sides. 

Here it's easy to see the rivet holes on the sides of the mask where the straps would attach.

Sadly, I forgot to closely document the attachment of the straps, but 

behind the head is a belt buckle that holds everything together.

I was very pleased with my handiwork, especially given my inexperience in leathercrafting. This certainly motivated me to do more leather projects, some of which have already been shown on the blog and others which will be posted later on. I ultimately would love to work on a complete plague doctor costume, but that would surely take some time!

Thanks for reading,

Juju

BMW R65 Restoration - Part 2 - Painting the Frame

Greetings friends,

This is a continuation of my series of posts documenting the restoration of my BMW R65. For the previous (first) post, click here.

Where I left off, I had begun disassembling the forks and was looking to get the front rim fixed. This portion of the restoration will be covered in a separate post. For now, I'll focus on the disassembly and re-painting of the frame and subframe.

To start, I removed the forks, subframe, swingarm, and rear wheel. The forks were pretty severely bent, but I was able to remove them in one piece. I later had to cut off the lower yoke with a cutting wheel to separate the forks, which I'll keep for spare parts later on. The swingarm and back wheel were super easy to remove, albeit messy!

The electronics were a bit more difficult to remove, requiring me to drill out some screws to detach certain components. Many of the small screws had rusted and there was simply no better way to remove them. After that, the main frame was free of all non-metal components.

To begin the paint stripping process, I used Airline brand paint remover. First blasting through an aerosol can of the stuff followed by a can of liquid stripper, it did a decent job of loosening the paint. To remove the rest and to blast off the rust, I took an angle grinder with wire-wheel attachment and went to town. This ended up being very effective and before long the frame was basically entirely down to bare metal!

The primer and paint I used for the frame and subframe were fantastic. Both sprayed on incredibly smoothly and were easy to use. There really weren't any challenges associated with painting the frame, so there's very little to say! I would highly recommend this combo for anyone wanting to paint automotive parts, especially the high-durability roll bar paint.

One coat of primer, and a smooth coat of paint. Couldn't have been easier! 

Though I suppose a lot went into getting the frame prepped...

The black paint needs several days to fully cure, so after attaching the subframe, I just let it sit. However, I couldn't resist setting the gas tank onto it for a final pic!

Thanks for reading,

Juju

Leather Dice Cup

Greetings friends,

A quick project today, only took a few hours to whip up! I wanted a small leathercrafting project to do, and I figured a simple dice cup would be a lot of fun. Let's get to it!

I found a pattern on Etsy, which had the look I was going for. The cup was an ideal size; I didn't want it to be too big. I laid out the pattern onto some scrap pieces of leather I had, and cut out the pieces.

Once the pieces were cut, I beveled the edges, cut grooves, punched holes, and dyed the leather. This all goes pretty quickly, so I'm only showing pictures of the major steps. 

The dye I used was "Bordeaux" by Eco-Flo which creates a lovely rich wine/cordovan/oxblood color, my personal favorite for leather goods. Two thin coats usually does the trick for the large (skin side) areas, and multiple coats get the edges to a dark shade.

It took a few attempts to get the bottom cut out well enough for my standards, so
here you see a comparison of the color before and after dying.

The side was very easy to stitch together. I used a simple cross stitch to join them, using a rust-colored waxed thread, which matches the dye very well and generally is my go-to when using this dye. The bottom was considerably harder to stitch and as mentioned above, I had to make several bottoms to get it right. Originally I had thought that pre-punching the holes into the bottom would be the way to go, but since the spacing of the holes had to be smaller than those punched into the larger piece of leather, that wasn't possible with my normal punching tools. I found some documentation discussing stitching cups, which recommended simply grooving the bottom cap, and piercing through into that groove from the hole already present in the sides. This proved to work quite well, though I could tell that more experience will certainly improve the quality of the stitch.

When the cap was firmly attached to the bottom I noticed that due to my inexperience, it wasn't entirely even. To (crudely) remedy this, I decided to simply sand down the high spots on the cap until it rested flat on a table, and re-dyed those edges. Following some burnishing with gum trag, the edges looked pretty decent.

A coat of leather conditioner and a quick buff completed the cup. I'm pretty happy with it for my first attempt, especially since stitching on the bottom was pretty difficult!

Thanks for reading,

Juju