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    March 11th - 16th, 2007 : Leather Boot Projects

    This week I attempted my first set of projects with the Tacsew Sewing Machine; a boot for my shifter, one for my foot brake and one for my hand brake. Here's a shot of all three, showing the button motif (note: those are eye-buttons, not snaps):


Note: The variations in color that you see are simply different lighting situations. In the outdoors, the elk looks black ... as it should. But inside, with yellow-based lighting, the elk looks more brownish.

March 11th, 2007 : Moose Leather Boot for the Foot Brake

I started (and finished!) my first boot project today and I can't believe how well everything went! It took me five or six hours but I made no mistakes and even though I ad-libbed my design ideas, they worked out beautifully!

I started off with a drawing pad, noting my measurements and sketching out ideas for a design. The challenge was not only to make the boot wrap around the outside of the trim ring (instead of coming up from the inside, as is usually done) but also to be able to get inside the boot and be able to access the mounting screws. That meant I had to have a larger than usual opening in the boot. At first, I thought I would lace the boot up on one side but that left the problem of what to do with the string or lace after tying it off. Then I thought, "Wait a minute! I have a button making machine!"

I immediately saw the solution in my head, drew it out on poster board and cut out the templates and then the moose leather.


Next, I sewed all the seams but the last one and followed up with french stitching. The final seam and french stitches only ran up about three inches from the bottom of the boot which made sewing them much simpler than it would have been otherwise. Once that was done, I placed a vinyl tie-strap in the top hem and sewed the hem shut.


After setting the trim ring in place and noting where the screw holes needed to be in order to position the boot the way I wanted it in the truck, I glued the leather to the trim ring.


After the glue was set, I took the boot out to the truck and installed it over the foot brake ... this is really gonna look nice once the carpet is in!



March 12th, 2007 : Elk Leather Boot for the Hand Brake

Today, working along the same lines as above, I made a boot for the hand brake - this is elk (the boot for the foot brake is moose). What I like about this one is that I used the natural lines of an edge of the elk hide for the tab where the buttons are.



March 16th, 2007 : Elk Leather Boot for the Shifter

Again, working along the same lines as above, I made a boot for the shifter - this is elk (like the hand brake). Shots of all three boots, installed in the truck, can be seen at the bottom of this page.


I wanted to match the look of the boot I made for the hand brake but the original trim ring for my Gennie shifter was round, whereas the trim ring for the Gennie hand brake had a more rectangular shape with rounded ends ... so I needed to fabricate a new mounting plate (trim ring) for the shifter in order to achieve the same look in the boot:




Here are shots of all 3 boots installed:

Before:



After:

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