How to Make a Biker Wallet

To begin making a biker wallet we will need some materials and tools to work with.

1. One to two square ft of 5-6 oz vegetable tanned leather.

2. Your choice of leather for pockets.

3. Some type of stiff material for making templates

4. A swivel knife, soft sponge, bowl of water, stitching groover, stitching wheel, and stitching awl.

5. Needles and thread for stitching.

6. A stylus or other pointed tool.

7. A knife and surface for cutting.

8. A mallet or maul.

9. Various stamps, i will be using a beveler, veiner, mules foot, and seeder

To begin, gather all the materials you will be using, make adjustments for tools you do not have.Take a piece of template material and fold it in half, use a pencil, pen, or marker and draw one side of the pattern on either side of the fold. Cut with a pair of scissors or craft knife and fold over to trace the pattern on the other side of the fold line.Cut the rest of the pattern out of the template material.

Once you have the paper pattern, you can then trace around it on the leather you will be using, cut out tooling leather and also cut out the pockets for the wallet. Now would be a good time to use the stitching groover, set it to about an eighth of an inch, or whatever is pleasing to you, I wont use my stitching wheel until later but if you would like to do it now it wont hurt anything.

Now that you have your leather grooved for stitching, you can draw a pattern to carve into the leather or stamp a pattern. I traced around the wallet onto a fresh piece of paper to use as a guide for my carving dimensions. Draw a pattern that is pleasing to you, after you have drawn something you like trace to drawing onto a piece of tracing film. Now that you have that done case your leather with a sponge and water, use clear tape to tape the leather onto a piece of cardboard, and tape your tracing onto the cased leather, use a stylus to trace it onto the leather, wait until the leather starts to turn back to its natural color then you can carve the drawing with a swivel knife.

Now you can use your stamps to give your wallet a unique look, camoflauge, pear shader, beveler, mules foot and decorative cuts were used add to the carving.

now that you have the tooling finished punch holes for snaps and the concho. stitch and dye the snap tab. attach the concho and tab to the wallet with the screw. glue your liner and pocket to each other, and glue them to the wallet, then stitch them together. now that you have it all stitched together dye the wallet how you want to, i used black fiebings for the skull and boarders, and brown for the main part of the wallet.

Now i decided to cut another piece to snap onto the belt loop and braided 3 strands of lace together instead of using a chain. Basically you just cut out a piece in the shape you would like, punch your holes, stamp, dye, and set the snaps in place, i used some swivel type connectors to tie the braided lace to.