Canto Leather Cardholder Tutorial (With PDF Pattern!)

Hey everyone, this is Thomas from TC Hall Leather and today we're going to be building a kanto wallet. You can get the pattern from the link below on our website and follow along from there. We'll be using turquoise, gaucho oil buffed leather as well as natural avancorpo horse front. We recommend between a 2.5 and a 3.5 ounce leather for this project. So go ahead and print out the pattern, cut that out of some good hefty cardstock or a cereal box, and start marking it with our scratch awl. When we make our cuts, we're going to be using the lines on a cutting mat to make sure that everything squares up. You definitely don't want to come out with a trapezoid or some sort of weird shape because that's going to throw us off later down the line and make it really difficult to get a consistent product. The thumb notch here on these card pockets is optional but it's a pretty simple process if you have one of these cheap punches from Amazon. They don't come very sharp but you can strop them pretty well. And we're also cutting off the very edges of our thumb notch here to make sure that everything comes out smoothly and it's not going to be jagged when we sand it. We're using about 150 grit sandpaper for these pockets. You can use whatever you like as long as you don't take off too much material. I like to mark left and right on my pocket pieces and also which way is down, which I'm doing here. We're heating up our edge creaser here on a candle. An alcohol lamp is common as well. Tandy carries this craft tool edge creaser for not very much and I think it lends a nice refinement to the project. Here we're just stropping our skiving knife on a piece of leather strop with some green and white compound on either side. To thin out these pocket pieces with our skiving knife we're just going to take off the very edge to as thin as we would like. It helps the pockets to lay flat whenever they're layered. For some extra thinning of these T-pockets we'll whip out our French skiver from Weaver. This French skiver is actually a little lopsided. I should have returned it when I bought it but I did not. Our edge beveler is a size number one from Springfield. The size allows us to use it on pretty much every piece of this wallet project. To burnish our edges I like to use it's a water-based solution that works really well on French tan leather. We're going to put some on here just a very little amount, rub it in with our fingers, and then go to town with a wood slicker. Some folks use beeswax, gum trag, or even water at this point too. This is the step that's taken me the longest to perfect. Lining up my T-pockets to make sure that both sides are symmetrical and far enough away from each other that everything's natural and fits well. We're going to set our wing dividers to six millimeters and mark out where we're going to glue our T-pockets. The six millimeters takes into account 3.5 millimeters for our stitch line and also two millimeters for our trim allowance and a little bit for extra just in case. We're using a water-based glue here again from Sewa Leather Company. I've seen this described as Ace Bond before or just Sewa Leather Glue. I like that it's water-based because it's easy to clean off and if you really need to redo something you can remove it. It's not a perfect bond. We're using some on both sides of our project and we're letting it dry most of the way until it's fairly translucent before sticking it on. One thing to remember is that this project is asymmetrical in that there's a front pocket on one side but not the other. We're also going to stitch one of these T-pockets but not the other because we can't cover up that stitch line without a second front pocket. So while this side will be glued and stitched, our second T-pocket will be neither of those. Here I'm just doing a final check for spacing between the T-pockets and it looks good. Next we'll set our wing dividers to about 3.5 millimeters for our first stitch line and use our 3.85 millimeter slanted pricking irons. These are the European style from Rocky Mountain Leather. This is the nine prong or nine tooth. We want to close up these holes. We can hammer them but I like to use a bone folder to press them closed. For thread we're using Vinimo No. 5 MBT. This is the silver color. We're adding some beeswax because the Vinimo is unwaxed and we're using about 4.5 to 5 times the length of the line that we need to stitch. We'll thread into our John James 004 needles. Since we're using polyester thread we can burn the ends down. We're using a thread zap too here. You can also use a lighter. Then we're going to pound those stitches down nice and flat so they don't get in the way. We're back to our six millimeter wing divider width. This is going to be our glue line for the rest of the wallet. We need to rough up the smooth grain side of this gaucho leather so we're going to be using a leather rougher craft tool from Tandy to make sure that everything gets a nice good adhesion. Our next step is to set our wing dividers to two millimeters. That's going to account for our trim allowance so we'll mark that all around the perimeter of our project. On the pattern if you don't want to use the trim allowance simply cut off that two millimeters on the pattern pieces and that'll leave you without that trim allowance so that you can just sand the edges if you would prefer. Personally I like the look of the trim allowance being able to know that everything is perfectly straight and flat every time but it can be tricky sometimes especially with thicker leather. This is a radius tool. We'll be using the 7.5 radius. The more cuts you make on the radius the smoother it's going to be and the less work you'll have later with the sandpaper. I'll be using 150 grit here just on the corners to get them as smooth as everything else. I won't touch the rest of the edges with the sandpaper just yet but now we're back to 3.5 millimeters. With our wing divider this is going to be our stitch line. I find that anything less than 3.5 is too close to the edge and causes problems but that's just my personal preference. When punching your holes through the wallet really try your hardest to straddle the pocket panels so wherever there's a seam with that t-pocket put one hole equidistant on either side of the seam. You really don't want to puncture the the seam with a hole because it's going to affect the integrity of that pocket. When we come around the corners it's helpful to have a two-tooth iron. You'll see me working around here. Everyone does this a little bit differently. Some people pre-measure their holes entirely around the wallet and some folks have more of a free-form approach to it. You'll get to know every wallet project as you make it. I like to backstitch every time I come across a pocket seam. It just gives me peace of mind knowing that there's some more strength on the stitch line. As we come to the final burnishing on this wallet I'm going to be using a drill press that I've adapted to use as a burnisher. It's pretty handy. I got this adapter for burnishing on Etsy but there are lots of places that make them. Sometimes I'll go back over the final project one more time with a piece of canvas cloth. You can do as many rounds of sandpaper as you like. Just remember to go up in the grit instead of going down. Our final step is to open up those pockets using our bone folder. Make sure there's no excess glue and brush it off with a horsehair brush. And there we have it. I hope that you've enjoyed this tutorial on making our Kanto card holder. Be sure to check out our website and our Instagram for more patterns and also for more fun stuff coming up. We have a lot in the works right now. Please reach out with any questions and thanks for watching!