Yep! Got a piece of tooling leather, roughed up the steel with sandpaper, and affixed it with gorilla glue two part epoxy. If you go that route, make sure you clean the steel with soap -- my first attempt started to delaminate after a few months, I think because I didn't do that. After the epoxy cured I cut it to size and burnished the edges with a cheap wooden burnisher and some beeswax.
I used a piece of undyed vegetable-tanned leather that I treated with neatsfoot oil and left in the sun for a few days. The oil takes it from pale pink to an ugly, mottled liver color, but as it rests in the sun it develops that warm, rich tan. (This is sort of off-topic but that board was my first time "finishing" leather myself, and I like the look and feel of it so much that I've done it for all my leather projects since.)
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Is that leather on top of the plate? I bought a piece of leather to try that out for mine too.
Yep! Got a piece of tooling leather, roughed up the steel with sandpaper, and affixed it with gorilla glue two part epoxy. If you go that route, make sure you clean the steel with soap -- my first attempt started to delaminate after a few months, I think because I didn't do that. After the epoxy cured I cut it to size and burnished the edges with a cheap wooden burnisher and some beeswax.
I used a piece of undyed vegetable-tanned leather that I treated with neatsfoot oil and left in the sun for a few days. The oil takes it from pale pink to an ugly, mottled liver color, but as it rests in the sun it develops that warm, rich tan. (This is sort of off-topic but that board was my first time "finishing" leather myself, and I like the look and feel of it so much that I've done it for all my leather projects since.)