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January HeartBeat

By TIM Weddle

you noticed all of the CMA leather products in the Goodies store? They are absolutely beautiful works of art, painstakingly handcrafted right here in the CMA Support Center at Hatfield, Arkansas. Let’ s take a peek behind the curtain and learn the full story of what it takes to produce these stylish pieces.

Nathaniel Martin, CMA’ s Production Technician, works tirelessly constructing these leather belts, wallets, book covers, name and officer tags, along with various other miscellaneous plastic items, and last but not least, the highly respected CMA back patches.

Nathaniel had learned to work with his hands over the previous years before coming to CMA, working at the airport disassembling and reassembling aircraft interiors. Although this paid the bills, he still felt that God had something more for him. The ease with which God opened the door to this career opportunity just intensified within him the feeling that this was indeed a calling from God and a definite answer to prayer.

God has developed in Nathaniel an analytical mind to construct patterns, templates, and tooling devices to promote efficiency and the marvelous gift of creativity to fabricate these beautiful handcrafted leather works.

The processes are involved and labor intensive, but it is all worth it in the end. Generally, all leather products go through this procedure with added steps for belts,

wallets, and other specialty items. The hides for CMA back and smaller front patches, flag, name, and officer tags are selected, blanks shaped and then dampened prior to being embossed. Next comes trimming, dyeing, and painting of the product with a combination of white and blue paint, leather stain, and a finish coat of acrylic sealer. The large back patches can require over two and a half hours to complete, including painting and drying time.

Each custom belt starts as cut strips that are skived on the back side in the buckle area to make them thinner for folding. Then, using templates he has designed, Nathaniel marks the buckle and punches holes, and the varied stitch pattern, before oiling, dyeing, and finishing the leather. Quite a bit of work left to do at this point, as he glues the belt liner, trims and burnishes the edges, stitches the unique pattern, punches the adjustment holes, and installs the buckle using cap snaps. Somehow, Nathaniel manages to accomplish this in a little over two hours per belt.

Nathaniel uses a laser engraver to cut out the templates and several other unique fixtures he has developed to make the jobs easier. He has found the engraver especially useful for cutting at one time, the six to seven separate pieces that go into constructing a wallet.

In the beginning, when Nathaniel first started CMA, it was only producing leather patches, but he

soon became intrigued with the idea of leather work and began on his own time to research, study, and learn. God developed in him a love for this fine art of working with leather and blessed him with the creativity to develop new and uniquely hand-crafted Goodies for the CMA members. It is with a grateful heart and a sense of fulfillment that Nathaniel Martin produces every working day what the Lord dictates and what the CMA membership requires.

Nathaniel is just one story of the impact donations to the general fund make in supporting the National / International Support Center. General donations and the sale of Goodies fund the operations and maintenance at CMA National as well as provide for the maintenance and upkeep of our Iron Mountain facilities.

Above all, we want to thank you for your continued faithfulness to the ministry of CMA. Through your generosity, we are able to support evangelistic outreach to the motorcycling community worldwide with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. CMA

Tim Weddle is a media writer for the CMA National / International Support Center.

Nathaniel Martin working on custom CMA belt.