bruce johnson

I think a call to Osborne to see what the hole size is will be your best bet. I decided several years ago to put new rawhide heads on several wore out mauls. What I found was that every maker had their own better (and different idea) of what the round stock should be even among the same general sizes. I gave up at that point and used them for ballast in the trash can. Dan Preston from then ShopTalk magazine did some refurbishing on mauls and made up rawhide heads. I think he had an article or two about it. I bought out his stuff twice and those mauls were not the shiniest. They ended up ballast as well.

If Barbara at Y-Knot doesn’t have 2.7 mm she or I have tools available to cut down lace to any width.

When I first got my business license I had a county inspection - some work place guy and a fire dept inspector. Not pain in the a** guys, they just wanted to know what they’d up against in a fire or industrial accident. I’m a one man shop so mostly formality probably. Really pretty cool guys. The work-place guy noticed I didn’t have a workplace safety poster in place. He said to just send him a picture when I got it and he’d sign me off. I came up with this. He said it was official enough for him and one of the best he’d seen.

I'll see if I can dig up his name, He just shows up at the show and I recognize him.

Leather trade shows - we set up as venders at Prescott Az, Sheridan WY, Pendleton OR, and new show in Las Vegas next January. We are going to miss Waco this year but on the radar for next year.

Michelle, I deal in leather tools and come across this situation more often than not. You can sell them through the market place here. Ebay is another option, some people have good luck on FaceBook marketplace too. There are also FaceBook groups dedicated to just selling leather tools. If you want to get them moved as a group and sell them, these are all viable options. Problem with all this is taking pictures, dealing with the selling process and collecting payment, then shipment. Oh yeah and figuring a price first. Pricing - There is a lot of smoke and advice from people who have never done this. I tried Craftool stamps early on with my website. There was too much time in pictures and descriptions for singles to make it worth the time. Put them in small groups by type and you get five questions about "I just want that one, not the other 4". We evolved to just selling them on a bargain table at the shows. In about the last 5 years I have all but stopped intentionally buying just Craftools for resale. Still with estate sets I end up with 500-700 Craftool stamps a year, plus the hand tools and patterns. Contrary to popular belief, older Craftools do not necessarily sell better than newer ones to most people. Maybe a single stamp or small group here and there, but overall - no. For the shows, I used to price the preletter Craftool stamps at $7 and letter prefix stamps at $5. I spent a lot of time at the shows explaining the difference to people who in the end just didn't care. They either liked the stamp or they didn't and tried to deal down on the $7 price anyway. Now all stamps are $5 each and Ms Rundi will deal them at 5 for $20. The hand tools are usually on the bottom end too - lot of $5 tools and they are still piling up here. Patterns and books depend. Some are pretty much outdated styles and projects. Some are good like the Baird books, some are fire-starters like bowling ball bag patterns. Likewise with Craft-Aids - a few good ones, more though that we bundle and hope. What do we do now? We take them to the shows and reliably the Prescott AZ show is our better one for them. We found they sell decently at Prescott, barely sell at Sheridan, do just Ok at the Pendleton show. Overall we end up and sell maybe half the stamps at best. Now Maker's Leather Supply is set up across from us at the Prescott show. They are great about having kid's project kits they give away. The kids get a free kit and then Janie Sue sends them across the way to us. They get to pick out up to 5 stamps for free. Mallets are free too if we have any. The cool thing about Prescott also is there is a guy who has a leather craft program at the VA facility. He gets whatever he asks for and more. There are a few kids whose parents take classes or are venders at the shows. I have a loosely structured informal program with free roaming kids. They help empty my candy dish, I give them a deal on a few tools for part of their pocket cash. Later on they trade up to something they like better, or sell stuff back (at a profit for them). It keeps them occupied throughout the show and learning cowboy bartering skills. My experience anyway

Agree on the planer for thickness reduction as the best option. but those places with the capacity for 2 feet wide seem to be getting fewer all the time in some areas. I have successfully resurfaced mine by hand. I did light pressure with a fairly coarse paper on a palm sander to take down the high spots. I think I started in the low 100s for grit. You want to almost float it over the surface. The paper cleans easy enough with a crepe belt cleaner every so often, no different than wood as long as it doesn't melt.. Then follow up with a couple progression of finer grits until you are satisfied. The key is keep moving with light pressure. Excess pressure or staying in one spot can melt the plastic and that gums up the paper and makes a divot. You don't have to take out the cut lines as much as just take down the high ridges next to those cut lines. A belt sander is probably going to run too fast and "hot".

The most popular weight depends on the job at hand. The right size makes the job easier and more enjoyable. Otherwise you can wear yourself out trying to hold up a heavy maul for easy stuff or wear yourself out beating a light maul repeatedly on heavy stuff. Stamping Tools - everyone needs a 1# maul. With most stamps that weight gives a good deadfall effect. For larger face stamps like 1/2 inch or more geometrics - 1.5# or 2# depending on how intricate the design is. For tiny faced or sharper stamps like seeders and bargrounders, consider stepping down to a 12 ounce maul. Hardware setting, smaller round punches, and most strap end punches - 1#. If you fall to the side of "I don't want to my punches to be really sharp" then 2# for the strap ends and rounds. I don't follow that theory but some do. Large round (2 inches and up) and Rosette punches - 2.5# or 3#. I sell 4.5# mauls for the heavy hitters on big punches. I don't mean to dissuade you from rawhide, but a few things to consider. The industrial handle rawhide mauls new are about twice the cost of a good leather handle maul ike the Wayne Jueschke mauls I sell or Barry King mauls. Rawhide can wear a little faster and can flake off onto your work. There are definite fans of rawhide and I do like them, just not as affordable new and the good used ones are few and far between.

There are a few Champions that got traded around this area for years. The old deal with Champions and American straight needles was that most shops had two. One to sew and another to scavenge parts off when they wore totally out on the main machine. The problem was that those same parts were likely worn on the scavenge machine as well. The parts availability is not necessarily what they are for the Landis, Campbell, and Randall machines. The last Champion I know of around here that sewed pretty well sold for $1200. A friend had a Champion deep throat that sort of sewed and he stored it here when he was between places. Once in a while he'd come over and we'd BS for the afternoon, get it going somewhat, and then have some Crown Royal and a steak. When we finally got through the bucket of scavenged parts and it wasn't much better, we called it some quality buddy time and scrapped it. On the stand it weighed around 600#.

That tool is for setting "bar snaps". Bar snaps are used on the edge of wide flaps like on the coin pocket in a wallet. It was a wide piece of brass with the snap stead molded in. This tool was used to crimp the bar on the edge of the flap.

If you want to go natural, one of the best wood surfaces I cut on was a 20 year old plank of clear sugar pine. occasionally resurfaced with a sander. What do I have in my shop and recommend for a cutting surface? Hint - it isn't wood. - https://brucejohnsonleather.com/links-resources/tool-talk/cutting-surfaces-knives-and-blades

There is zero reason for you to stay neutral, you are in Conroe and not Switzerland. I was happy to see your name pop up here when you first joined. There is a real lack of understanding about these big old machines and parts sourcing. The guys that knew them inside and out (like my late friends Sam Huey and Keith Pommer) are thinning out. Please feel free to promote away and any information threads or history you want to post will be welcome. I have had nothing but positive experiences with Campbell-Randall. If I was still a maker and not a tool seller, you can bet my supplies would still come from C-R. When I transitioned to refurbishing tools and bench machines I appreciated the support and referrals from Dan early on a lot!

Campbell-randall.com @mbnaegle

The heaviest rawhide comes from slaughter bulls. Percentage-wise, packer bulls are a very small number versus the total number of cattle slaughtered everyday, and not done by a lot of major packing plants. The hides are big and heavy from English breed bulls and especially northern cattle. Commercially, you may run across sourcing those in a smaller plant. Denise and Rod Nikkell used to build saddle trees. They drove to a small processor when they got a call there would be bulls. They picked up the wet hides and fleshed and dehaired themselves. I'm not going to say impossible to find processed bull rawhide but harder than straight run rawhide.

Call your saddle maker and tell them what happened. My guess is that at a minimum you will be told to move the screws and not use the same holes.