hey guys Cameron Laughlin here I'm going to show you today how to cut leather straight seems a little hard at first I prefer using a utility knife which I have right here but the first thing I'm going to do is go ahead and make some lines on the side of the leather here I'm going to mark it just so I know exactly where I'm gonna cut so I'm going to start off with my steel square by the way I bought this off tandy leather factory now it's just a ruler basically with a 90 degree angle and I'm going to mark it a half an inch on this side of the hide right here and then on this side I'm going to mark as well at half an inch now that I have two marks on the side of my hide I'm going to go ahead and take my steel ruler I'm sure you've probably seen one of these before and mark a line now there's many ways to cut a side straight and there's people with ploud gauges and different kinds of tools you can use but ultimately I like using this method here and I'll show you in a second how to do that this is new buck leather by the way it's six ounces which isn't the thickest leather out there you'll see I typically use vegetable vegetable I'm at the edge ten so you see I'm using a pin here just to mark the line where I'm going to be cutting and now I'm gonna have to do this little by little so I don't know what size cutting board you have but I don't want to mark up my table so I'm going to go ahead and use that and that cutting board by the way I got off tandy leather factory as well you can find it there so now that I have my cutting board underneath I'm gonna bring out my steel square again and I find this thing handy now I'm not using the big steel ruler that you saw before this one here this I just feel like I have more control with this small ruler so I'm going to go ahead and put that here and then I'm gonna start cutting and I'm gonna do that using my utility knife again this is a special utility knife so make sure you don't buy just any old utility knife you want to get one made for cutting leather and make sure the blade is really sharp so we're going to start here from the top applying some pressure moving straight down the side of the ruler here and usually I do a couple passes actually so that was my first here's my second sometimes it takes three for me to cut the leather all the way through but you can kind of hear less friction on that last cut because you realize the leather is already cut let's just finish the top there we go now I'm gonna move the ruler down I should say the hide down this way and we're just gonna keep cutting and do this little by little because once you have a straight edge then you can cut straps or whatever you want using a strap cutter maybe you have a strap cutting machine if you're a little more sophisticated but this just helps you get the straight cut down the side that you really need to do straps or belts okay let's do this again gone through one second gone go through it again twice that wouldn't felt like a good cut all right it's good I need one more alright so now we're gonna keep passing before we do that to make sure this is a nice clean cut down the side here all right keep moving the fried down looks like we can finish it on this cut so let's start from the top you notice I'm applying medium pressure I think ultimately you can push a little harder than I am but I just want to make sure that I'm being really clear because it's important to have this straight line down the side of your hide and here we go yeah so we finished the edge here you can see how straight this is thanks for watching