Fixing Your Leather Bag
Some repairs do not require special tools. It is not too complicated to fix minor bag problems if you have basic sewing skills. Here are what you will need: needle, nylon thread, rivets, screwdriver and hammer. Tandy Leather has over 200 stores around the globe, and they provide pretty much everything you need; otherwise you can find almost everything at Amazon or eBay. Repairing kit does not cost much and you can save a lot of money by doing the repair yourself rather than sending it to a local repair shop. We do have some spare parts in stock just in case our customers need to replace a loose or missing part.
We use highly engineered industry nylon on our bags. You can find the same nylon thread at Tandy Leather Factory. There are some other companies, like Ohio Travel Bag, that also sell leather bag accessories and tools, but they probably only do wholesale.
We use two types of rivets on our bags: double cap rivet and heavy duty screw rivet.
A double cap rivet costs about $0.06 at Tandy Leather and is the most common type of rivet on the market. To install it requires tools like a rivet setter and a hammer to punch the male cap into the female cap. The front end of the male cap will explode inside to hold the female cap in place otherwise it will become loose and eventually fall out. Vagarant Traveler uses these double cap rivets for areas that do not require much support.
For key areas, or the most stressed areas, we use copper made screw rivets that are specially manufactured by our hardware supplier. These exact rivets cannot be found on the market. If a buyer is in need of some, he/she can feel free to order them from our website. We only charge our customers for the cost of the rivets. They are our gifts to our fans.
https://www.vagarantraveler.com/product/craft-supply
This type of rivet is coated with nickel, which means it will not rust if it gets wet. It is also easy to install. All you need is a screwdriver and a hand. It is so simple that even a kid can do it! Factory workers use a small power screwdriver to screw it; if the rivets aren’t fastened enough, it may spin out over time. Another minor issue is with the leather. Thick leather can forcefully push against the rivet, causing it to spin out as well. In addition, excessive touching or playing with rivets can also cause them to slowly spin out.
In future bag production we will dab a little glue inside to prevent these possible spin-outs from happening. However, once the internal copper ages, the rivet can hold very tightly. When you receive your lovely leather bag, we recommend that you use a screwdriver on some rivets to make sure they’re as tight as can be. We send out spare screw rivets with some of our bags, so make sure you do not throw them away. They may come in handy one day. The best part of this screw rivet is that it can replace any type of rivet, like the double cap rivet mentioned above.
