Christophe of Grey
Leathersmith/Archer
A Tooling Example
Step 5
For added interest you can texture the inner parts of the plait and the outter. In this case I used a stippling tool for the inner parts and a textured beveler for the outter part.
Stippling tools comes in many sizes to fit the areas of your project and two basic stipple patterns. One is coarse and the other fine. If you get a selection of sizes be sure they are all of the same pattern, coarse/fine.
The textured beveler is a standard beveling tool but instead of the face being smooth as most are, these have a cross hatch texture to then. Doing this to your project gives it a little more for the stain to grab onto. I have found if you use acrylic paints on your work that stippling gives the paint a better hold on the project.
It's a personal thing but I don't like to bevel where one plait goes under another. I think the knife cut is sufficeint to indicate that is what's going on.