Leather Strap Cutter for Leather Working: How to Make One
When you need to cut leather straps, you need a strap cutter. I like to build my own leather working tools, so in this video I will show you how to make a leather strap cutter. It is an easy woodworking project, for my leatherworking hobby. The result is a wonderfully working strap cutter that you can use as a belt cutter or for any leather working project that involves a strap of leather.
Video transcript:
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Tony Needs Hobbies. My name is Tony and in this video I will show you how I made a leather strap cutter out of some scrap pieces of American red oak, European oak and ash wood. Have fun watching
For this project I am going to use some pieces of wood that are lying around from previous creations. The red oak and European oak are boards that are not thick enough, so I will cut them in smaller pieces and glue those pieces together to form thicker but smaller bars. From the scrap piece of ash, left over from the knob that I made for my stitching pony, I just need to cut off a little strip. Before gluing everything up I use some sandpaper to quickly clean up the cuts and to make sure the glue adheres well to the wood. Then I glue it with all-purpose wood glue and clamp it for a while.
When the glue has dried, I remove the clamps and sand all the sides using a belt sander. It is already important to try to make all the sides square to each other. Otherwise, later on in the project, it is difficult to make sure that the strap cutter cuts the leather straight. Then, I cut the bars that will later on hold the blade so that they both have equal lengths.
When you need to cut leather straps, you need a strap cutter. I like to build my own leather working tools, so in this video I will show you how to make a leather strap cutter. It is an easy woodworking project, for my leatherworking hobby. The result is a wonderfully working strap cutter that you can use as a belt cutter or for any leather working project that involves a strap of leather.
The four main parts have their initial shape now. I will continue with removing material and making some holes until they meet their definitive shape. Then I will install the hardware and assemble this thing.
This will be the bulk of the work. Let’s start with marking the part of the handle that needs to be removed. I use my small drill press to drill straight holes. When the holes are drilled I use my jigsaw to cut between the holes to form the hole where the bars that hold the blade go. This doesn’t look nice yet, so with a rasp, files and coarse sand paper I clean this up as good as I can. Again, everything needs to be square to get straight cuts through the leather.
When that’s done, I drill a hole through the little bars to fit an M3 hex head bolt. On one of these bars I draw the outline of the head to cut it out with a chisel so that the head sits flush in the hole. In the hole that was drilled in the handle I will insert a threaded insert. The easiest way to make sure this thing goes in straight, is by fitting a washer and the bolt that finally will go in the insert. Then use a wrench to drive the combo in.
The handle gets its final shape by scraping off wood with a spoke shape and then rasps for more detail and roughing in the shape where my fingers will go. This is a right-handed tool, so lefties, you’ll have to mirror it. By quite some sanding all rasp marks will be removed. Some more holes will be drilled to fit the plates that will hold the blade.
With a pyrography pen I burn centimeter and half centimeter marks in the European oak. All the wood will be finished by applying two coats of linseed oil so it will maintain the wood structure which gives grip during cutting through leather.
The last two parts to be fabricated are the aluminum clamps that hold the blade. The need to be the same size as the sides of the bars that they will be screwed on. I will cut them out of a strip of aluminum. The edges will be filed and sanded to become smooth. Two holes will be drilled in them, the blade will fall in between the screws so that the blade is not exposed. This makes for a safer tool than made in many other DIY strap cutter videos available on YouTube. The holes for the screws will be countersunk.
Now I’m really almost done. I’m going to put some scrap leather right here and some sandpaper on these edges so that all these parts will have a little bit more grip and will not slide around.
The leather is a 9 ounce or 3.5 mm veg tan leather scrap piece and the sandpaper is 180 grit, but that doesn’t matter that much. I apply contact cement on both sides to be glued, then let it dry and after five minutes attach both pieces together by firmly pressing. Also, the hex bolt needs to be glued into the hex shaped hole that I carved out. I will glue that tightly using some 5 minute epoxy. Using some rings as spacers the gap in between these bars will be 4 mm, so 9 ounce veg tan leather will fit through. If I need to cut a thinner strap, I can easily remove one or two of the spacers.
The final step before testing is installing the blade. For that I use a new thin razor blade. The sharp size should face towards the person holding the strap cutter. Once the blade is secured tightly, this tool can be assembled and tested.
This is quite a beautiful tool, isn’t it? I’m very happy with the result. For an upcoming project I’m going to need 2 five cm wide straps of leather. Let’s see if this leather strap cutter can do the trick.
The leather strap cutter that I built in this video works just like it should work, and I had a lot of fun building it. I learned some new woodworking skills and in the end I was able to cut myself a whole bunch of straps of leather with a consistent width. These straps will be used for another project in one of my upcoming videos. If you don’t want to miss that one, be sure to subscribe to this channel. I hope you have enjoyed watching this video and if you did, please let me know by hitting the like button. You should also check out a video in which I build a stitching pony for hand stitching leather. You might enjoy that one as well, so I will post a link in the end screen of this video. If you have any comment for me, just drop it in the comment box.
That’s all for this video. I’d like to thank you for watching. Bye, bye!
