Welcome to my little bindery! Today we'll be doing some hand tooling on leather. This book needed something more to compliment raised bands and really make the black calfskin pop, so I decided to do a classic blind-tooled center panel design on both the front and back covers. Its called 'blind tooling' because I haven’t used any type of gold or colored foil to highlight the design. In this video I use my own handmade brass finishing tools, heated on an electric hot plate, to impress the design into the dampened leather. I use my prepared design and a set of dividers to carefully lay out the pattern on the leather, then carefully tool in the lines and embellishments. Achieving the proper heat in the tools is important - too cool and the impressions won't take very well, while too much heat could scorch the leather. I first cool the tip of the hot tool on a damp rag before touching it to the leather, then try to make quick impressions until I know I've got things right.