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Rating: 
Summary: The Real Scoop on Leather Braiding
Review: Even if you are a beginner, this book will show you how to braid simple projects quite quickly. Practice the methods in this book paying close attention to detail and you will soon have a quality product made of either precut lace, a skin, or a side of leather!
If you are looking for solid tutoring in crafting basic braided work, this is the book for you.
You'll learn the fundamentals about materials, tools, cutting, and braiding upfront. The author then takes you through seven different projects with illustrations to go by. With this knowledge your skills will develop to create fancier work.
Pay particular attention to where the hands are placed during the braiding techniques. This is crucial in order to produce quality craftsmanship.
The book takes its information from the pros in Austrailian whipmaking shops. A must for anyone wanting to accomplish their own leather braiding.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't forget your reading glasses.
Review: I really want to like this book. It appears to aspire to teach advanced techniques, but only teaches the very basics of braiding leather. While it does offer some techniques not directly taught in other books, such as Ron Edward's excellent "How to Make Whips", those offerings are rather meager. I had expected more from the US's best known whipmaker. I imagined that he'd cover advanced topics such as pattern work in detail; sadly, such are rare and only mentioned. The one and only knot shown suffers from brief instructions and poor illustrations. Morgan uses a great deal of space explaining the basics, such as four strand round braid, illustrated with copious photographs. The photographs are poorly framed, so that the important details of which strand goes where are lost. These would be much improved by cropping most of the hands at work out, retaining only the process in progress. I needed a 5x magnifier to see the details; expect to need something similar if your eyes don't resolve small details well. The book is not without merit: it covers some areas only touched on elsewhere, such as back braiding, changing from round to flat braid, laying out a hide for stranding, and similar tidbits. His section on assessing a hide is excellent. It will help anyone with a knowledge of braiding basics to put a very fine edge on their work, but as a standalone primer, its deficits are glaring.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I've been making whips for 14 years and have every book in print on the subject of whips and plaiting. They all show braiding sequences and patterns, some better than others. However they all lack one thing. That is showing proper process and technique. David Morgan's book fills this void and does it extremely well. It is written so that someone with little or no plaiting experience can understand it and has some simple projects that will help to develope proper technique. This book doesn't show how to make whips and is not intended to do so. If you are a beginner this book is essential. If you've been plaiting for a while, you may learn something and refine your technique.
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