I think the deboss or sanded down engraving tip looked best! I'm glad I found your video looking at how to use my cricut to layout tooling on leather so dont actually need a super heavy line , just enough to see the pattern to tool it out. Great vid thank you for your trial and error !
Been working with Leather for almost ten years now. I just got a Cricut and was interested to see the verdict on using it. Thanks for making the sacrifice. I can now say with 100% certainty that not only is it not worth it to use the Cricut, it is also significantly cheaper to buy the necessary leatherworking tools and tool it by hand. The finish you get will look great, and that investment of time pays off (literally; you can sell hand tooled stuff for a lot more than embossed or machine stamped).
I like the sanded down the best and once it had the antique gel it looked amazing. What a nice way to get a nice image on a more modern wallet besides the usual western leather work I am doing. Thank you for the experiment as I will be doing the same thing.
my dear, you have just saved me and my husband 400$ by sacrificing your engraving tool for all of us to see what it does or doesn't do. THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH SWEETHEART xo
Thank you for "Destroying" your tool....... Not!!!!!! you actually gave me a way to mark up leather shapes to be tool by hand. Thank you very much for this video.
Both options have a good use on leather. Especialy to make small items like wallets. And to make the base drawings to do the hand carving with punch tools. I liked your test. Thanks.
The debossing is basically just for accurate design transfer onto the leather. You should then go through the normal hand process to cut and pattern the leather for correct effect. But this is a great tool for pattern transfer rather than doing it all by hand.
The engraving tip actually worked pretty good for putting the pattern down. All you would have needed to do is use some leather shading tools to make it look better and stand out more. What the engraver did is basically what a leather craving knife does.
Thanks for your sacrifice, you're very appreciated! I have some heavyweight cork fabric I wanted to use the engraving tool on..lucky I found you before I did.
I haven’t used a cricut for leather but typically when working with leather you’re going to want to let that water soak in a little before you start doing anything to it. You want the color to almost come back to the natural color of the leather or anything you do on the surface is going to be mushy and lack detail.
Thank you for the sub! I actually think if I didn't sand it for as long as I did, it might have worked a lot better. But I'm not going to buy another one and check 😂
Engraving leather is often done with a blade, right? So I wonder if you could tweak the settings for the blade and get good results? I'd maybe even use a somewhat dull blade that isn't any good for cutting paper and vinyl any more. I might play around on some scraps when I have a dull blade available. Nothing to lose!
When you wet the leather you need to let the water soak in and “case” the leather. You would probably get better results with the de bossing tip. Much like stamping the leather if the water content is to high it get mushy impressions if to dry not deep enough.
Nothing beats an actual swivel knife. That being said, for a hand tooled project, the sanded down version would be perfect for design transferring in preparation for hand tooling. (swivel knife cuts, bevelling, pear shading, backgrounding...etc.)
Thanks for the video! Is it safe to say that the sanded down engraving tip pretty much gives the same look as the embossed tip? I didn't think it was a dumb idea at all, it sounded good in theory 😊
Thank you!! It's pretty similar. The sanded down engraving tip is a little more precise and the embossing tip is a bit deeper but I think I sanded it down too much. Probably one second with the Dremel would have been sufficient.
Could you increase your pressure setting (well, of course you could, go into special settings, or special materials) with the debossing tip? Or, conversely, decrease the pressure before use with the engraving tip.
I think that if you were to soak the leather a little longer and making it a little wetter, the embossing would be good. Maybe with an added pressure to the pen?
what if you engraved and then embossed? It might press down the burs left by the engraver... also, if you did a little bit of leather tooling on the engraving the image could really pop.
I also like the results from the sanded down engraving tip! Wondering if anyone knows if those little dots are part of the design or what the tips do to leather?
I would have liked to see what the engraving tip would do to harness or bridle leather. Maybe even on a piece that was finished with resolene first. Maybe it would be less ... scratchy.
interesting, its looks like the sanded engraving tip was JUST a touch better than the de bossing tip. what if you tried the de bossier first and then reran it with the sanded engraver?
When embossing or tooling leather, top grain veggie tanned is always the way to go. It's the best leather of durability and longevity. However, "genuine leather" is the poorest and cheapest type of leather. It will crack, dry and basically disintegrate over time. Great video.
It looks like the tip spins to cut in a rotary fashion, if they made it more like a saw rotation that wouldnt pull out the fibers of the leather which are parallel to its current rotation.
Yes I'm late to the party. I am wondering if sanding down could have been accomplished by running a piece of wet sand or emery paper through the machine. Would that refine the amount taken off the engraving tip? I don't hate the result of the engraver, just the ragged appearance. I am considering buying a Cricut, thank you for going the extra mile👍
Great video. I do have a question…where did you get your veg-tan leather? I bought some round coasters for debossing them, but I guess they are too thick because it left marks all over the coaster from the bar that holds your mat down and the blade housing going back and forth. Also had ghost images from the design. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
The last time I checked, I don't think debossing or engraving has custom material settings so you can't manually increase the pressure! Hopefully that gets updated at some point.
Two things I would only suggest for your leather work, carving techniques and laser. Glad you tried it, but there is a reason why we don't engrave leather.
You definitely could if you duplicated the file and overlapped it, my only concern is that something would misalign and the Cricut wouldn't get it exactly on the same spot when going back to deboss.
I don’t think you would get any better given that the embossing tip isn’t very tall. More pressure would only push the flat portions of the tool into the leather giving a fat line around an inside dip. Hope that made sense.
The sanded down engraving tip and debossing (embossing really) tip are neither finished results, But? *Both are VERY useful for creating /imprinting patterns onto veg tan leather to follow through with hand tooling & carving using a swivel knife and various stamps!* On its own sans hand tooling? The Circuit is 100% useless to a leathwerworker, but used as a quick way to set a pattern that one can not otherwise easilly attain for the real leathwrwork of hand tooling and carving? It's priceless as it saves you so much time effort and money.
I love your videos. You get right to the point. No useless chatter I have to fast forward through. Thanks so much!
I actually think the sanded down engraving tip looks the best!
That makes me feel a little better! I think if I didn't sand it for as long, it would have actually been really good. But I took too much off.
Same.
I think it should be painted or lacquered after sanding, because the leather became porous, like suede
I agree!!
I agree!
The fact that you took a chance for us, deserves a subscribe from me for sure.
I think the deboss or sanded down engraving tip looked best! I'm glad I found your video
looking at how to use my cricut to layout tooling on leather so dont actually need a super heavy line , just enough to see the pattern to tool it out. Great vid thank you for your trial and error !
My pleasure! and I think that's a very practical application for it!
LOL, you're supposed to use the engraving tip, do 2 passes, and then 4 passes on the debossing tip... then it looks just like hand tooled leather...
I love the way the sanded tip looks like! Sometimes we need to tweak our tools for our needs
Been working with Leather for almost ten years now. I just got a Cricut and was interested to see the verdict on using it. Thanks for making the sacrifice. I can now say with 100% certainty that not only is it not worth it to use the Cricut, it is also significantly cheaper to buy the necessary leatherworking tools and tool it by hand. The finish you get will look great, and that investment of time pays off (literally; you can sell hand tooled stuff for a lot more than embossed or machine stamped).
Have you tried the foil tool?
I like the sanded down the best and once it had the antique gel it looked amazing. What a nice way to get a nice image on a more modern wallet besides the usual western leather work I am doing. Thank you for the experiment as I will be doing the same thing.
my dear, you have just saved me and my husband 400$ by sacrificing your engraving tool for all of us to see what it does or doesn't do. THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH SWEETHEART xo
Glad I could help 😀
Thank you for "Destroying" your tool....... Not!!!!!! you actually gave me a way to mark up leather shapes to be tool by hand. Thank you very much for this video.
Both options have a good use on leather. Especialy to make small items like wallets. And to make the base drawings to do the hand carving with punch tools. I liked your test. Thanks.
Thanks so much!
I love this video!! And I will be sanding my Cricut engraving tool down because I liked the outcome so much! Thank you!
I have watched a lot of Cricut tutorial videos and I have to say that you are not cringe like the others. Subbed.
You get an A for efforts made. The one you sanded worked the most pleasurably in my opinion.
The debossing is basically just for accurate design transfer onto the leather. You should then go through the normal hand process to cut and pattern the leather for correct effect. But this is a great tool for pattern transfer rather than doing it all by hand.
I like it. Is not so bad. Debossing and the engraving after sand it its looks pretty well. Thanks for the tip.
The engraving tip actually worked pretty good for putting the pattern down. All you would have needed to do is use some leather shading tools to make it look better and stand out more. What the engraver did is basically what a leather craving knife does.
Yep! I think the best application for it would be to trace for tooling.
Thank you for being the one to take the end off the engraver, because it would have been me otherwise and I would die slowly by the wifes hand.
hahaha took one for the team.
I rushed home from work stopping only for a strip of leather for a project. I’m excited to try this.
Thanks for your sacrifice, you're very appreciated! I have some heavyweight cork fabric I wanted to use the engraving tool on..lucky I found you before I did.
You're too kind. Thanks for watching.
Deboss is my fav. Thx for showing us.
Thanks for watching!
You are so brave! Thank you for your science experiments!
Happy to take the fall for everyone Ha!
I haven’t used a cricut for leather but typically when working with leather you’re going to want to let that water soak in a little before you start doing anything to it. You want the color to almost come back to the natural color of the leather or anything you do on the surface is going to be mushy and lack detail.
The best way is probably to cut first, just one pass…then load the engraving tip and it widens out the cut. But your sanded one looks good too!
Don’t regret it sending it down made that piece the best out of all three at least that’s what I think
Sanded tip looks best on camera...to me...and subscribed 😊
Thank you for the sub! I actually think if I didn't sand it for as long as I did, it might have worked a lot better. But I'm not going to buy another one and check 😂
Great video, really like your presentation style and your personality
Thank you, I appreciate that a lot!
Engraving leather is often done with a blade, right? So I wonder if you could tweak the settings for the blade and get good results? I'd maybe even use a somewhat dull blade that isn't any good for cutting paper and vinyl any more. I might play around on some scraps when I have a dull blade available. Nothing to lose!
Yep! I think the best application for it would be to trace for tooling.
I just might sand down mine too, I love it!!! thnx a lot
Thanks so much! Means a lot.
When you wet the leather you need to let the water soak in and “case” the leather. You would probably get better results with the de bossing tip. Much like stamping the leather if the water content is to high it get mushy impressions if to dry not deep enough.
Thanks for the tip Matt! no pun intended.
Thank you for explaining that!
I like the sanded look. You can def get different depths of the image if used in combination with the normal tip and the sanded tip
Nothing beats an actual swivel knife. That being said, for a hand tooled project, the sanded down version would be perfect for design transferring in preparation for hand tooling. (swivel knife cuts, bevelling, pear shading, backgrounding...etc.)
Your lighting set up looks nice.
Thanks!
Thanks for the video! Is it safe to say that the sanded down engraving tip pretty much gives the same look as the embossed tip? I didn't think it was a dumb idea at all, it sounded good in theory 😊
Thank you!! It's pretty similar. The sanded down engraving tip is a little more precise and the embossing tip is a bit deeper but I think I sanded it down too much. Probably one second with the Dremel would have been sufficient.
Could you increase your pressure setting (well, of course you could, go into special settings, or special materials) with the debossing tip?
Or, conversely, decrease the pressure before use with the engraving tip.
Try using it as the knifework stage of a full tooling, followed by bevelling, ground filling, graining. The full Al Stohlman.
I think that if you were to soak the leather a little longer and making it a little wetter, the embossing would be good. Maybe with an added pressure to the pen?
what if you engraved and then embossed? It might press down the burs left by the engraver... also, if you did a little bit of leather tooling on the engraving the image could really pop.
I used my foil tip and it came out really good
Ive been using the foil tip works pretty ok
Neat! But I was distracted by how that t-shirt is the best.
It is pretty nice.
I also like the results from the sanded down engraving tip! Wondering if anyone knows if those little dots are part of the design or what the tips do to leather?
The dots are kind of where it stops and pivots and the tip spins so it leaves a dot. A little annoying!
Try layering the debossing on top of the engraving and you will get a different outcome.
Engrave then emboss? Hmmmm...I will have to try that! Thank you!
I actually think the sanded down engraving top looks just as look as the embossing top and miles better than the sharp engraving tip
I agree with Lynn. Maybe you should try it again with a more floral design. You could then tool the leather.
Agreed. I think using the Cricut as your base for tooling is the best use of the engraving tip.
I would have liked to see what the engraving tip would do to harness or bridle leather. Maybe even on a piece that was finished with resolene first. Maybe it would be less ... scratchy.
I tried it on some Wickett and Craig English Bridle Leather and it also scratched it, but definitely different leathers might respond better.
What if you ran the deboss tip over twice, or deboss then engrave or vice versa? I havent bought any leather to try
Thanks for the video! *removes engraving tool from shopping basket*
😂
I wonder how the debossing would look on chrome tan…and if you could put foil over it to really make the design pop?
interesting, its looks like the sanded engraving tip was JUST a touch better than the de bossing tip. what if you tried the de bossier first and then reran it with the sanded engraver?
Can you use black ink pen to draw after embossing
The last 2 look good for me
I feel like the foil tool works better, have you tried it?
I found that using the foil tip works better than either of these for engraving using 3 passes
😅 Te compadezco pero mereció la pena experimentar los límites de las herramientas; eso te hace diferente 😊
Thanks for the experiment!
I liked it after you sanded it down 🙂
What I do wonder is if they might work better if the leather was cased more than you did there, a full overnight one might have far better results
Yeah that last on for the after the grind on the tip. That third one looks more professional.
I'm curious how the foil transfer tip would look without foil just embossing?
When embossing or tooling leather, top grain veggie tanned is always the way to go. It's the best leather of durability and longevity. However, "genuine leather" is the poorest and cheapest type of leather. It will crack, dry and basically disintegrate over time. Great video.
It looks like the tip spins to cut in a rotary fashion, if they made it more like a saw rotation that wouldnt pull out the fibers of the leather which are parallel to its current rotation.
Yes I'm late to the party. I am wondering if sanding down could have been accomplished by running a piece of wet sand or emery paper through the machine. Would that refine the amount taken off the engraving tip? I don't hate the result of the engraver, just the ragged appearance. I am considering buying a Cricut, thank you for going the extra mile👍
is it possible to run the same piece through the machine twice, starting with engraving then switching to the debossing tip?
You are great, thanks for your tutorial
Thanks so much. All the best!
Is it possible to engrave then deboss over the engraved image?
Can you recommend a gel?
What is the weight of the leather that you used for the video? Thanks in advance.
Great video. I do have a question…where did you get your veg-tan leather? I bought some round coasters for debossing them, but I guess they are too thick because it left marks all over the coaster from the bar that holds your mat down and the blade housing going back and forth. Also had ghost images from the design. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Tandy leather is probably the most generic answer as those are everywhere! I find anything over 6 oz there is a strong chance of jamming.
Weaver leather supply
Tandy leather
Springfield leather co
Maverick Leather
Rocky Mountain Leather
I have seen some use both engrave and deboss in the same template so it won’t look bad. Just an idea.
What if you amped up the pressure when debossing?
The last time I checked, I don't think debossing or engraving has custom material settings so you can't manually increase the pressure! Hopefully that gets updated at some point.
Can you use engraving tola mekar 3 please answer me ?
What does work is to engrave then run again with foil transfer tool. Engraving tool opens the surface and the foil tool widens out the line.
Two things I would only suggest for your leather work, carving techniques and laser. Glad you tried it, but there is a reason why we don't engrave leather.
they need to make a roller ball engraving tip, you think?
Hey! that's not a bad idea at all.
Can I wash it if I add it to fabric?
I tend to think the sanded tip should be burnished to round it a little more. Great experiment. 🤔🤔🤔. Or maybe dull the end with some tape?
That might work!
Can you engrave then embose it?
Did you try to retrace the image with a swivel knife or a pinball point after using the cutter tool? It may help
I didn't but that's definitely the best application for the engraving tip.
What would it look like if you engrave first than debossed over top of it?
Will have to try that some time. But definitely had some alignment issues trying to deboss multiple times.
What about using the engraver then the debosser?
Interesting! Thx , I was wondering about how leather would do. Ive had mine for a week lol
No problem! Thanks for commenting :)
I like the sanded one the best
Maybe do the debossing twice?
I love it.
Could you engrave it first then use the Deboss over top of it?
You definitely could if you duplicated the file and overlapped it, my only concern is that something would misalign and the Cricut wouldn't get it exactly on the same spot when going back to deboss.
This was my same thought do both!
Is this possible with explore 3 ?
Really helpful!
How thin does the leather have to be?
You made me laugh I’m subscribing jus off that you are not afraid of trying
Is it possible to use a scoring tool instead and adjust the pressure?
I actually tried the scoring tool as well, but you can't do any custom pressure settings with the scoring tool. At least I don't think so.
What is that tool actually made for?
Was hoping this would be a great solution to add a brand to my work but I hate the little divets that it caused.
my debossing tip didnt even achieve that ! hardly a mark on the leather - Ive almost given up
you are so funny and cute, thank you, liked already
can the pressure be increased (or not) when using the debossing tip?
Unfortunately there are no custom material settings options for the debossing tip. So you can't up the pressure significantly.
I don’t think you would get any better given that the embossing tip isn’t very tall. More pressure would only push the flat portions of the tool into the leather giving a fat line around an inside dip. Hope that made sense.
I would like to have seen it if you put some resist on it before you antiqued it.
The sanded down engraving tip and debossing (embossing really) tip are neither finished results, But? *Both are VERY useful for creating /imprinting patterns onto veg tan leather to follow through with hand tooling & carving using a swivel knife and various stamps!*
On its own sans hand tooling? The Circuit is 100% useless to a leathwerworker, but used as a quick way to set a pattern that one can not otherwise easilly attain for the real leathwrwork of hand tooling and carving? It's priceless as it saves you so much time effort and money.
Do you have a cricut 3?
Haven't gotten it yet.
You should be able to tool either and they should come out fine...