Spinner

+1 to what Paul said. For glossy edge, most true acrylics (from the art store) will have acrylic mediums that can be used to thin the paint instead of water and add an extra untinted base that will create various finishes like gloss, satin, crackle, etc. Remember to use the same brand of paint & medium as not all brand formulas like each other.

You can own one for $3.50 + shipping... http://zackwhite.com/xcart/product.php?productid=20889&cat=1118&page=1

Thanks again Bob, appreciate the info. Looks like the 206 is the better machine for my needs. Now to figure out the budget. I noticed the Chandler 406RB-1 is pretty much the same machine as the Consew 206RB-5, any major differences aside from brand name that would justify the $400 higher price tag on the Consew? Thanks, Chris

Thanks Bob. Am I correct in my understanding that the 206 has a larger bobbin as well? Is there an advantage to a vertical versus horizontal hook and bobbin location? Just trying to make sure I get the right machine. On the same note, It looks like Chandler is simply a Consew clone, any advantage of one over the other since the price difference is quite a bit between the two.

Anyone know what the actual differences between the Consew 206RB-5 and the Consew 226R-2 are? All the stats seem to be the same with the exception of the 206 using a "large" bobbin... and here I thought knowing the ins and outs of various motorcycles can be confusing! At least I can find specs and stats on them easily online! LOL

Thanks Wiz, I've been trying to read all the posts before asking questions and it's now getting to the point where the questions are brand/model specific. It looks like the bobbin is class M and 46-138 is pretty standard for it, good to know 207 could be. Before I commit to something I plan to give Bob, Steve and Ronnie a call just to be sure they don't have something equal or better in the price range.. Cheers, Chris

Hey sewing gurus, I'm looking at 1 of 3 Consew 226R-2 machines that are local. Being near the L.A. Fashion District, I have access to a half billion dealers, new & used. I believe this is the machine that will do the work I'm looking at doing but I can't find anywhere that mentions what thread size it maxes out at. I can't imagine going over 138 as I'd be mostly using it to sew 5/6oz double stacked for bags, etc and likely lighter stuff as well but not likely thicker as I don't generally get into that. It would be nice to be able to go to 207 if I wanted to but it wouldn't be a deal breaker. On the same note, any pluses or minuses I should know about the machine in general? Thanks, Chris

Hey Reddevil, I had the same experience with the Royal Meadow, I hand picked the nicest piece in the store - looked very clean and a very mellow, light color great for painting on. Once I cut, carved and dyed it about half a dozen spots showed up that didn't even show up when the piece was cased. I did notice though that it was soft, really soft. I curved nicely but even applying Pro Oil dye was enough for the carving to raise back up and loose some definition. Should make good rustic bag leather though. Before you place your W&C order, let me check out the H.O. from Sheridan Leather Outfitters. It's almost the same price (about 20 cents difference) and shipping shouldn't be much different. With my last piece from Goliger, the H.O. was great to work with. A little stiffer than W&C so for wet molding it was a little more work but on the tooling side of things it was probably my best carving experience ever. The H.O. takes and holds detail extremely well and even with 5/6 oz. I was able to get some great definition & depth, moreso than any leather I have used previously. Hopefully my recent explorations into different vendors can help folks like yourself. Here's a piece in progress carved on the H.O.: Chris

The Creatix does a good job but since it's already pretty thin for airbrush use, start at 50/50 or so. Otherwise, your local shoe repair shop or Springfield Leather has it: http://springfieldleather.com/Dyes%2C-Paints-%26-Finishes/product/7407/Paint%2CAngelus-White-1oz/ and thanks for the compliment on the bib. The white and silver were painted separately from the black so the colors would be more true. Black under other colors gives it a shade and washes them out. Chris

Fiebings has a white "dye" but it's not really dye. Both the fiebing and angelus white may be more fluid and feel like dye but they both have a heavier colorant/pigment and will eventually build up on top. Best bet IMHO is the Angelus version which is closer to acrylics and will thin & clean with water but once dry is pretty well adhered. Shoot some aerosol Super Sheen over it seal it (don't use a wipe on sealer!) and you're good to go. If you can, thinning with an acrylic medium like airbrush medium is even better than water. For this sort of application 50/50 mix at least, or start the first coat or two with 30/70 color/water and work up layers. A thick heavy single coat will simply end up cracking and yellowing much faster. In a pinch, if yuo can't access Angelus, your local hobby store should have airbrush paint that will work well, and no need to thin it. Here's what 5 coats of Angelus layered thinly looks like (POW/MIA logo...the wings are Angelus Silver):

Looks great, the lines are nice & clean and the background has a good random feel to it. The skull looks very familiar and it's driving me nuts! I want to say there's a comic book publisher logo like that but the name escapes me now...lol getting old sucks.

Thanks for the correction Elton. Vandy was "wrangling the dogs in" when she answered the phone so I must have missed the V during the fray. All the same, she provided a great first impression and I'm looking forward to seeing what they send. Chris

Thanks for the feedback guys. I tooled on the HO from Goliger last night and it was awesome stuff. Just to make sure I'm not limiting myself though, I ordered a side from Sheridan Leather Outfitters to see how the two compare. Price was only $0.50 difference including shipping between the two shops. Both made notes on the pick sheets to send HO grade A - cleanest so we'll see how their pick staffs respond to that as well. Customer Service at both have been great, Cheryl @ Goliger and Andi @ SLO were both helpful, listened well and nice to chat with. K-man, I'd love to order direct and might get to that point some day but right now business/budget only requires 2-4 hides a month. Aside from storage issues, it would take me a little while to save for the leather bill and that would push the sewing machine purchase out even further. Oh well, I'll get there soon enough. I do appreciate the tips on who to talk to though, a good contact always helps! Chris

Hey Clair, after using both this week in projects (as well as Tandy's Royal Meadow) Hermann Oak definitely is top notch. W&C will turn somewhat of a golden color with neatsfoot oil but it is a bit softer than and a bit lighter colored than Hermann Oak typically. I'd call W&C's a 'natural' and HO more of a true 'russett'. The HO costs a little more ($178/side W&C vs. $197/side HO - both A/1 grade) but so far it's been worth every penny. Chris

Thanks Johanna, I have gotten to know the folks at a few shops big and small well enough to ask for what I want but sometimes I wish I could just go down and pick myself. I do work with/around marks, positioning them in strategic locations, etc. I haven't tried Sheridan Leather or ZW yet, they may be next (that would take me to #9 & 10 on the list of vendors). Springfield has great folks and they do try the hardest to get what you want but I think their effort may be limited by their available stock. Most folks just don't have to pull individual pieces the size of mine out of a hide so I can see where it would be difficult to accommodate. On a good day, I can get 5-6 of my whaletail bibs cut from a clean 22 sqft hide with only a small bit of clean leftovers. It very well could be that I'm just being too critical of these things, it's not like woodturning was any different...I constantly had to work around knots, bark inclusions, etc. the only difference is if I did it right, the client would actually pay more for a piece that started out with a huge blemish! LOL Here's the pic of the bib you mentioned and another couple that I did recently. Front to back, these measure close to 28" long to give some scale:

As most folks know, I make a lot of motorcycle bibs; they are black, satin sheen and VERY visible in their position on the top of the tank. Since they really are my personal calling card I'm using the best materials I can to take related issues out of the equation. Problem is, even when I order the "best" and pay the associated prices I don't always feel like my perception of best is satisfied by the merchants idea of "best". This has been the case for W&C, HO, Royal Oak (Tandy's #1) and a few other places that deal in imported shoulders/hides. Question is, how much loss due to marks/scarring should be expected on a hide? To be fair let's use Hermann Oak A or Wickett &Craig 1 as the base lines. These are supposed to be the best of the best, the cleanest, etc. My last few 22-25 sq ft hides from W&C had approx. 10-15% loss due to scarring. A recent H.O. of the same size was better with only 7-8% but there was a 5" x 1/8" scar almost dead center of the hide. Seeing as how I have to be really creative with the patterns to minimize waste (my bibs start out as a T-shape 18" wide and 26-28" long) having 10% loss and blems in the middle can really muck planning up and increases waste even further. Thoughts, comments? Is this the norm or should I be giving yet another vendor a try? Thanks, Chris

Wish I were close enough to pick up...would have carted that off yesterday. Good luck with the sale, it is a great price.

Will do. In talking to Jessica, this is something she plans on doing at least once or twice a month to provide more in depth teaching beyond the standard project based weekly classes. She and are going to talk that morning and during the class to see what other classes folks would be interested in from a more focused techniques stand-point versus general project based. Cheers, Chris

Thanks guys. Officially, the hiatus is over but I'm having a few issues with the Etsy store so I've backtracked & updated LeatherBurnishers.com so folks can see prices & email me with requests. Hope to have the technical side of things figured out by next week so I can keep myself in the shop where I belong! Chris

Just wanted to let folks know that I will be teaching a 2-hour class on November 19th from 1:30-3:30 at the Tandy Leather Factory in Baldwin Park, CA. The class will go into some detail of the various products to color leather from dyes to acrylics, the methods to applying them from sponge to air brush and include info on how to bring depth to color jobs through shading, shadows & layering, two tone fades, masking, etc. Cost is only $25 and students will get to take home the materials I'll be supplying everyone to try out and learn with. Work space is limited so if you're interested in signing up, contact the store manager Jessica at: 626-813-1570 regards, Chris

Anteater, if you can find it will be expensive as K-man said. They were added to the endangered species list in early 2007 so any hides you find now will either be remanants of pre-2007 stock or illegally poached hides. Illegal capture and trade of Pangolin Anteaters is still a big problem in Thailand & Malaysia, unless you can specifically identify the source of the hide, it's best not to buy them.

hey Dink, Sorry I didn't come back to this before, I received your PM and figured I would just post here to make it easier for you to track. Most of the responses, especially BillB and Ladykahu hit on very important points. 1) Flash is cumbersome for mobile browsers, especially Apple products due to their dislike of Flash's security protocols. It also adds quite a bit of loading time to a website versus a website without. 2) Prices, or price ranges if you don't want to be tied down to a specific price, definitely help sales. 3) The font size used in the main paragraphs for the home page and a few others is too large. Yes, it makes it easier to read but it also creates the need for scrolling bars embedded in the middle of the page. From a usability stand-point, most folks won't use bars embedded in the middle of the page they'll read what they can see and move along sometimes missing important information. They will however use the browser scroll bars if the page extends past their screen. Shrink the font so the text all appears on the page. (Visit my website to see the difference) 4) CONTACT INFORMATION!!! In my current website I'm guilty of this too but I'm also in the midst of a rebuild and plan to fix this myself as well. Contact information should appear somewhere on every page, at least a phone number or email, whichever is preferred. This allows the client to contact you without having to leave the important pages that contain your product. I do see a 'contact us' link at the top right of the page(s) but it's small, dislocated from the rest of the navigation and is easily overlooked. If folks can't figure out how to get ahold of you easily they'll just as likely leave the site rather than dig around looking for the info. The page footers and/or headers are a good place for this info. 5) This one may be a touchy subject but it may also help someone else so I'll put it out there. Looking at the site footers, it looks like the site was "professionally" built for you by a "designer". However, they have neglected many basic website rules, especially relating to search engines. They also used a website builder template and didn't do any designing themselves at all aside from editing a few photos and following on screen instructions in the free builder. http://www.wix.com/ is the service being used. Hopefully you aren't paying a service fee for web space as the Wix accounts are free. This can be verified by simply clicking on one of your links and watching the status bar. You'll see the address change to "static.wix.com" or "beat.wix.com" when it's loading a page. 6) Speaking of the website guidelines, the photos are not optimized for search engine indexing. This means that when Google visits your website, it looks at the meta-tags (hidden tags in your site code) to identify keywords, descriptions, etc then it looks at the website text for the same things. If done correctly, they will match up and help the search engine determine how related you are to keyword searches. The site is fine in this area. However, the search engines also look at picture alt tags (the pop ups when you float over pictures) and the picture file names themselves. Every picture, graphic, background image, etc. should have related keywords or text used for the alt tags and file names to improve your rankings and 90% of the site doesn't employ this. Example: float over the first picture on the home page. The alt tag says "chaps_1". Right clicking and selecting "Item Details" gives an empty description box. At the very least, the file name could be something like, "purple_black_chaps" or try for more keywords with "barrel_racing_womens_chaps". Use underscores: _ in the file names instead of spaces (spaces are replaced with %20 in website address protocols) but in the alt tags spaces are fine. *Note - the alt tags were used exactly as should be in the "Pro Store" page photos.* 7) Normalize the website navigation. From the looks of it, kids chaps and chinks were added to the website later than the rest. Unfortunately, when it was done, the wrong size font was used for them and they were pushed over to the right taking up photo and text real estate. They should be aligned with the rest of the navigation links and if need be, reduce the font size on all the links to keep them spaced correctly and all in the same vertical line for consistency. Hopefully some of this long winded post helps! Chris

Hey Jennifer, sounds like you have an old/bad/expired batch of paint. A fresh tube of acrylic paint shouldn't be chalky it should be very smooth and bright with the consistency of toothpaste. Water works to thin them out but for greater control and protection, a thinning medium works better. Thin is down to the consistency of milk and layer it on versus dipping the brush straight into the tube/pool to get nice translucent colors that will have better adherence and color depth. Acrylics can be your friend! For brands, I like Angelus leather paints & Golden Fluid Acrylics w/ Golden Airbrush Medium (even when brushing them by hand). Chris

Very nice McJeep! You might want to consider selling the pattern as well, I'm sure a few folks would be interested!