Hand Tooling a Large Basket Weave Pattern

Hey, welcome back everybody. In this video, I'm gonna show you how to do this large basket stamp. I started doing this last year after seeing a few years of many, many craftsmen out there tooling this type of pattern and I thought it was just a really, really nice geometric style, probably a quick addition to any kind of tooling pattern to kind of compliment some floral. I've always really liked it, just never took the time to learn how to do it. I kind of had an idea of how to do it, but I never really sat down and did it. So last year, we did a saddle. If you've seen our full saddle build video where we did a time-lapse of an entire saddle being built from cut bench all the way to being boxed up, you can go back and watch that video. I'll put a link down in the description. And on that saddle, I did this type of tooling. I had already tooled it some on some gun slings and some wallets and some small items. And I just really like it. I think it's really pretty. I think it's kind of contemporary looking and customers seem to really gravitate towards this type of pattern. So in this quick video, I'm just gonna show you how to do this. It's very simple. It's not very hard. You don't need any special geometric stamps or anything to do this. And we'll go over that and I'll show you how I do it. Okay, so we're gonna put that large basket stamp on this little bifold wallet. I've done a number of these little bifold wallets that we make with this large basket stamp tooling on there. And they always sell, they're very popular. So we're gonna go ahead and do one for this video on that. The first thing you're gonna need is either a stylus or a pencil. You can use whichever one you want. And then I like to use this little straight edge. I think some people may call this a gauge or something like that. It's a draftsman's tool, but these are really handy to have on the bench. We've talked about these before in some other videos, but I just use one of these because of the width. The width of this on the bottom of that triangle is about seven eighths. So anywhere from three quarter to one inch is usually a good spread as far as to draw your lines. So we're gonna go ahead and draw our lines in here. And that gives us a nice spread between those lines so that we can get a larger basket stamp set. So what I'm gonna do is first just start right here and I'm gonna go from corner to corner. You could definitely do them straight if you want. I think they look much more pleasing if they're at an angle. And so I usually just go from corner to corner. I'm gonna make my first line. And then before I move my ruler, I'm gonna go ahead and catch the other side of that and put a line there. And I'm gonna move it down to where we started and I'm gonna run me another line there. And then I'll go and I just keep doing that across whatever you're tooling. If it's a saddle fender or a wallet or a portfolio, you just keep doing that all the way across your tooling window. This square here that I've carved being my tooling window, that's where the tooling's gonna inset. So once you do that and you got your lines all the way across, then I go and cross it to the other side. We'll do the same thing. I'm gonna put a line on this backside, move that over. We're doing the same thing, just going the other direction. For the sake of the video, I'm just gonna go ahead and do this front side. But if I'm gonna do this backside as well, you go ahead and do that. But we're gonna try to keep this video short. Now you're gonna wanna take the tools that you're gonna need. It's gonna be a swivel knife. For any time you're carving long straight lines, it is much more helpful to get the largest blade that you can or that you have. You don't need to go buy a special blade for this. But I find that the wider the blade in your swivel knife, the easier it is to keep those long straight lines nice and straight without any wobble. If you're using your normal little half inch or three eighths blade like this for like your floral carving, it's just a little easier to get off because it's a little quicker blade. So if you've got a larger blade, this is a great time to use that. But again, any swivel knife will work. You don't need anything special. And then you're gonna need a beveler. And the largest beveler you have as far as width goes, this is a Barry King large beveler checkered stamped. I think the checkered looks the best, but you could definitely use any beveler you want. And then I use a vertical lined thumbprint from Barry King, but something with vertical lines in there. You could also use a flower center tool, a flower center liner if you have one. The only problem is it's got a little concave area right in there, but you could use the heel or you could sacrifice one of these just for this type of tooling and just square off the toe of this tool. And you'll see why here in a minute. But I find that just using a vertical line pear shader or a thumbprint works just fine. So that's what we use there. So that's really all you need. You need a beveler and a vertical line pear shader and a swivel knife. And then we'll go ahead. Now we'll go ahead and carve these lines and I'm gonna carve those, trying to keep them as straight as I can. And you're just gonna carve them how they lay. There's no separation in the lines. You just carve all the way across. Just like if you were gonna do a cross hatching or something like that. And then we'll carve the other direction. So that's what we end up with. Very simple. Just some cross lines. You carve them all the way through. Don't worry about separating them as you get to a line that's going the other direction. Just carve through them. Make your cross hatching. Now, if you want to do a quilting pattern that was something that we call it, we've done for a long time, then this would be the moment here where you would take a seed tool of your choice, whatever seeder you like, and put one of those in each one of those intersections. And that'd be it. And that's a very nice, clean, simple, covers a blank area really nicely and looks real attractive. But we're gonna take this another step further by doing that large basket stand. So I'm gonna mist this down one more time. Jabbering and it's getting a little bit dry on me. So now we'll take our large basket stand. What you're gonna do when you start this is you're going to just pick a spot, start where you want to. I usually start on the longest line that I've got so I can kind of set the system up. So what I'm gonna do is you just pick a side. You can either do this side or this side. Either side you want to do. And you just bevel just that one section within that square. Okay, you got a bunch of squares. So you just bevel that one on that side. And now as we go up this line, we're gonna switch sides. So now as we get to this next square, we're gonna go to the other side. And now as we get to this next square, you go to the other side. And that's it. I mean, you're just alternating which side you're beveling on all the way down. Now, when we go to the next line, I usually do the ones running this way first, okay? So we'll go to this next line. Now we have to be mindful of which side of the line we're gonna bevel on. So what I do is whatever the side directly across from it is, that's what we do on this side. So here we're beveling on the outside of this square. So we would do the same on this side. And now you would just do the opposite on all the other lines. So once you do that, as you can see, this one's on the inside of the square, so is the one directly across from it. This one's on the outside of the square, so is the one directly across from it here. So you just wanna make sure just to check your work, make sure it's that way all the way around. And then these little ones in the corner, I just try to get just a little bit of a bevel in there. So then we'll go on this line. This is on the outside of this square, so we'll do this one on the outside. This one's on the inside. Okay, now as we've got those done, as we work these lines now, we're gonna have to look at where we are here. You wanna do the opposite on these vertical lines here than what you did here. So on this square right here, we did the inside of the line. So that means on these two, we're gonna do the outside. That's what's gonna give you that weave look. So once you get that done, now you can just run your lines just like we did this way. Okay, so now we just go the opposite side. As we move down, you can look across your line to see where you're supposed to be, or look at the other side and see that you're doing the opposite. It can kind of get a little bit confusing the bigger the area and the more lines you've got, but if you just kind of be mindful of it and take your time, you'll kind of get the hang of it as far as where you need to be. The thing I've kind of learned on this is that for each square, the two across will be the same bevel. Then the other two across here will be the opposite bevel that these are. If you do that and they all match each other, it'll all work out. But like I said, you'll start off by doing that middle line, alternating which side you're beveling, match this one and do that. It'll kind of help you keep it all sorted out. But it's a really fun style to play with. Okay, now we're gonna put our beveler up for right now and now we'll get our, one thing I like to do is go ahead and bevel around my edge. And I'm just using a push beveler here. You could definitely bevel with a beveler. So now I take my vertical line pear shader and where we're beveled down here, where it's going, it looks like, now you can kind of begin to see the pattern. And this one here looks like it's going underneath this one and this one's coming out from underneath this one and so on. So now you can kind of use this as your shader to kind of give it that shading effect. And what I usually do is I set the toe down in the bevel and I'll start on one side and go all the way across, just evenly. So just bevel that nice and even or shade that. Then I will take along the edge and I'll drag that just a little bit. So you don't have any tool marks. And sometimes I'll give it one or two in the middle where it's not, where this, this area here, the shaded area doesn't look perfect. I want it to kind of do this, you know, where it's got some shape to it. And you'll just go along and. So the way I like to do these, as I'm doing any type of this basket stamping here is I try to work from where my position is or where I'm seated. So I'm not turning my work too much. And even on something small like this, I'll just do all the ones that I can get to here and shade those up. Just kind of work all the ones. And right here on the edge, I just kind of lightly tap just so it's got a little bit of texture right in there. Even these ones in the corner, I'll just try to get just a little bit in there. It probably doesn't matter, but I like just a little bit in there just to give it a little color. And now we've gotten all the ones I can get from this side. So now I'll turn my work here and now I'll work all the other ones. You'll just keep doing that until you've got all of your ones that are going underneath the adjacent square. When you've got all those shaded, then we'll come back and I'll show you what we'll do next. But I'm gonna speed through this and get all these done. Okay, so we've gotten them all shaded. As you can see that it's starting to look pretty well like we want it to look. But now what I like to do next is I like to take my beveler and re-bevel all these lines and get a nice crisp transition there. And that'll really segment all those pieces and make them look even more kind of realistic. And so that's what I like to do now is just go in there and clean up our beveling and just really get a nice, clean, sharp bevel on all of those. You can see how much better that looks right there than this one here. This one looks a little shallow because you're kind of beating it up whenever you use that vertical line pear shader. So I like to go back through and just tighten those bevel lines up. Doesn't take that long and it really makes a difference. Okay, now that we've got all that re-beveled, you can see how now it looks almost like you cut that out and weaved it and then laid it in there. That's kind of what we're looking for is that kind of effect on there. And so now what I like to do is just take my swivel knife and just do some decorative cuts in here. Just going to give it a little bit of a, say like a actual basket that's weaved, you know, out of, you know, like wood stays kind of deal. You get a little bit of that wood grain or that cracking in there. And so what I'll do is just kind of do a few long ones, some little ones and just be a little bit random with them. Don't let them have such a pattern. You may have one that's almost reaches the other side over there and just kind of flick them in there. They don't need to be very deep. They're just more of a grain accent than they are a real flowy decorative cut. All right, so that's pretty much it. That's all of it. If you wanted to go back through after you're all done and just kind of clean up that edge border a little bit, that'd be fine. You know, just to kind of, again, just kind of dress it up just a bit, clean everything up. But you can see how nice and simple that was. On a bigger piece, you know, doing that saddle, some of those pieces, it was quite a bit to do, but on a wallet or a gunsling especially, you can probably do this on a belt, but you may want to narrow up the width of how far apart your lines are. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe just angle them more on a belt. You just have to play with that. But this works really good on wallets and wallets, portfolios, anywhere you're wanting to cover a big area and not have it just smooth or just a quilting. It's a really, really good option. I didn't invent this. I've been watching it for years. A lot of great toolers and craftsmen out there have used this type of basket stamping. I'm not sure who the first one was to do it, but I've always admired it. And last year, like I said, we finally gave it a whirl and started doing it. And at some, and I've been doing it a lot more on different projects. Thought you might want to know. Try it out on some scrap and see what you think about it. And we'll see y'all in the next video.