Four bridle leather strap samples showing the stages of beveling and creasing leather edges, from square cut to creased.
|

Beveling and Creasing a Leather Strap

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

Two millimetres of geometry decide whether a strap frays or holds.

A strap edge is the narrowest part of any leather piece and the part that takes the most abuse. It rubs against a coat, a hand, a doorframe and the case it hangs from, all day, so the little bit of shape you give it decides whether it frays in a year or stays tight for decades. I bevel and crease my strap edges in English bridle, and the video on my channel is one of those straps, in London Tan bridle.

Video: Beveling London Tan English Bridle Leather Briefcase Strap, from Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube.

One edge, four stages, in order: square cut, beveled, burnished, creased. At each stage the question is what that edge can and can’t do yet. The tool steps belong to toolmakers and to working makers on the trade forums, and each one gets credit where it shows up.

Stage one: the square cut

A fresh cut edge has two sharp corners, and both of them are weak.

Hands beveling the edge of a tan bridle leather strap with a curl of leather lifting from the edge beveler.

I cut straps from the bend and nowhere else, because that’s where the fiber is tightest. The belly goes in the trash. Cut a strap from a bend of bridle with a sharp knife and sight down it end-on. A rectangle. Two right-angle corners on top, two underneath, and between them a wall of raw fibers waiting for something to catch on.

My opinion: that block is the worst shape a strap can wear, because each corner is a thin ridge with nothing behind it on two sides, and it takes every scrape first. American Benchcraft’s page on leather edging puts the goal of edge work simply: finished edges are about keeping the leather from fraying over time. Tandy’s article on beveling, burnishing and polishing gives the practical reason, which is that a sharp edge is harder to burnish, and skipping the bevel is on its list of common mistakes.

The cut matters more than any tool that comes after it. The Hoplok Leather article on edge creasing and beveling for leather belts says it straight out: fix a bad cut at the cut, rather than trying to hide it later with a deeper bevel. A wavy cut stays wavy. Every stage after this one follows the line the knife made, the way every course of brick follows the first.

Some makers true the edge further before anything else. In a leatherworker.net thread on sanding belt edges, Dwight says he sands before he bevels, and Hildebrand agrees, sanding edges “dead even” first. Others in the same thread bevel first and sand afterward. There’s no single rule.

There’s only a flat, true edge before the corners come off.

On my own straps the edge is often two pieces, not one. I thin the strap leather on an old hand-crank splitter, the kind you turn with your arm, and stitch two thinned pieces together so the strap shows a good face on both sides. Two layers put a glue line in the middle of the edge wall, and every stage after this one has to bury it.

Stage two: beveled

Take the corners off, and the edge has something to round over.

The bevel is the most important of the four stages, in my opinion, and the one I’d never skip on a strap.

An edge beveler is a small blade with a guide that rides the corner. Hoplok defines the job simply: a beveler takes material off a corner and leaves the face alone. Tandy’s instructions are to hold the tool at a steady angle, pull it along the edge in one smooth pass, then turn the strap over and repeat on the other side. One pass per corner. Four corners if the strap is finished on both faces, and a thin curl of leather off each one if the blade is sharp.

Size is where beginners get tangled. Weaver’s page for its Master Tool Edge Beveler publishes a clear chart:

SizeCutLeather weightWeaver’s suggested use
01/32 in4 to 6 ozvery fine edges
13/64 in4 to 10 ozshow tack, fine edge
21/16 in8 to 12 oztack liners and reins
37/64 in12 oz and upunderside of tack

Weaver adds that lower numbers suit lighter leather and higher numbers heavier. The catch is that numbers aren’t standard across brands. In a leatherworker.net thread on beveler size for leather thickness, billybopp states flatly that there is no standard for beveler sizes, and the Hoplok article agrees, warning that a #3 from one range need not cut the same profile as a #3 from another. Test on scrap from the same bend before you touch the strap.

Look at where the chart’s words come from. Reins, tack, liners. The sizing language belongs to the saddlery trade, and the post on cordwainers and saddlers covers how separate that trade always was.

After the bevel the edge is no longer a rectangle. It’s a flat wall with its corners cut back, and that shape can finally be rounded.

Stage three: burnished

The bevel gives the shape. Friction closes it.

Macro end view of a bridle leather strap edge, half square cut and half beveled and burnished round.

Burnishing is its own subject, so here is only what it does to the strap at this stage.

Sailrite’s guide to slicking leather edges puts the order as sand, bevel, lubricate, then rub, and explains that friction makes heat that compresses the fibers and seals the edge. Tandy’s article says the same compression leaves a glossy, sealed finish. My opinion: on a beveled edge that pressure rolls the two small flats into one continuous curve, and the square block from stage one is now close to a half-round.

The earlier post on patina on this site describes the Marcellino edge as bevelled, sanded and burnished with gum tragacanth or beeswax. That’s the same order these suppliers give, which is either good sense or a long habit everybody copied from everybody else.

From the top, stage two and stage three can look alike. On edge they don’t. The stage-two edge still has open fibers in the middle of its wall, and the burnished one, by the suppliers’ own account, is sealed and glossy.

Stage four: creased

A line pressed just inside the edge, and a lot of argument about what it is for.

An edge creaser is a blunt tool, not a blade. The American Benchcraft page on leather creasing describes it as having a rounded or pointed end, U-shaped for a round line and V-shaped for a sharp one. It doesn’t cut. It presses a line into the grain at a fixed distance from the edge, using the edge itself as its guide.

The working method from the trade forums is consistent. In a leatherworker.net thread on using an edge creaser, rdb advises pushing the tool rather than pulling it, held as upright as possible without sliding off the edge. He also burnishes first, because it makes for a smoother ride along the edge.

Heat is where bridle changes the rules. In a long thread on creasing, UKRay reports that he can crease wet veg-tan with a cold tool, but that cold creasing bridle gives poor results; he heated creasers on hard harness leather to help melt the fat in the leather. In a separate thread, do you heat your creaser, the same member says the waxiness of bridle helps a heated creaser glide, while bruce johnson notes that old-timers heated their creasers and that a correctly heated tool leaves a darker, burnished line. rdb, in the first thread, warns that too much heat burns the leather.

My opinion: that matches the leather. A cold tool on waxy bridle is fighting the wax, and a warm one is moving it. My YouTube channel has a video of creasing brown bridle edges on a cross body case, and that’s the kind of edge this section describes.

Strap ends are where creases go wrong. In a thread on creasing around strap ends and tight curves, Cyberthrasher advises moving the leather through a planted tool at a corner rather than swinging the tool around, and going slowly.

When the crease is decoration, and when it lies

A clean line beside a bad edge only makes the bad edge easier to see.

Finished brown bridle leather strap with a burnished edge and a fine crease line running beside it.

Here’s the harder thing about stage four. A crease makes an edge look finished. Looking finished and standing up to years of hands, buckles and coat sleeves are two different jobs.

The sources split on whether creasing does any structural work. American Benchcraft says edge creases help prevent fraying and give a finished edge. In the long creasing thread, badger gives four reasons to crease, one of them that it compresses the edge fibers, which he believes strengthens the edge. That’s one maker’s belief. The Hoplok article takes the other side, saying a crease “is not proof of superior strength,” and adding that a decorative crease does not keep water out. American Benchcraft’s own edging page notes that its brand does not crease at all.

I didn’t find a test that settles it, so I won’t pretend one exists.

And here’s my own problem with that. I crease my straps anyway. My honest opinion is that a creased edge simply looks right on bridle, and nothing above proves the line earns its keep. I’d rather tell you that than dress taste up as engineering.

Where the sources do agree is that the crease follows the edge. In the strap-ends thread, Tree Reaper puts it plainly: “Your crease will only be as good as your edge because that’s your guide.” A creaser rides whatever edge you give it. If the cut wandered at stage one, or the bevel chattered at stage two, the crease copies the wobble just inside the edge, now drawn as a dark line right where the eye goes first.

In my view, a strap that hangs right wears its edge evenly. I set shoulder-strap rings on the top edge of a case, not the gusset, so the strap drops straight and doesn’t wrinkle a suit, and the buckles are stitched by hand, no rivets. None of that is the crease’s job. All of it decides how the edge gets rubbed.

My opinion: on a strap, creasing is the last stage and the least important, and it should never be used to rescue the first three. A crease on a bad edge is a tidy line laid beside a crooked one, and nobody misses the crooked one for long.

Even the order gets argued. In that same thread Bob Blea creases before anything else is done to the edge, so the full edge can guide the tool, while Cyberthrasher’s rule is to get the edge the way it is going to be forever and then add the crease. On a strap, my opinion leans toward Cyberthrasher. After that, care for the strap like the rest of the case. My Leather Care page says wax conditioners repel water but nothing is waterproof, and that holds for a creased edge as much as for the face.

Which leaves me at the bench with a creaser in my fist and a good edge under it, about to press a line I can’t defend.

Tandy Leather Craftool Edge Beveler, size 2: A steel-blade edge beveler for taking the sharp corner off a strap before burnishing. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

UOOU 4-Piece Leather Edge Creaser Set: A four-piece edge creaser set in 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 mm widths. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Mandala Crafts 150D 0.8mm Black Flat Waxed Thread: A flat waxed polyester thread, 0.8 mm, in black, for hand sewing leather. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. A commission may be earned if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you.

Sources

You Might Also Like

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply