Learn All About Leather, get help & information, learn skills & tricks of the trade. Don’t be satisfied with the simple Home Kits or the obscure short instructions peddled around the Internet. Sure Home Kits are fine to start with but they are limited, they have to be, so that any Tom Dick or Hillary can quickly assemble an article & satisfy a passing interest. If the bug bites then you will need to go further into the Craft & simple kits will never do that. Other books, there are many but there are few written by expert trained Craftsmen or Designer Craftsmen & the few that were written are out of print & difficult to obtain. & the Authors are unfortunately no longer with us.

These books are worth getting if you can find one & if you are already an experienced worker as they are rather technical & hard going for the beginner. I have attempted to rectify this in my series of "Leather Instruction Manuals" But first perhaps I should explain that I come from the same back ground as the other two in that we all worked for Top Level London Leathergoods Companies at various levels of Supervision & Management, we were all Top Level Craftsmen & All ended up finishing our Careers as HOD’s of a Leading UK Leather College based in London.

They were both specialists in one specific area of leathergoods whereas I gained experience in all areas of this Craft. With those excellent college courses no longer available due to Government meddling (both Conservative & Labour) which saw the demise of Craft Courses & apprenticeships only to be replaced by the inadequate & low skill level factory based NVQ’s which however much they defend them will never produce the Master Craftsmen that were once available In The UK.

However NVQ's do produce bench hands capable of doing the repetitive jobs required by most mass production units. so I suppose that to an extent they fill a requirement in industry. I cant help feeling that it will end up like the blind leading the blind one day. Unlike engineering this is a Craft & it therefore can't be completely mechanised & basic Knowledge & skills are required by at least one member in an organisation. Some of the products I have seen recently lead me to believe that we have already reached that stage.

Writing a Book like the other two previous HOD's was not an option (1) it would have proved to long, (2) getting it published would be impossible as the previous two had gone out of print due to lack of sales. I would have been forced to stand the cost of self publishing a series of volumes myself which was financially out of the question. Driven by a desire to make my skills & knowledge available to all & in some respect make up for the removal of the opportunity to fully learn these ancient skills I resorted to the Internet.