How to make a leather valet tray

This is one of my favorite small leatherworking projects -- it's not that much work and you get a really nice artifact. It's also a great beginner project as it requires most of the techniques you need for making other small leather goods (e.g. wallets, watch straps, belts, notebook cases).

If you're totally new to leatherworking you should still be able to follow this guide. If you're looking for more resources, r/leathercraft is great for getting started. Once you sort of know what you're doing you'll end up stumbling on great info in arcane forums. It's really pretty easy to get started, so it's also worth thinking about making something you want! My first project was a super simple sleeve for my Kindle -- I didn't like any of the cases online and figured it couldn't be that hard to sew two pieces of leather together.

Materials needed

Here's the list of materials + tools you'll need, including links to the exact more niche items I used in this post:

• 3oz/1.2mm thickness leather
• Skiving knife or rotary cutting tool
• Framing square or ruler
• Leather glue
• Glue spreader
• Xacto knife
• Quarter
• A small flat head screw driver
• 24" x 36" self-healing cutting mat
• Compass
• Cork board
• 5-tooth and optionally 2-tooth 5mm diamond pricking iron or small diamond awl
  • I recommend pricking irons here, they make stitching substantially faster and in my experience safer (I cut my finger once pulling out a diamond awl and it hurt really bad so I hate using them). That being said, if you want to keep the budget lower an awl works too (just be careful!).
• Something to mark patterns on leather with. You can get a cheap scratch awl. I use the 0.2mm KS Blade hole punch here but I can't find it for sale anymore.
• Thread nippers
• Beeswax block
• Size 532 thread
• Mallet
• Size 4 harness needles
• Stitching pony
  • You can buy one of these, or if you're willing to do some basic woodworking you can build one yourself (my dad built mine for me). You also can get by without this, it will just be harder.
• A piece of canvas
  • I have an old scrap piece I use, you can also buy a piece like this if you don't have any.
• Burnishing agent
  • I've never tried it, but I read on a forum once that in the worst case you can use spit as a substitute here.
• 3/16" hole punch
• 1/4" post chicago screws

Worth noting you can definitely opt for cheaper alternatives here -- I splurged on nicer tools almost immediately because I knew I would enjoy leatherworking, so if you have the same feeling and can afford it go for it!

Instructions

The first step is cutting two 8" x 8" squares of leather. You can see a demonstration here of how to cut depending on what type of implement you have. You should use the scratch awl to mark out the squares. I recommend marking them out adjacent to each other to minimize scraps.

If you're using a skiving knife you'll also want to make sure it's sharp -- you can watch a good demonstration of sharpening/stropping here. If you just bought a knife it will probably be sharp already but it's good to learn anyway.

Find the rotations of your squares that line up the best (you probably won't have perfect cuts). Spread some glue, attach the squares, and leave something a bit weighty like a textbook on top for a couple minutes while the glue dries.

Use an Xacto knife to clean up uneven edges. Then take a quarter, line it up at a corner, and cut around it. Repeat for each corner.

The next step is stitching. You can watch a good tutorial of the whole process here.

Set the compass to 3/16" and trace around the edge. Then with the leather on top of your cork board, work all the way around with your pricking iron (or diamond awl). A good trick with the pricking iron is to re-use the last hole of the previous punch when doing the next one.

Cut enough thread to work all the way around. The rule of thumb I use is 3x the length of what I'm stitching, so here I would do 12x one side of the square. In this project I actually tried using two pieces of thread that each covered two sides rather than one big piece, but either works. One piece of thread might look a tad nicer, but two pieces should speed things up a bit since with one piece you have to pull through a lot of thread at the beginning of the stitching process.

Now run the thread through some wax a couple of times. The rule of thumb I use is 3x for the length of the thread, and a couple extra times at the edges. Then flatten the edges with a hammer or mallet, thread the needle, and twist the thread a bit at the end to help make sure it doesn't fall out of the needle while stitching.

Now load up the square into the stitching pony and stitch all the way around. Refer to the stitching tutorial above for help here.

Once I stitch all the way around, I like to stitch back one hole in the opposite direction. Next snip the leftover thread to around the length between holes, and apply a bit of glue to the leftover thread to pin it down.

Next we'll burnish the edges to give them a nice finish. Take a bit of paper towel and spread some of the burnishing agent along half of one edge. Take the piece of canvas and create a bunch of friction by rubbing it along the edge. Put in a good amount of elbow grease here. Repeat over the whole surface of the edge.

Finally we'll punch some holes and add the screws. On each corner measure 1.5" from the top and 3/4" from the side. Mark one hole like this for each corner. Once you've marked the holes use the 3/16" hole punch and a mallet to punch the holes. It's best to punch the holes over your cutting mat on a hard surface.

To mark the position for the second hole for each corner, fold the corner and run the scratch awl around through the first hole. Punch the holes after you've lined them up.

Fold and add the screws to each corner and you should have the finished product! If you're having trouble folding the leather, you can wet it a bit with cloth or paper towel and try again.