Making a Leather Wallet
Why? Because I’ve always been big on buying stuff to last — stuff that looks better, feels better with wear and use. And because I wanted to see if I could.
I joined Shift on a whim, when my chances of getting into another club fell through, and I know everyone says that everything happens for a reason — well it does. Accidentally stumbling upon Shift led me to meeting Noah and Ryan — joining this awesome community — finding my future housemates for next year — and hell, even leading the club.
I spent a number of summers as a kid building things out of wood — stabs at modern art, our back porch, etc. — and I really wanted to tap back into creating non-tech projects. At Shift, I wanted to try everything — new disciplines, skills, experiences — and as a community, I believe that we’ve made this possible.
My first project was a chatbot generation tool — think like weebly but for making chatbots rather than websites— but I really didn’t have the motivation for another tech-intensive project on top everything else. Then Youtube recommended me an ASMR video of someone recreating a Hermes leather wallet from scratch and I was like yes — I want to do this.
So, I bought some Vegetable Tanned Italian Vanchetta from Amazon as well as a basic 12 piece leather working kit and found an amazing tutorial online. I decided on making a simple cardholder, like my current wallet but you guys don’t know what that looks like huh, which was simple but certainly a challenge.
After cutting out a template and scoring the edges, it was time to punch the holes with a 6 pronged diamond tool. I was doing this in my dorm room, slamming textbooks onto a metal prong, and I’m very surprised that I didn’t get a noise complaint. You can see the holes on the left, and me trying to stitch on the right. Stitching actually wasn’t as hard / bad as I thought it would be — but gloves really would have prevented some workplace accidents.
Fast forward a bit and its done! Kinda. After a generous rubbing of olive oil to condition the leather, it took on some color and kind of held my cards together. Obviously, I need to finish the main crease so it’ll actually close but I’m pretty proud of the stitching. + Stitching is very therapeutic when combined with Netflix…
Making my own wallet from scratch was terrifying — I’ve never worked with leather before, never picked up a needle, I don’t know if it’ll even turn out ok — but I did it. Sure, I should have picked a thinner leather, and I shouldn’t have hit it with a mallet so hard that it cracked, but what’s the fun in being perfect? I wanted to make something with character.
What’s next? I’m gonna use it and (hopefully) it’ll look better next year.
About Eric
I’m a student studying Computer Science at the University of Michigan. I develop front-end applications in my free time and am also working on a startup called RecTable. I also love to cook and snowboard.
You can check out the work that I’ve done at ericzhong.com , or say hello at ezhong@umich.edu
