This is my first mod, and although it will likely be updated, this version works and as such I have decided to upload it so people other than me can test it and give me some feedback. I have included a number of recipes for use with the new materials, including a couple of hidden recipes. I went ahead and made all of the recipes smithing related, including the creation of the leather. Personally to me it didn't make much sense to use an ingot press, or an anvil, to create leather. However, I chose the anvil for this initial version, since the Skinning Knife also requires an anvil for you to create it. If other people think that I should change it, I'll take it under advisement and consider using the ingot press, although as I mentioned before neither really makes a lot of sense. This mod allows you to create a Skinning Knife, which will then allow you to harvest skins from corpses. The skins can be converted into scrap leather for basic items, and the scrap leather can be boiled to create more advanced leather goods. Everything tested out for me, and after several iterations I have decided that it is better to have a functional mod than banging my head on a wall attempting to get the thing up and running using my initial plan. While this means that you can harvest leather from any corpse, including constructs and vegetables, it also means the mod functions and I can receive feedback. In the future I may make a vegetable peeler wand, and cloth from harvested fiber. I may also expand the amount of items that can be produced with leather, depending on feedback I receive. I personally believe the mod as it stands to be fairly balanced, you can harvest 8-12 skins with a skinning knife and create 4-6 leather with them, which allows you to make some basic leather items instead of early iron weapons.
The initial version had a few XML issues, and as such wasn't displaying the recipe for the Leather Cuirass. I've uploaded the version with everything corrected. (thanks FaxCelestis!)
Man, I missed that in the previous pic colors of the items were kind of distorted. Created a new version and added a critter skin pic to the title. Made another style of the border. Not that there is any demand, I just wanted to see if I can make an interesting logo from your first version
