#costrel

Re-did the second costrel, and managed not to melt it this time. 🤣 We’ll need to acquire a stopper for it (the other one was off a bottle of some apple brandy that I chose specifically for the cork), but it is now waxed and ready for use.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the one I ruined; I hate to just throw it away, because I sunk a lot of time into it, and it is functional, and it looks fine from the front, but I have no use for such an unflattering example of my work.

More costrels! The two in the front are still damp, have been packed with pellets to round them out while they dry, the four in the back are ready for waxing.

So after letting the costrel dry overnight (filled with lentils), the next morning it looked like this:

Not bad! I did some minor manual touch-ups with the beveling tool, but on the whole, a lot of the detail returned once the leather was dry and no longer so puffy.

Then it was time to remove the lentils, which was, ah -- easier said than done.

Lentils for days, my friends. Lentils that were now slightly soft and puffy from the water they’d absorbed.

When I thought I had gotten all the lentils out, I tossed some screws in there and shook it up and more came out:

And more. And more. Every time I did it, more lentils. At which point it occurred to me that I had been a fucking moron, because you know what is EXACTLY the same size and shape as lentils??

The fucking wax I’d been planning to use in the first place.

Ah well. Live and learn.

I did, of course, want to look up the Material Safety Data Sheet for the jeweler’s wax before I used it for a drinking vessel, and I found out--

--that eating plastic is bad for you.

lol, ALRIGHT THEN, I think we’re good.

...That said, in the end I decided to go with beeswax anyway, because the jeweler’s wax has a rather pronounced smell. It’s not a bad scent, but it is kind of... soapy/perfume-y, which probably wasn’t going to pair well with potable beverages.

So here is me melting down a lump of beeswax on the stovetop:

Everyone recommends a double boiler for wax, but you can also just... put it on low heat? o_O

Anyway, it took forever. I spent longer waxing it than I did on every other step combined, mostly because this is the part I was unfamiliar with. I was initially not using enough wax -- it wound up using that entire lump -- so next time I’m just going to dump in a ton from the start, way more than I need, slosh it around until it’s saturated and then pour off the extra. I was also very leery of overcooking the leather, because that is very easy to do, and it is permanent. I’d forgotten what the polymerization point is for leather (the point at which is begins to shrivel, a chemical rather than physical change -- around 200F?) but I knew I was having to push my oven close to that edge in order to get the wax to melt, so I was doing the whole thing in 5-10 minute intervals.

It was, needless to say, very slow. And then every time I went to fill it with water to see if was finished, there would be water leaking out from some holes, or darkening some patches (making it clear that the underside there that hadn’t gotten waxed properly), or ugh. After a day and half, I was like, SCREW IT, IF IT DOESN’T WORK THIS TIME, THEN IT CAN BE A *DECORATIVE* BOTTLE.

Luckily that’s when it finally held. Here is the waxing job, finished:

McFUCKIN’ FINALLY.

I did not dye the leather beforehand, because I wanted to show the color change that you get just from waxing/baking. It’s... a kind of meh shade of brown, like refried beans. S’okay, I’m gonna hit it with an antiquing paste.

Costrel all done. 😊

Made of 8 oz veg-tan leather and sealed with beeswax. Probably not something I’m going to put up for sale, but it was a fun little project and I now have a functional drink container for my blinged-out viking costume.

Commencing with the costrel, because I have no self-control when presented with a shiny new project. 🤣

I have a feeling that the elaborate tooling isn't going to weather the soaking/stretching stage very well, but we shall see. (I'm thinking I'll probably wind up painting the design in gold after it's done.)

In any event, I am definitely backing it with duct tape before tooling, because it needs to stay precisely the same size, and I learned that lesson the hard way with the Iznik quiver.

(This bad boy:

Soaking in the sink for roughly 15 minutes.

My beautiful details, gone. 😭

Filling it with lentils -- because it was that or quinoa, and lentils are cheaper.

The shaping is nice, but jfc, it destroyed the tooling. Half the beveling isn't even visible anymore, all you can see are the cut lines.

Anyway, I'll see if I can do some manual touch-ups when it's drier (way too soggy right now), and painting it gold will probably hide a multitude of sins. 👍

Used the stitching groover to make a pair of channels for the stitches.

Used the four-prong punch to make most of the stitching holes.

Since I don't have a two-prong punch in this size, I used a nail to punch the holes on the tight curves where the four-prong didn't fit.

And the back came out pretty good too. If you don't keep the punch perpendicular to the cutting mat when you're making the holes, the front will look fine but the back will look janky as hell.

For funsies, I took the guide off the stitching groover and connected the dots freehand on the back. It will never be quite as tidy as the front, but it's better than no groove at all. (In addition to making everything look nicer, sinking the line of stitches below the surface of the leather will make them less vulnerable to abrasion.)

Stitching! The device I'm using to hold the leather in place is called a stitching pony -- not essential, but convenient when you're doing a flat project like this.

Take note though! When you first get it, the clamps will be bare wood, and you MUST make little leather pads for it, or else the hard edges will leave nasty indentations in your project. The other day I was watching a (different) leatherworking video where the guy hadn't padded his stitching pony, and my face was literally the 😱 emoji.

Stitching complete -- I used an edge burnisher to smooth down the ripples where the thread had pulled on the leather. If you don’t have one of these, you could probably use the back of a spoon.