Welcome to the Leatherworker merit badge guide for Fallout 76! As with all of the Possum merit badges, make sure to earn your Possum rank before beginning work on the Leatherworker badge. Most of these are easy enough, and odds are good you’ve already completed a few of these. A few are time consuming, but before we get into our tips, here are the requirements.
- Pass Leatherworker knowledge exam at an exam terminal
- Craft Leather Chest Piece armor
- Craft Leather Left Arm armor
- Craft Leather Left Leg armor
- Craft Leather Right Arm armor
- Craft Leather Right Leg armor
- Build a bear skin rug in a Workshop or C.A.M.P.
- Build a Fertilizer Producer in a Workshop or C.A.M.P.
- Build an armor workbench in a Workshop or C.A.M.P.
- Build taxidermy items in a Workshop or C.A.M.P. (x/3)
- Mod Leather Armor (x/5)
- Scrap Brahmin Hide (x/5)
- Scrap Deathclaw Hide (x/5)
- Scrap Radstag Hide (x/5)
- Scrap Yao Guai Hide (x/5)
- Take a camera picture of a Mounted Cat Head at Van Lowe Taxidermy
- Take a camera picture of Mounted Brahmin Heads at Black Bear Lodge
- Take a camera picture of Mounted Radstag Heads at Appalachian Antiques
If you’re looking for the answers to the Leatherworker knowledge exam, you’ll find those at the bottom of the article in an expandable tab. The game gives you plans to craft leather armor from the beginning, the first several requirements are easy enough. If you don’t already have the plans, you’ll have to pony up for them at a player vendor or one of the vendors at The Whitespring. Note that the Fertilizer Producer goes by the name of Brahmin Pen (as of our latest test on 19 Oct. 2020, the Chicken Coop does not count for this).
If you’ve been doing your scouting dailies, or you’ve done the Sheepsquatch questline, then you probably already have several taxidermy plans, and the Santatron was giving out loads more around Christmas 2019, so building a few mounted critters shouldn’t be difficult. Deathclaw Hide was fairly rare when this merit badge came out, and people were buying and selling any extras they had for thousands of caps back in the day, but the devs made it much easier to obtain, so as long as you keep killing the necessary animals, scrapping their respective hides won’t take too long.
Finally, you’ll just need to take camera pictures of the necessary items in Lewisburg, the northeast corner of the Toxic Valley, and just west of Watoga and you’ll be done in no time. While you’re at Appalachain Antiques, if you haven’t completed the Gardener merit badge, you might want to make sure you kill all of the ants in the area to make that badge a little easier.
- “Cuir bouilli”, or “boiled leather” is a way of treating wet leather so that it has what properties when dry?
- It holds its shape
- Brendan lost his thong while working leather in his workshop. Now he has to look all over for it! What exactly did Brendan lose?
- A strip of leather
- Brendan wants to press a cool dragon pattern into his new leather belt. What’s the term for pressing a pattern or design into leather?
- Tooling
- Different kinds of animal hides make leather with different kinds of properties. Jacob wants to use a soft leather to craft a luxury item. What animal’s hide is often used for making luxury leather items?
- Deer
- Erin is making a leather jacket and needs to decide how she wants to lace some material. What is lacing?
- A decorative way of sewing leather
- Hannah is apprenticed to a “currier”, a professional who processes leather. Which of the following leather processing steps is NOT the job of a currier?
- Making leather fruit snacks
- Leatherworkers use something called “dubbin”, which comes in a little tin, to condition and waterproof leather. What is dubbin, exactly?
- A wax rubbed into the leather
- Mark is digging through his attic and discovers an old vellum parchment. A treasure map, maybe? But Mark is more interested in the vellum! “Vellum” is a Latin word that means what?
- Made of calf
- Mark is making himself comfy new shoes out of a soft leather product called “suede”. Where on an animal’s hide can Mark get the leather for his suede?
- The underside
- Red Chinese officers carry swords prized as trophies by our brave fighting men and women. Historically, intricate sword grips were wrapped in leather made from which creature?
- The stingray
- Robert is putting the final touches on his piece of tanned leather by oiling, polishing, and buffing it. What is this last step in the leatherworking process called?
- Finishing
- Sally has an animal hide that hasn’t yet been tanned. But it’s still useful! Leatherworkers use these for everything from drumheads to lampshades. What do you call this kind of hide?
- Rawhide
- Sally just skinned a fresh carcass and now has a raw hide to turn into leather. What process will she use to transform the raw hide into leather?
- Tanning
- Sometimes leatherworkers will add a rough pattern to their work to make it seem more natural or appealing. What do you call this process?
- Graining
- Susie’s favorite part of working leather is when she gets to die it just the right color. Is there any color that you can’t dye leather?
- No
- Tanning is an integral part of leatherworking. It even gets its own building! What do you call a building used for tanning leather?
- A tannery
- Untreated animal hides have uses, but tanning is done for a reason! What’s a major benefit of tanning a hide?
- It decomposes less
- When it comes to making leather twist and bend, there’s no better technique than “skiving”. What does skiving do?
- Makes the leather thinner without weakening it
- When stitching a seam in leather, you can stitch in such a way that both sides are exposed. What is this kind of stitching called?
- Saddle stitching
- You can make leather from the hide of any animal, but some animals are more popular with leatherworkers. Which animal is the most popular source of hides for leatherworking?
- Cows