Nuttish

What kind of leather is that, what tools and chemicals did you use, and what's wrong with your edges in your view?

KS Blade makes the ones I found first.

We clean rust with oxalic acid and then rub paraffin into a little piece of flannel and polish the tool. Works great.

In just the last year or so several nice hand brogue punches have become available in the US. Lekoza isn't the only show in town. The only prior option I could find was a very expensive German tool.

As I said, PVA is a great filler and on its own burnishes beautifully. It's durable and remains flexible enough for our purposes. However, it remains porous to water and could always stand to be mechanically stronger. I make my solution based on protocols from academic articles from polymer and materials science journals. I'd rather not completely give away the secret sauce, but with these search terms you'll easily be able to figure out what I'm doing with cheap and readily available ingredients: crosslink PVA glutaraldehyde.

We use something similar to PVA glue that's more flexible and has a high gloss. Several applications of a medium thin solution allowed to dry completely then sanded with 150 will fill the loose fibers marvelously. You can then do whatever other edge treatment you want. Sand with 100 grit to rough the surface up for acrylic edge paint, but you won't need to do lots of applications to build nice smooth layers because it doesn't need to penetrate and will adhere evenly and smoothly. PVA burnishes like a dream. You're essentially impregnating the edge with flexible plastic which you can then polish however you wish just like any other plastic. Just use progressively higher grits and burnish as usual with canvas and a thin solution, then let it dry and hit it with a felt wheel loaded with carnauba wax for a nice shine.

This is what ultrasonic cleaners are for. Degreaser or mineral spirits should help a lot.

I ended up getting a great deal on a Kwikprint 86A at an industrial auction and repurposed the press for rivets and snaps. It worked great though.

Production quality machines come up on industrial auctions very frequently because they're used in so many industries. Smaller ones are within your budget. Check bidspotter.com. I got a pneumatic Kwikprint 86 with a hundred pounds of foil and loads of other stuff for $300.

I've got a 1445 with the unusual double round post setup that can use the binding foot. Do you have any more double round post pieces or the binder guide bracket thingy?

Check out one of my most recent posts about the horizontal burnisher I made out of a free treadmill motor. It produces absurdly good results with absurdly little effort. The key is going SLOW.

Check out https://www.riogrande.com/ for good quality parts and tools, as well as a good resource to learn more about what's available and how to use it. Their prices are very good for what you're getting.

I cut them to 4' and use 8" diameter. They hold several loosely rolled sides and allow them to be inserted deeply enough to avoid dust and light but still be easily accessed.

Thick and stiff leather is more difficult to split or skive than thinner softer leather. It requires a very sharp knife, clean emery or steel feed roll, higher feed roll spring tension balanced with the distance between the bell knife and leading edge of the presser foot, and correctly setting the curvature of the presser foot to be concentric with the bell knife. If your piece is getting stuck, your knife is too dull, there's not enough tension on the feed roll spring, or your knife is too close, or a combination. I'd start by making sure your knife is actually sharp. If you take a corner of any leather and dip it against the running knife it should cut with no drag. I'll post a walkthrough with pics of skiving and splitting thicker leather on a similar machine if you want.

Grinders and buffers are wayyy too fast and use AC motors so aren't easily speed controlled. They're also more expensive than the DIY alternative. You can come in under budget with a more useful machine by getting a DC treadmill motor and using bolt on arbors with soft buffs. You can often get treadmill motors for free if you haul a busted treadmill away for someone - the controllers die first, but the motors are usually good. The merit of these motors is that they are easily speed controlled because they're DC and are designed to generate high torque at low voltages. We burnish and wax polish at hundreds of RPM vs thousands. Parts list: (1) treadmill motor - free, (2) assortment of wire terminals - less than $10 and useful for tons of projects, (3) extra IEC cable or other computer component cable you have lying around, (4) cheap Amazon voltage regulator with potentiometer knob - around $15 shipped, (5) cheap full wave bridge rectifier - less than $5, (6) length of 14 gauge wire and wire nut - you probably already have The horizontal burnishing setup cost less than $50 plus wheels. See pics. The edge burnisher got a custom work table so it fits in front of the sander and the wheel runs horizontally. The shaft is 5/8" threaded for a left handed 1/2-13 nut. This required a custom reducing bushing/flange in order to use the Italian polishing wheels from Campbell Randall. A non-threaded shaft would require an arbor for regular cotton buffing wheels or in the case of the vertical polisher I fabricated flannel polishing wheels with integral set screws that go in the shaft's keyway. You should definitely electrically ground yours and cover your wires. Not sure if you can post videos here or I'd post one proving that you get far superior results burnishing at very low speeds.