Leather wallet
Production: MÆNUS
Materials: Leather
Techniques: Mold making, wet molding, carving, tooling, staining and hand stitching leather
Finished: 2021
The main goal for this project was for me to learn how wet molding leather works. Wet molding leather is a technique where the leather is soaked in water and pressed and stretched into a mold in order to shape the leather so it will hold the form over time. To try out this technique a wallet was the perfect project to start with. A wallet is not too big and complex so this allowed me to try it out and make something fairly quickly and in the meantime learn about the ins and outs of this technique.
Next to this I wanted to further hone my skills of tooling floral designs into leather using a swivel knife and various types of leather stamping tools like bevelers, seeders, edgers and shaders.
Steps taken
The first step was to decide on the dimensions of the wallet. This provided me with a guideline on the size of the mold I needed to make. After making both the inner and outer mold out of plywood I soaked a piece of leather in water, hand formed it around the inner mold and kept it in place by stretching and clamping it between the inner and outer mold. After the leather dried I took it out of the mold and cut it to form the main pocket of the wallet.
Next up was the flap and backside of the wallet. This is one single piece and I wanted to tool a floral design onto it going from the front to the back of the wallet. I found a very nice floral design, transferred it onto the leather, carved the outlines into the leather using a swivel knife and tooled it into the leather with leather stamping tools.
After the tooling of the design was done I stained the leather and finished the main edges of the flap and pocket. Then I applied resolene in order to lock in the color and avoid bleeding. Then it was time to start assembling the wallet. First by gluing the wet molded pocket to the inner pocket. And then by gluing that onto the flap.
The next step was to trim, stain and finish the edges of the wallet, punch the stitching holes and stitch it together by hand. The final touch was to buff up the leather using a horsehair brush giving it a nice shine.
As requested by the client I also made a matching card holder for easy access of the cards mainly used, which fits easily inside the wallet leaving plenty of space for more cards, receipts and cash money.
End result
The result is a beautiful, hand crafted wallet with a tooled floral design that will last for a lifetime. Furthermore II experimented with and learnt the technique of wet molding leather providing me with the opportunity to use it in future projects and honed my skills of tooling floral designs into leather.
