Yep Barry King tools. They are more expensive but worth it. Actually in leather tools they are kinda mid priced. We have stamps and tools that cost way more than the BKs and don't like em as much. On a day to day basis, BKs are what get used around here. Stamps, edgers, mauls, swivel knives etc. Build your own roundknives and skivvers. AEB-L at 63RC will cut leather all day, .040 and thinner is what ya want.
A basic stamp set for tooling for me would be: a medium size basket stamp, a medium sized camo border, a seeder, a smaller carlos border stamp (also called an hour glass stamp, a meander stamp or a lazy W stamp) and a arrow shaped border stamp of some kind. That would take care of about 90 percent of the tooling I do on sheaths, holsters, belts, spur straps, rifle scabbards, chinks/chaps etc.
If you want to do some carving you will need (besides the camo border and the seeder above) a set of bevellers in different sizes, a petal lifter (or undercut beveller), a couple of pear shades (thumb prints), a stop or two, a couple of backgrounders and maybe a veiner. Of course for carving you do need a good swivel knife too.
Definitly an edger or two. We have BKs and I also am fond of an Osborne #2 and #3 that I use daily, they do cut a little different though. The BK is more of a rounded edge and the Osborne more of a facet edge.
Wickett and Craig leather has been mentioned and you won't find better. Herman Oak is also a premium leather that I use a lot of. I tend to use HO in lighter weights and the WC in 8-10 oz. Neither is inexpensive. After having a wholesale account with Weaver for almost 30 years, I can no longer recommend them and am ceasing all business (yeah there's a story, actually several) with them.
I heartily dislike dyeing leather and almost won't. Both the tanneries above will make drum dyed leather in black and various browns, use that if color is needed. You are just so much further along doing so. Again not cheap but way better.
The wife tooling a yoke for a pair of wooly chaps. Here she is doing the background:
Finished tooling. So in the basket stamp areas the tools used are: a seeder (small dot in the corners), camo border (the half round stamp around the edges) and a medium sized basket stamp. The border around the stamped areas has also been cut with a swivel knife and then beveled.
On the flower carving the tools used are: the swivel knife, bevellers, petal lifter, pear shaders, two different veiners (squiggly lines on the leaf and not so squiggly on the flower), a flower center stamp, a stop and a mulesfoot (the arrow shaped stamps on the stems) and bar backgrounders.
Oiled, finished and put together on the buffalo woolies we made for a customer:
Some holsters I did prior to a show. The few tools I mentioned for stamping did all these:
Ya can do a lot of work with just those few stamps I mentioned. For carving you do need a lot more.
Forgot to mention glassing or slicking the leather prior to stamping is a vital step as was mentioned above. The wife uses the Tandy glass slicker, however I much prefer a knife handle block of ligum vitae I got from Ann Sheffield about a hundred years ago. Just rounded the corners off. I think it does a better job. The roundknife and this block are the only two tools that never get put away. They always live on the workbench.
