technerd Report post Posted February 19, 2015 Greetings from Corvallis Oregon. This is my first post. Since retirement, to keep busy, I buy older sewing machines at garage sales and thrift stores, fix them, and donate them to the local thrift store that supports Special Needs Children. I recently received in a trade a very nice Singer 29K shoe patcher, which I am going to keep and restore. I have almost immediately run into a problem, which I hope someone here can help me solve. I am trying to repair a large back-pack, made of heavy canvas, with thick nylon webbing straps. On several places on the webbing strap, there is a decorative piece of thin leather, about two inches square, that sort of dresses up the place where the webbing is sewed to the canvas bag. In other words, there are places where I am sewing a thin piece of top leather, a piece of thick nylon webbing, and a bottom layer of thick canvas. The three layers can be sewn, if I slowly hand-walk the machine through it's stitch. But if I try to use the treadle, even at moderate speed, the thread frays on the input, or tensioner side of the needle. And it breaks if I continue to sew. There is no burr on the end of the needle, or on the bobbin race. I am using size 18 needle, and TEX 70 nylon thread. Thnaks in advance for any help. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Geneva Report post Posted February 19, 2015 The patcher can only sew 1/4" of material. Anything beyond that you are asking for trouble. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Pkay Report post Posted February 23, 2015 And when machine sewing leather you need a different needle shape to sewing man made fibre. For leather the needle is diamond shaped and sharp to cut through the leather. With man made material the needle is round and pushes the fabric aside. You could do worse than hand stitch these last bits. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
