Rachel Schaffer creates unique 3D leather items
by Paul Newton | pnewton@ruralmissouri.coop
Rachel Schaffer needed an escape from it all. Health struggles had sidelined her academic career and she felt lost. “I was at a standstill in my own home,” she says. “I couldn’t go to school. I couldn’t go out and do anything. For lack of a better term, I felt worthless.”
She felt like a prisoner in her own home and turned to leatherwork to pass the time. With no training, guidebook or instructions, she took on the hobby and forged her unique style. Seven years later, Rachel’s hobby has turned into a full-fledged business.
Rachel owns and operates R & J Custom Leather from her home in Climax Springs. Every piece she makes is a one-of-a-kind custom order and she specializes in slings, wallets, belts and memorable keepsakes adorned with 3D artwork.
“Growing up, I was into art like drawing, painting and clay work,” she says. “But what I really loved was horses, and leatherwork kind of goes along with horses. I had this fascination with leatherwork but didn’t think it was something that just an individual could do.”
Rachel suffered severe injuries following an accident where she was thrown from her horse as a teenager. She would spend months in the hospital and rehab relearning how to walk and talk. She gravitated toward equine therapy as much as possible. After graduating from high school, Rachel went to college with the hopes of getting a kinesiology degree, eventually opening an equine-assisted therapy program.
While at college, she began having seizures. As doctors searched for the cause, they found an inoperable tumor on her brain. When she started receiving radiation, Rachel was instructed to stay home as much as possible.
Eventually, Rachel underwent two rounds of chemotherapy that did more harm to her than the cancer. She decided to quit the treatment and return home. “I felt like I was going to die eventually either way, so I just decided to put what I had into the leatherwork for as long as I could,” she says. “It just gave me an escape. Something to keep my mind off the fact I wasn’t returning to school or that I was going to die.”
Rachel taught herself the craft through a series of trials and errors, the first being the type of leather she was using. “I was getting frustrated because I knew what things were supposed to look and feel like, but things just weren’t turning out right,” she says. “After two months, I found out I was using oil-tan leather when I should’ve used veg-tan leather for what I needed.”
She met the folks at Springfield Leather Co., who gave her some tips and got her going in the right direction. Rachel first tried to become proficient in making gunslings, which are still one of her biggest sellers. As she developed her skills and came up with her unique style, she found hand sewing to be tedious and time-consuming. “Hand sewing is not the most fun thing to start with,” she says. “But, because of my neuropathy, it was really hard and slowing me down.”
She was gifted an industrial sewing machine with a foot pedal, which greatly increased her production capabilities, including belts and wallets, and managed her neuropathy.
What makes Rachel’s work so unique is the design and 3D tooling she does to her work. Customers contact Rachel with a request and she’ll come up with a design on translucent paper. Once a final design is picked, the Southwest Electric Cooperative member picks a piece of Hermann Oak veg-tan leather that is the perfect thickness. The leather is hand-cut and soaked. Then, Rachel uses a swivel knife to carve out the initial design into the piece.
The 3D look to Rachel’s products comes from not only pushing the leather down, but also pulling the leather up. “This is my most used tool,” Rachel says holding a modeling spoon. “I use them and push them into the leather to create the folds in the leather.”
Rachel then paints and dyes the products before slicking the edges and sealing, protecting and giving her leather a professional look. “The most simple products still probably take a whole day’s worth of work to complete,” she says. “I’ve had some items that have taken me more than 100 hours.”
Rachel’s hobby eventually turned into her business. Enough orders came through that she could forgo vendor shows and exclusively do custom orders. She’s expanded her workshop accordingly. When she first started, Rachel was doing her leatherwork from the living room of her 900-square-foot apartment in Buffalo. Rachel and her husband, Jacob, moved to Climax Springs and last year she built a 1,200-square-foot workshop for all of her custom creations.
Rachel posts nearly every item she makes to her Facebook page. She looks back at some of her earlier items and can see how her skills and style have evolved. She’s never watched a video on leatherwork and has taught herself through trial and error, using each error to learn the best way to do something herself.
“I’ve learned each tool, each cut on my own instead of having someone tell me,” she says. “It might take me a week to figure out something I could probably learn in 10 minutes from someone else, but those mistakes are what enabled me to create my style. I’m always learning.”
Since each piece is custom-made, prices for Rachel’s products vary. She says the simplest items like a sling start at $240 but typically range from $300 to $500. “This is Hermann Oak leather, it’s one of the oldest tanneries,” she says. “You will not wear it out. It’s not going anywhere. It will be with you the rest of your life, the rest of your children’s life.”
Rachel has battles with her health, including siezures and severe headaches. And so much of what she does is handmade, so her neuropathy can be challenging. But she intends to keep leatherworking for as long as she can.
“This started as an escape for me to clear my head, but it has turned into me challenging myself to get better and better at every aspect of it, which is rewarding,” she says. “I start with a blank canvas and turn it into this three-dimensional piece of art. And I know a lot of these pieces are memorial items or gifts that are going to be in families for a long time. That’s the best part.”
For more information on R & J Custom Leather, call 573-836-3281, visit rjcustomeleather.com or email rjcustomleather@gmail.com.