How it started

The journey to leather began long before I first picked up a knife and a piece of leather. When I was a young man choosing a school, I was thinking about saddlery and basketry - something drew me to it. In the end, I took a different path. It was a mistake that manifested itself sooner than I knew.
After I finished school, I lost feeling in my fingers for six months. To this day I have sensitivity at about 10% compared to a healthy person. Ironically, this is what taught me to work with even more precision - when you don't feel pressure, you have to learn to see and anticipate.

The Impulse That Changed Everything

I had a friend who was a great craftsman who made things out of leather. We'd been talking about him making me a knife sheath for a long time, but it still didn't work out. In 2018, news came that you can't be prepared for - a tragic car accident. He was 28.
I remember standing there with that knife in my hand and realizing that six months of procrastination meant it would never happen again. That thought hit me harder than the loss itself. How many things do we put off? How many intentions remain just intentions?
I figured I'd learn to make leather in his honor. I didn't want his craft to end with him.

Beginning with an illusion

For six months I gathered courage. I studied tutorials, watched videos, wondered if I was up to it at all - with fingers that couldn't feel and no practice. But the phrase “can't do it” doesn't exist in my vocabulary.
I bought my first piece of leather and a Chinese tool kit. The idea: “It'll be a piece of cake.” Reality: It wasn't. The first pieces looked exactly like every beginner's first pieces look - wrong. Leather is a material that does things in practice that it doesn't do in theory. Every piece reacts differently, every seam wants a different approach.
Most people start with wallets or simple belts. I went straight to handcuffs and collars. It wasn't a genius decision - it was masochistic. But it taught me to work with design details, stress points and ergonomics in a way that you can't learn when making simple things.

From prototype to craft

The first functional piece was a slapper - from the first design to the final execution of my entire design. It wasn't perfect, but it worked. And most importantly, it was mine.
Then came the thing that got me started on all this: the knife sheath. I was afraid of it. Sheaths are difficult - at least three layers of leather, and you often find out at the end that you made a mistake right at the beginning. But fear has to be overcome. I did it.
Several years have passed since then. I've made hundreds of pieces, ruined a few meters of leather in experimentation, invested hundreds of thousands in tools and materials. Every day I learn something new - leather is a material that never stops testing you.
The memory of my friend is always there. In every seam, every polished edge, every piece that leaves the workshop. If he were alive, you might not be reading these lines. But he would be happy that his craft lives on - and that I have better results than I ever expected.