My friend Ken Williams and his wife (here and here) have inspired me again. They brought down some iPad cases and I loved the designs. Here’s some photos of what they brought:
iPad 2/3 cases from the Williams: Light Nubuck leather
I’ll be auctioning these off at Defcon to raise money for Ken and his family’s work in the north. Bidding will start at $25.
Based on all the requests for iPad cases, and inspired by the William’s designs, I decided to try my hand at a case. I started with heavy 6oz distressed Vegetable Tanned Leather. This is by far the heaviest leather I’ve worked with yet. Everything was new about working with this heavy leather. It was harder to measure because the bulky roll wants to unroll all the time. It was harder to cut, especially since I messed up and had to make five pieces instead of two. In fact, my arms were shaking as I made the last cuts because of the intense pressure I had to put down to keep the leather from resisting the utility knife. The lace had to be pre-cut from the same material, and this was no small job considering that there is over eight feet of lace wound around the edges. The holes punched around the sides were so difficult to punch. But the hardest part was the lacing, and the dry splicing of a second piece of lace (I didn’t have an eight-foot piece of leather to cut lace from). The slicing took me about an hour and a half.
All told, this took me most of my “day off” on Sunday. It was “relaxing” (in a masochistic kind of way) and in the end, my hate for this material turned into a twisted kind of love. This case will last forever. It’s so tough and durable that thirty years from now my grandkids will be able to use it for their “desktop” computer.
I learned a lot from this project and I know I can do them much faster after all the screwups, but I’m gonna rest first. =)
This case is signed and numbered (iPad case #1) and I’ll be auctioning it off at Defcon to help pay for the tools we need to continue working.
