Making a wallet

A homemade wallet!

This is my first blog (Pauls blog) and it will be short but exciting!

I have been doing a lot of laser cutting and engraving for the upcoming Maker Faire in San Francisco on the 19th of May 2017 but what is missing so far are cutting and engraving on different materials. I decided to do a wallet and keep in mind I have never worked with leather before or made a wallet. This will be the test if someone with no skill can be productive with the new K40 controller and the toolchain.

My first step was to look for existing designs because I have literally no knowledge of the subject. This was difficult because nobody had any designs or patterns ready in svg format to use. I managed to find a wallet on Pinterest from a maker called ‘highonglue’ see www.highonglue.com which is very simple and elegant and ideal for a starter like me. I ordered the leather on ebay and hoping that it would be the right material since I did not know what actually to order. The hide arrived and it looked great for price I paid ($15).

I traced the pattern from maker Highonglue in Inkscape, converted it to  g code through the menu option, ‘trace object to path’ and laser cut plugin ‘J tech   photonics’ and did a cut on my laser at 5mm/sec on 3mA (yes it was my first cut since I replace the tube for new laser tube from reci laser). One cut and it came out great! Next was a custom engraving of text and a stamp. Used the text editor in Inkscape and traced the bitmap of the Awesome stamp. Used my engraving plugin and engraved the text and stamp. Then the assembly through stitching it together. This was the hard part since the yarn I used was sailmaker yarn that I had laying around. The knots just came loose after a round of stitching. So ended this issue by glueing the knots. And there it is: a wallet!

Small engraving

Big text engraving

Happy making! See you in San Fran in May.

2 thoughts on “Making a wallet”

  1. Paul, this is Ron Padilla we were sharing some info on the k40 page, as I mention I already have updated my nozzle and have a chain so would only need to get the controller and maybe a bracket to mount the chain with, but would like to know what the cost of the board is including shipping to Tennessee, and by the way I work in leather so If you wouldn’t mind sharing the files for the key fobs and the wallet that would be great as I am a total newbie. One other thing I need to mention is that I am retired and only get to make purchases once a month on the 3rd of each month when I get paid so hopefully depending on the cost I can buy this from you on the 3rd of November thanks for your help and response!

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