I was reading the news the other day and found some stats that was surprising to me. Now that times are hard and people are trying to save money, I thought motorcycle sales would be great. After all, motorcycles are very good on gas, you can buy used ones for only a few thousand and in Florida you don’t even need any insurance! (although that’s not a good idea).

But it turns out that motorcycle dealers are really getting hit hard and are even going out of biz. Why? Well for the most part it’s because of the clamp down on credit. Getting a house, then getting a car are considered basic “needs” and you can get credit easier for those. But a motorcycle is looked at as a toy you don’t need.

So the credit companies are making it really hard to finance one. Even people with great credit are finding out they can’t get a loan for a motorcycle. Getting a Harley is easier because they have their own financing and they are not being as hard as the others. So, if your thinking of getting a motorcycle right now, save up your money!

Try to have as much down as you can so it’s easier to get credit. Go with a Harley if you like them, as it’s easier to get financing with them. If you have bad credit, forget about it. You can always get a used one for a few thousand if your not picky. Good luck!

One of the most beautiful items that are made with leather is jewelry boxes. Leather jewelry boxes come in many different sizes, shapes and colors. Because leather is so soft and flexible you can use it for very small, detailed items. The leather jewelry boxes here give you an idea of just how fancy and detailed you can make an item out of leather. Read more…

Well I hate to say it, but the Leesburg Bikefest has come and gone and I did not even know about it until today. However I am sure I’m in good company, as far more bikers know about bike week in Daytona Beach then the Leesburg bikfest. Leesburg is a medium sized town north-west of Orlando, Florida.

The Leesburg Bikefest ran from April 24th to today, the 26th. It actually started 12 years ago and has gotten bigger every year. They estimate a good 250,000 bikers was at this years events. It has a lot of the same activities as Bike Week does, which is looking at hot women, hot bikes and drinking cold beer!

Unfortunately they had at least two bike fatalities today, which mars the perfect previous two years. They had perfect weather over the weekend and I’m sure everyone had a great time. If you want to learn more about it so you can go next year, visit the Leesburg Bikefest home page.

Well even though the folks down here in Florida can ride all year long, most of us put away our bikes for the winter. After a long winter it’s really nice to get that leather motorcycle jacket out and all the gear, go over it and get it ready for riding! Storing a leather jacket over the winter can be very easy or very harmful to it, depending on how you store it.

If you cleaned it good and conditioned it before putting it away in a cool dry place, chances are you don’t have to do anything to it. But lots of times we tend to throw our leather jacket in a corner somewhere, thinking we will get to it later. Then later becomes when you take it out in the spring!

Two of the most common problems you see when storing a leather jacket for the winter are drying and cracking, and mildew. The first problem comes from storing it in a hot and/or too dry place. The second comes from storing it in a damp and wet area, or putting it away with dirt on it. Winters seem to have both conditions in the same house!
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Wow, it sure has been a long time since my last post! Well I have a good reason for it. My last post I made was just after I got back from Bike week in Daytona Beach. Right after that, all hell broke loose! My computer crashed, which is a big deal for me since I work on the net. At the same time my truck wore out the front brakes.

So I had a few days of frantically trying to get my computer fixed. Turned out it was the motherboard, which basically means in my case it was cheaper to just buy a new one. Then I fixed my front brakes, only to find I could not get the bleeder screw loose! So I drove down the road hoping I could “pump” the air out. Yeah, so now I know that does not work!

Anyway somehow by doing that I blew a hole right in the back brake line! I was about close to tears by then! So the next day I fixed that, don’t ask me how, lets just say I hope it last for a little while. I then spent a few days getting all my old information off my old hard drive on my computer into my new one.

Half of that the new windows vista operating system does not “see”, so I am still having problems. So, that’s what my life has been like the past few weeks! Things are a lot better right now, at least I can work on my new computer and can drive my truck, just not very far! So if your having a tough time, your not alone.

Anyways I wanted to let anyone who reads this site know that I’m still around, still selling leather and will soon start making semi-regular post again. I need to get a lot more leather products in my store and spiff it up a bit. Hope everyone is doing as best as they can in these troubling times and look for more post soon, hopefully ones with better news!!

Well I finally got time to make another post on here! I managed to get up to Daytona beach for bike week on Thursday. It was not fun, at least not the trip up. I got stuck in two accidents on the way up on I-4, I knew I should have taken I-95. Then once there it was stop and go for hours!

I finally got close to main st. and got a place to park for 10 bucks. Then I walked down to main st. and started taking pictures. It was crowded, as it always is. I always like looking at the custom bikes and the custom paint jobs on them, damn they look nice. There was lots of hot babes serving beer and so on too.

They had about the same amount of booths that they have every year. Seems like almost half the places was food joints, they really were selling lots of food. It was late by the time I got there so I did not have much time to take good pictures before dark, but I got a few. So I made my very first bike week gallery in here.

There’s not much to it, but you can see some nice custom bikes and trikes in it. Sorry, no pictures of the hot babes, I’ll have to do that next year. So bike week looks like it was a success like last year and next year should be as good or better. Check out my bike week 2009 gallery here. I’ll try to start posting more regularly from now on!

Well everyone, in about one more week Daytona Beach will host bike week 2009. I live in Orlando, which is about 60 miles away from Daytona. I think last year there was over 600,000 bikers there. This year it’s hard to say how many will be there the way the economy is. It might be a little less busy, but not by much.

I think bikers who really like bike week in Daytona will find the money to go. I’ve been there a few times myself. So just what kind of bikes and bikers can you find there? Every kind you can think of. It’s not just die hard bikers that live on the road, although there will be plenty of them. You also get the more family type of biker.

There will be plenty of $70,000 touring motorcycles with sidecars with mom and the kid. Doctors, office guys and so on will be there with their bikes. Many make it a family event. There are plenty of things to see for the whole family. Of course there’s just as many events you want to go by yourself, like the ladies oil wrestling and wet t shirt contest!
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Pictures above from English Leather Rose website click here

I hope everyone had a nice Valentines day. Right after that day I thought about how you can buy leather roses and so I thought I’d make a post about that. I wish I had thought about it before Valentines Day! But hey, you can buy your sweetie leather roses anytime of the year. Now not all leather roses are made the same.

Making a leather rose is an art and is pretty much all hand made. Some can be crude, just loops of colored leather made into a strange looking rose. While others are done in a very beautiful way that really looks like a rose. The ones in the pictures here all are from a shop in the UK called English Leather Rose.

There are many here in the USA too, I just used English Leather Rose shop because I really like how they make their leather roses. Now I myself admit I don’t really know just what type of leather they use for leather roses. The leather looks thin, so I would say it’s lambskin or goatskin. However it could be cowhide split very thin. Read more…

Hi everyone, the weather is getting warmer, at least down here in Florida. It will not be long before it’s hot all the time here in Orlando. My last post was about leather jewelry, so today I thought I’d make a youtube video post on leather crafting. That is, making designs and very detailed pictures in leather.

It’s amazing just how detailed you can get a design in leather. Now this video makes it all look real easy, but it’s not! It takes years and years of practice to get as good as this guy is in this video. I myself can’t make a design in leather to save my life. I’ve airbrushed designs on leather, but using stencils.

As this guy shows, it takes a lot of special leather crafting tools to make any good design. The tools need to be in good shape and really sharp. But once you know what your doing and have all the right leather crafting tools you can make just about any design you can think of in leather.

Once the design has been cut into the leather, you want to treat it with conditioner, then a sealer over it. Just like all the rest of your leather items. So if you ever wanted to make some designs in leather this video is a good start to watch. Enjoy this leather crafting youtube video!

From time to time I start to get a little writers block about leather. There is only so much you can talk about as far as leather goes. I’ve pretty much covered all the ways of cleaning, conditioning and caring for leather. But today I happened to see a pretty leather bracelet and realized I have never talked about leather jewelry.

Now to some jewelry made from leather just does not sound right. Like, what can you make with leather that looks like jewelry? But actually there are many kinds of leather jewelry made. Often the leather is only part of the whole piece of jewelry, like a braided leather necklace with a silver pendant on the end.

Or in the case of leather bracelets the leather makes up the whole thing, or most of it. Cowhide and pigskin are the most common types of leather hides used to make leather jewelry. Almost all leather jewelry is made by making the leather into long thin strips, then braiding them together to make a nice looking pattern.

A leather bracelet or necklace can have many small strips of leather braided together, or just a few thick ones. It all depends on the leather artist. And they truly are artist; it takes a damn long time to learn how to braid leather into jewelry, I know I can’t! Some use different colors of leather strips to make a colorful piece.

Often they also add silver, gold, copper, nickel or stainless steel to the leather jewelry to really make it look nice and give it more function. The types of leather jewelry is only limited to your imagination. There are leather roses, leather picture frames, leather jewelry boxes and many other forms of leather jewelry.

So if you wanted to see just what kinds of leather jewelry there are out there, just google leather jewelry and you’ll find lots of them. Sometimes there are even leather jewelry shops in my sidebar ads I sell. If you love leather, than go all out and get a few leather necklaces, bracelets or any other leather jewelry and show off your love of leather!