Digit

I stick a bit of paper masking tape underneath my machine's feet to smooth out the teeth if needed. Most of the time I sew lightweight things and I use a very small walking foot (aound 2x3mm smooth footprint), which I think is intended to sew near zippers or around magnets/buttons.

I don't consider myself poor, but neither am I rich enough to be able to afford all the specialty sewing machines that are needed to stitch all possible seams. I have a basic, run-of-the-mill walking foot cylinder arm machine and that's it. I try to design things (or adjust patterns) in such a way that they can be machine stitched, but sooner or later I'll have to resort to manual sewing for 'difficult' seams. Not necessarily out of stitch strength or financial considerations, but for the esthetics. I think (maybe naively due to lack of experience) that most items can be created using the same machine stitch, but not all of those items will look pleasing to the eye (or be comfortable to wear) when there are thick seams (however thin one can skive them) and exposed edges (however fine one can finish them).

I have no experience with hand stitching, but a possible weakness with a saddle stitch might be that you keep pulling the same thread through the leather, abrading the thread and making it slightly weaker with each hole you pass. By the time you reach the fiftieth hole, the thread has been pulled through fifty holes. With a (machine) lockstitch only a short amount of (top) thread gets pushed through the hole and pulled back, while the bottom thread doesn't get pulled through at all. So any bit of the top thread at any moment in time has been pushed through the leather only a couple of times and so has only worn down a little bit. Increased thread abrasion with manual stitching is offset by typically using thicker thread sizes as far as I can tell (so they there is more material to abrade before the thread becomes too weak) and waxing the threads for lubrication (so they abrade less when pulled through holes). On the other hand, the threads in a lockstitch basically make a 180 degree U-turn and as has been said before, that sort of a concentrated pulling point might be a weak spot. That said, now I wonder where a thread usually breaks when it does: in the exposed bit along the leather (in which case it doesn't really matter which stitch type you use), or in the hidden bit inside the leather where the threads are either locked (lockstitch) or where they pass each other (saddle stitch). Also, to be fair, one should compare apples with apples: so we should compare different stitch types using the same thread type/size and leather and that could be hard. Running a thick waxed thread through a machine would require a heavy duting sewing machine and using an unwaxed machine thread while hand stitching for any serious length would probably wear away the fibres in the thread... In the end I think both stitch types are comparable in strength and it would largely depend on thread thickness, thread material, and the way in which an item is used how soon a stitch would fail.

At 42 I'm still pretty unscathed, apart from the occasional flesh wound (scratches, punctures, cuts, mildly crushed limbs, broken nails) but I've never been seriously wounded. I cracked a shoulder blade once by driving my bike straight while the road curved and I hit a crash barrier at about 80km/h (50 mph) and I also dislocated a shoulder once when falling during a hike. Lucky for me, neither of those accidents had any lasting damage. The only lasting damage I have is caused by spending an evening next to a thickness planer without hearing protection. I spent a few weeks going crazy with tinnitus, after which it slowly died away, together with the ability to hear certain frequencies. I'm still lucky the tinnitus didn't last (it does come back when I'm tired though) and I only have have around 12dB hearing loss. Since then I always wear hearing protection when working with machines or driving my bike. During my bike crash I was lucky to wear leather and since then I've ditched my textile bike gear.

I have absolutely no experience with this kind of cutting board, but LDPE has a pretty low melting point, so could you smooth down those ridges using an iron? Possibly using some baking paper to protect it?

Yeah, for cutting wheels the guard is best left on; those blades can be very thin and one wrong movement can make them explode. I only remove the guard on fiddly jobs when I need to reach a difficult spot for grinding with a flap disc or a bristle wheel, and even then I wear goggles (those bristles tend to fly around too).

When you're responsible for anyone other than yourself, then yes you need to follow laws and regulations, including those around safety and liability. I'm on my own, so naturally I remove obstacles such as a finger guard on my sewing machine, or the safety guards on my drill press or angle grinder when it suits my needs

I bought aftermarket feet for my Adler; they came with finger guards and I removed all of them. They just get in the way imo. I already live in nanny state Belgium; I can do without a nanny-sewing machine

During my woodworking period I learned that MDF is made from scrap wood and scrap wood can contain scrap of any kind (bits of nails and screws, bits of paint, sometimes even bits of lead from bullets or grape shot that ended up in trees). The large bits are mostly sieved out, but smaller bits can remain, especially on the inside of the panel: MDF is unlike fibreboard or chipboard in that MDF panels use smaller wood fibres on the oudside and coarser fibers (and potential scrap) on the inside. It's mixed nicely with glues and resins, making it more plasticky than real wood and if those additives contain formaldehyde, spending long periods of time near that MDF could be bad for your health. If you want to use wood for a cutting board, I suggest using end grain as cutting surface, that way you don't have a grain that could force your knife in directions you don't want or dull it down by cutting across the grain.

That's a wonderful jacket. I hope I'll be able to make something like that some day. Does it only have snaps for closing or is there a zipper underneath as well?

Ah yes indeed. My cursory glance failed to notice the white lever on white background

I don't see a reverse lever on that machine. It might be a button inside that dial, I'm not sure. Make sure that the machine you buy has a reverse (you can work without, but it's way more easier if your machine can reverse stitch).

I never used this kind of tool, but the way I'd use it would probably be approaching the bell from the top with the pin of the tool downwards, just to the left of the cutting edge. It would require a certain amount of precision to get the angle just right. It's the amount of precicion an experienced user would have, but not me, so I'll rely on the built-in sharpening wheel, which is always at the right angle. The built-in wheel has allowed me to sharpen the the bell knife so that I could skive down 0.8mm (2 oz) super-supple nappa leather to half thickness. That's all the sharpness I need. If your skiver stops spinning when the sharpening stone hits it, I suggest checking the belt tensions in the machine; they might be worn and slipping.

That Typical TW3-P335 looks exactly like the Global WF1335. Probably from the same OEM factory but differently branded. It's a good basic machine to get started on. Be sure to have it on a removable table so that you have room to manipulate larger work underneath the arm. Depending on which leather you'd want to stitch, have some spare feet at the ready without knurls/teeth that might leave patterns on your leather (or simply put some tape over the knurls, that's what I do). I never mentioned ideal. You need some starting point and it's best you learn to work with what's available in your market and what's affordable to you. Experience will guide you to a better machine (or not if the machine you buy does cover your needs in the end). I learned a lot about cars by buying five cheap ones over the past 15 years and working on them to keep them running, while I could have borrowed money to buy a single shiny 'ideal' car and just drive it and never learn anything...

In the period I signed up to this forum there was talk of some hack or something and everything needing to be set up from scratch and a backup restored. That might have done something to the permissions. I noticed that I had access to the NSFW area without needing to ask for it. Although that section isn't as active anymore as it used to be in the past (have people become more prudish in recent years?), it still contains a wealth of inspiration and tips for those interested. There have been half a dozen NSFW posts in the past few years or so. Compared to the endless stream of gun holsters, knife sheaths, and people with sewing machine problems I don't think the forum is at risk of degenerating into an obscenity pit just yet. Also: obscenity is in the eye (and mind) of the beholder. To relativize the mentioned post: I believe most people wear underwear. Some is made from plants (cotton), other is made from prehistoric micro-organisms (synthetics). So what could be the problem with someone showing underwear made from current macro-organisms (animal skin)? I hope Johanna can get that permission issue resolved so that those not interested in certain aspects of leatherwork can live peacefully ever after.