A leather wallet can look pretty simple when you see it sitting on a table. A few pieces of leather, some stitching, and a couple of pockets. But there is a lot more that goes into making a good wallet than what you see on the finished product. At Dark Forest, we believe craftsmanship is really about paying attention to the little things. A wallet should feel like someone spent a lot of time making it, because someone did.
Every Dark Forest wallet starts with raw vegetable-tanned leather from Hermann Oak. We choose vegetable-tanned leather because of the way it feels, ages, and develops character over time. It starts out as a piece of leather, but by the time it makes its way into your pocket, it has gone through a pretty long process in our Portland workshop.
The first step is hand dyeing. We dye every piece of leather ourselves rather than starting with leather that has already been finished to our specifications. Each piece is carefully worked with dye and then left to dry overnight. The following morning, once the leather has had time to settle and dry completely, we treat it and begin preparing the individual pieces for assembly.
Before we start putting anything together, each piece gets a little attention of its own. Any exposed top edge is burnished before we move on to skiving the leather. Skiving means thinning the leather in specific areas so that when multiple pieces come together, the finished wallet doesn't end up unnecessarily bulky. We also scratch or rough up the areas where the pieces will be glued together so the adhesive has a good surface to bond to.
This is where a lot of the craftsmanship happens, even though most of it eventually disappears into the finished wallet. There are a lot of little steps involved in getting the pieces to fit together properly. Edges have to line up, layers have to sit flat, and the thickness has to be right. None of these things are particularly exciting on their own, but they are the difference between something that was simply assembled and something that was carefully made.
We believe craftsmanship is often about the things you don't see. Taking an extra minute to make sure a corner is right. Cleaning up an edge before moving on. Making sure two pieces fit together exactly the way they should. Those little decisions add up. You might not be able to point to every one of them when you pick up a finished wallet, but you can see and feel that someone paid attention.
Once all of the pieces are prepared, we begin assembling the wallet. The individual layers are glued together carefully and the wallet starts to take its final shape. Once the construction is complete, it heads over to our Landis #3 sewing machine.
The Landis #3 is a needle-and-awl sewing machine, and it has been a favorite of leather workers for generations. We use a thick, robust 277 thread to stitch our wallets. It gives the stitching a substantial look and feel that matches the weight of the leather. Because the machine doesn't allow us to simply backstitch at the end, we lock the stitches by hand. It's another one of those small extra steps that takes a little more time, but that's pretty much the theme of the entire process.
After the wallet has been stitched, we take one final pass on the sander to make sure the edges are nice and square. From there, we bevel the edge and begin the burnishing process. Getting a really good leather edge takes time, and we don't try to rush it.
We use three passes to bring the edge to a smooth, almost mirror-like finish. We start with water and 1000-grit wet sandpaper to smooth the edge and prepare the leather fibers. From there, we use Tokonole to further compress and smooth the fibers as we burnish the edge. The final step is a coating of beeswax, which gives the edge its finished look and adds another layer of protection.
Once the burnishing is finished, we're down to the final details. We pound the stitches down to make sure they are sitting flat and use a bone folder to break up any leftover glue and clean up the areas around the seams. It's not uncommon for the last few minutes of making a wallet to be spent staring at something most people would never notice.
That's the part we like.
A Dark Forest wallet isn't made by doing one particularly complicated thing. It's made by doing a whole bunch of little things correctly. The leather is selected carefully, dyed by hand, prepared, skived, glued, assembled, stitched, sanded, beveled, burnished, waxed, and inspected. Every step affects the one that comes after it.
By the time the wallet is finished, that original piece of Hermann Oak leather has been handled dozens of times. It has been worked, shaped, smoothed, stitched, and finished by hand before it is finally packaged up and sent on its way to your pocket.
That's what we're after at Dark Forest. Not simply a wallet that looks good in a photograph, but something that feels right when you pick it up. Something with substantial leather, clean edges, solid stitching, and all of those little details that tell you somebody cared about making it.
Because to us, that's what craftsmanship is all about.