Here's some experimenting for a commission that's on my queue. The idea is to make bigger fins on a tail, and I'm trying to come up with good ways of making them. I'd want the fin to be made of a couple layers of leather sandwiched together, which would then have to attach down into the scale weave such that they stay perpendicular to the surface.

I could sew the layers together, but having done that for a couple spade tips I found that that would take a quite large amount of sewing. So I'm experimenting with rivets. They're somewhat harder to get to look neat and tidy, I'm finding--at least, they are when they're not being used on a perfectly level surface.

What I was trying out with these two scraps is two ways of strengthening and cleaning up the leading edge of the fin. The one on the left is like a piping detail, with a folded-over piece of leather sandwiched between the two main leather surfaces. The one on the right has the leather strip wrapped around the outside of the main surfaces. I think the one on the left looks a bit more like something you could see in nature, but it's harder to keep even when you're making it. The one on the right seems easier to keep looking right when you're making it, but it looks much more constructed and artificial. (I think it looks like a detail you'd see on a leather briefcase.)

Anyway, I'm still working on how to make this look right. I think next I'm going to try just sandwiching the leather surfaces around a piece of plywood to keep it really stiff, but that'll have to wait until I get back in town after Thanksgiving so I can laser-cut the wood.