Learn at your own bench
Not everyone can spend two weeks in the shop in Sheridan. These courses are the same instruction in smaller pieces — start where you are, work at your own pace, and come back to the videos as often as you need.
Everything is filmed in the Sheridan shop, and once you own a course it is yours to rewatch as many times as you need.
The first three build on each other in order. The last two stand on their own — take them whenever they’re useful to you.
Start here
The work starts on paper, not on leather. How to get started drawing flowers, how to build a basic layout, and how flow actually works. Comes with printable PDFs of flowers, leaves, scrolls and beginner flow designs to practise against.
Next
The swivel knife is the first tool you pick up once the pattern is drawn. Care and sharpening, the techniques that make it cut cleanly, and hand-eye exercises to make your cuts more fluid and more refined.
Then
Every tool, in the order Paul uses them, watched all the way through a rear jockey from first bevel to finished piece. Traditional Sheridan floral work, a bronc-riding figure brought up with a wood burner, and how he maintains the checkering on the face of his tools so they last.
A first project
A simple, satisfying project that teaches real leather skills and leaves you holding something you will actually use. Easy to follow from start to finish.
For saddle makers
Step by step through a covered horn: leather selection back at the cutting table, fitting and installing the belly and filler, the cap and the wrap, sewing, slicking and wings. The small details that add class to the work, not just the sequence of it.
Best value
Introduction to Drawing, the Swivel Knife Class and Getting Started with Flower Stamping, taken together in the order they were meant to be learned — drawn, cut, then stamped.
All three courses, yours to rewatch.
Get the bundleEnrolment and payment are handled on Teachable.
These courses cover the fundamentals. For hands-on saddle building, the Sheridan School of Saddlery takes two students for two weeks — and each of them goes home with two saddles they built themselves.
Questions
Tell Paul what you have made so far and what you are trying to get better at, and he will point you at the right one. He answers his own email.