Stingray Wallet
Custom Stingray Wallet you ask? Coming right up, err.... in a short bit... I have worked with a lot of tough leathers and difficult projects but I have to say finishing this wallet for a recent customer strained the both of us. The design and the manufacture of the pure cow leather bits was not difficult. Determining exactly how I was going to stitch this baby was not. Stingray skin is actually made up of a hard calcareous material that is more like armor than skin or scales. A regular knife will not easily cut it, nor are your scissors happy if you use them. I ended up using a pair of shop shears for the rough cut and my belt sander to get the edges straight. The tough part is physically in the stitching. Because of the calcareous material on the skin being formed as small beads of various sizes, a professional sewing machine needle will not stitch through the skin in a straight line as the needle wants to move around the bumps into an area the needle can penetrate. Most Stingray wallets are made from juvenile rays where the "bumps" as we call them are very small and easier to sew. The skin I was provided by the customer had a variety of "bump" sizes that are actually much more intriguing than the smaller rays but much tougher to work with. I finally decided to utilize my dremel skills to cut groves in the skin with a cutoff disc for the straight stitch lines and a diamond point tip to cut the radius grooves in the corners. Even then you have to be careful as the needle still wants to wander (I guess all of that miniature model making when I was younger paid off).
The customer had many card wallets in the past that just simply wore out after a period of time. He came up with some basic design ideas and I worked from those. This wallet has three pockets (two on the outside front and a gusseted one in the center). An additional request from the customer was that this wallet needed to hold 6-8 cards, hence the gusset, drivers license and cash. Further it needed to have a leather covered clip to secure to his pocket and a pen loop for a small fountain pen. Three busted needles and a broken cutoff disc later we have the wallet in the photos. The base price for this wallet is $140.00 and that's with you supplying the Stingray. There are so many different types and grades of Ray on the market that it would be tough to give an accurate estimate if I included the hide in the price. DH
For those of you that don't mind "personal protection" in the photos I kinda like the ones below. Rather "Bondish" I think, pip pip...
