Small first leather projects on a workbench in front of an unfinished briefcase panel and gussets.
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Why a Briefcase Should Not Be Your First Project

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

It is the bag everybody wants to make. That is the trouble with it.

A briefcase is the wrong first project for almost everyone who picks up leather, and I say that as a man whose whole trade is briefcases. I have done leather as a hobby since 1995 and for pay since 2010, and the case is still the hardest thing I build: two big panels, gussets that have to bend without creasing, a handle that takes the full load every day, hardware that has to line up to the hair. On The Maker page I say that each one takes “days of focused work.” A beginner who starts there is signing up to fail at six jobs at once and learn nothing clean from any of them. The questions below are the ones people ask me when they want to start with the big one anyway.

Video: Cutting 2 Single gusset Briefcase From a Bridle leather Bend and Shoulder, from Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube.

Isn’t a briefcase just a big wallet

No. A wallet is flat. A case has to stand up and carry weight.

Hands clipping a leather gusset to a briefcase panel along a curved line of pre-punched stitching holes.

A card wallet is two or three flat pieces stitched along straight lines. Nothing hangs from it. The worst that happens is a crooked seam, and you learn from it in an afternoon.

A briefcase is a box that has to hold its shape with a load inside. Panels meet gussets around corners, so every stitch line turns. And the handle carries the weight of files and a laptop through the stitches and the leather around them. The closure has to meet the body in the same place every time it shuts. Each of those is its own skill, and on a first project you meet all of them in the same week, in the most expensive leather you own.

Weaver Leather Supply’s getting started guide puts the alternative plainly. It points beginners toward “A smaller leather project with a manageable completion time,” and lists keychains, mousepads, pouches, card wallets and watchbands. Not one of those has a gusset. Not one carries a load.

There is a reason for the order. Each small project isolates one move. A keychain teaches a clean cut and a finished edge. A card wallet teaches a straight stitch line and how two layers sit together. A watchband teaches a small curve. Stack those up and you walk into a briefcase knowing which hand does what. Skip them and the briefcase becomes a very slow way to discover you can’t cut a straight line yet.

My opinion: the wallet is the scale on a guitar. Nobody wants to play scales. The people who skip them sound like it.

Can’t I learn everything on the one big project

You can. You’ll learn it in the wrong order and pay for each lesson in leather.

This is the argument I hear most, and it sounds efficient. Why make ten small things when the big thing contains every skill?

Because the big thing doesn’t let you fix anything. When a beginner’s stitch line wanders on a key fob, you cut a new strip and try again. When it wanders across the front of a briefcase panel, the panel is done. The leather is punched. The holes are there forever.

Read the old threads on leatherworker.net and the pattern repeats. In 2012 a beginner in Scotland, writing as TheGreatestScot, opened a thread called My first steps into leatherworking and I’ve set my goal high. He wanted a messenger bag that would last. The first reply, from a member named Chavez, was blunt: “I’d recommend starting with very basic things.” He suggested bookmarks and coasters. Another member, Sylvia, steered him to a pouch or a phone case and reminded him the craft takes patience.

Nobody in that thread told him he couldn’t make the bag. They told him what to make on the way to it, which is the better kind of advice, the kind that costs nothing to take.

What does one ruined panel cost

More than leather. It costs the whole hide’s plan.

A leather bend marked out for briefcase panels with little waste left between the pieces.

A briefcase eats a lot of hide. The video at the top is me cutting two single-gusset cases from a bend and a shoulder, which tells you how the pieces get planned: around the hide, not one at a time. In a 2008 leatherworker.net thread, A first for me, briefcase, a member named Ian said his case used most of the double shoulder he bought, and that his biggest fear the whole way through was ruining it with no leather left to spare.

That fear is the right one. Ruin a panel and you can’t just cut another from the scrap, because the good part of the hide is already spoken for. In my view, a replacement piece from another hide is a gamble on how well it sits next to the panel you kept. You pay for the leather twice and the lesson once.

Weaver’s guide has a better idea for the learning years. It tells beginners to keep costs down with good leather in cheaper cuts, naming single shoulders and bellies, so the money worry stays out of the way while you learn. That is the opposite of a briefcase. A case wants the tight fiber of the best part of the hide, and that is the part you least want to waste on practice.

Bridle makes it worse. It is stiff and waxy, and I have written separately about why bridle is a hard first leather. Put the hardest leather and the hardest object together on a first try and the leather wins.

Which part goes wrong first

The gusset first, then the alignment, then the handle.

Ask anyone who has made a bag and the gusset comes up before you finish the question. A 2017 thread titled So how do you gusset is a long list of complaints and workarounds. One member, Jackwack, wrote that “gussets are a pain in the butt, no way around it,” and said to cut them larger and adjust. Another, RKCrowe, said he had to fight the gussets around the bottom curves of his bag. Others reached for binder clips, contact cement and pre-punched holes to keep the layers in line.

A newer thread shows the same thing from a first-timer’s side. In First try at a bag, from 2021, the maker wrote that “Sewing the gusset was an adventure,” and admitted to getting it totally backwards at first. His plan afterward was smaller projects without a gusset for a while. He got there the hard way.

On thick work I pre-punch and line up every hole before a needle goes in, because heavy bridle will not stitch true otherwise. That is a habit you build on small, flat pieces where a misaligned hole costs you a strip. On a gusset, one hole out of line pulls the whole seam with it.

Then there is the hardware. I do the delicate steps alone, with nobody else at the bench: setting a lock, placing a handle. A small error there means the front panel gets made again. My Art of Hand Stitching page makes the related point that a stitch can look good outside while hidden layers hold problems for later. A beginner can’t see those yet. That’s not an insult. It is what the first years are for.

So what should come before a briefcase

Things you will use, in an order that teaches one skill at a time.

A finished hand-stitched leather card holder, a sensible first leather project.

The suggestions in a 2018 thread, Suggest a first project for a beginner, were small and useful. TomWisc proposed a plain belt from a blank and a buckle. A member named SilverForgeStudio made an ID card holder for work, and his reasoning was sharp: carry it, find its flaws, make a better one.

That last part matters more than the object. A thing you use every day tells you what you did wrong. The pocket that’s too tight. The edge that fuzzes. The stitch that loosens at the end of a row.

Popular Science published a beginner’s guide, Everything you need to know to start leatherworking, and built it on what working makers told the writer about their own starts. The guide warned that leather too stiff for the design can turn the satchel you had in mind into a useless box. It also said that if you aren’t ready for large pieces like luggage yet, you shouldn’t feel discouraged.

My opinion, as an order to work in: a key fob, then a card holder, then a belt or a strap, then a flat portfolio, the kind of portfolio piece that teaches big panels without a gusset. A strap project like a bridle dog leash teaches what carrying a load does to leather and stitches. Then a small bag with one gusset. Then the case.

One more suggestion from the 2012 Scotland thread: a member called scottishshoemaker told the beginner to buy cheap leather bags from charity shops and take them apart. I learned the same way, by trial and error, studying how the bags in city stores were put together and reading what books I could find. A bag you take apart teaches the inside of the seam, which a finished case on a shelf never shows you.

When is a beginner ready for one

Sooner than I would like to admit, if the small things are done.

Here is where my argument starts leaking. Ian, the member from that 2008 thread, called his briefcase one of the easier projects he had taken on, because it had relatively few pieces. And he went further: “Anyone who has medium skill shouldn’t be scared to tackle a briefcase like this.” He wasn’t a beginner, though. He’d made other things first. Read it closely and he’s agreeing with me.

The Popular Science piece is harder to wriggle out of. Justin Hagan of Gold Bark Leather said it straight: “If you have something you dream of making, go for it.” His own first project was a purse, and he said it turned out lumpy, the rivets smashed, and that he didn’t regret it. That’s a real maker telling beginners the opposite of what I’m telling them, and I can’t call him wrong.

And then the thing I owe you. The first bag I ever sold was a briefcase. The man who bought it came back for a second one, and that is how the name got started, one buyer at a time. The hobby came first, which is my excuse. It was still a briefcase with my name on it, sold to a stranger, and I went for it anyway.

So, in my view: the dream project is fine as the reason you start. It is a bad thing to cut first. Make the small things until your hands stop surprising you, then go buy the hide. When you get to the case, the five-point inspection on this site for finished bags is a fair test of your own.

The ugly purse taught Hagan something. Whether it taught him faster than a wallet would have, nobody can say.

Weaver Leather Supply Diamond Leather Stitching Chisel Set: A set of 4 mm diamond stitching chisels for punching saddle-stitch holes. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

John James Saddlers Harness Blunt Point Needles: A set of blunt-point harness needles, five sizes with five needles of each. 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).

Barge All Purpose Cement, Quart: A quart of solvent-based contact cement. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

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