Leatherwork!

Settin’ rivets, cuttin’ hides, and slashin’ costs!

Quinn McClurg

Let’s face it: neither quality leather accessories nor bondage-wear are easy to come by in the Twin Cities. That’s why, when I stumbled into Rewind Vintage as a baby punk, I was overjoyed to find a collar for only $12. A couple months of mosh pits later, I discovered that the collar was not, in fact, leather, nor was it still in one piece. Being both a punk and broke college kid, I held it together with a safety pin and called it good, promising that one day I’d have enough money to either support a local leather artist or take up the craft of leatherworking myself.

But why did I care so much? In good ol’ Minneapolis, city of crust punks, gutter punks, grease punks, and degenerates; battle jackets, crust pants, tall bikes, and chainmail, I wanted to be clear that I read as a freak, and leather—sleek, intimidating, queer, and (consensually) malicious—is exactly my speed.

Fast-forward a couple years and unemployments later, and I found myself at St. Paul’s Axe-Man Surplus on a whim before finding and digging into their bins of leather scraps; this chance encounter was exactly what I needed to realize this hobby was possible, not stuck behind the $200 paywall of buying half-a-cow’s-worth of leather.

Add some spikes from Extreme Noise, eyelets and framing wire from Michael’s, and a couple hundred rivets from Tandy, and I was ready. Later, more practiced (not squashing every installed eyelet) I bought bulk pet hardware (spikes, snaps, o-rings, choke chains, etc.) from across the pond, just like the first punks did in the 70s. 

Now I’m 12 commissions in, having recovered most of the money I spent on starting equipment (from $65 to $250 post-splurge). The goal of accessibility is still what motivates me, as each piece I make is on a sliding scale from $10 to $40 with discounts for BIPOC folks and musicians I previously enjoyed, but never paid to see. Sure, the edges are rough and potentially asymmetrical, and an entire finished piece may be sutured together by wire, but it’s real, handmade, and durable—I’ll leave the pristine leatherwork up to the professionals.