Wizcrafts

Uwe; I have all kinds of zippers in my shop. You are welcome to come up to Burton and measure all you want. I have plastic, molded plastic, aluminum and brass tooth zippers. Most are YKK, but I have a few other brands in stock. The location is on my website: www.rw-leatherworks.com

A few years ago I bought a combination leather burnisher and sander from Leather Machine Company (Cobra). It can sand the layers until they are even. With the sides flat you can use an edge tool to remove the lip formed by the sanding from the top and bottom. The larger the number the more leather it shaves off the edge. I would use a #3 on your holsters. Then, wet the edges and rub them into the groove in the burnisher that allows the inside and edges to be slicked. In case that machine is too much money, there is a cheaper solution. Use a powered sander on the edges and an edge tool as described above. If you have a drill press you can buy a burnisher that fits into a chuck on a drill press. It is made by Richard Loy.

As far as I know and understand, Cowboy primarily sells through a network of distributors unless there is nobody representing them in a particular country or hemisphere. It is unlikely that their binder will ever be on Amazon as that would be outside the dealer network. 25mm wide bias tape, as in 1 inch??? If that is a double fold (finished edge) binder it will be useless on 1/4 inch thick edges. The tape would need to be at least 1.25" wide to have enough left to sew after folding under the edges. At 5 or 6 ounces, the strips would need to be about 1.5 inches before double folding. I think they may have quoted the tape width for a single fold attachment.

Bob, can you inquire as to what thickness the binder can handle in both the binding material and the edge to be covered? It looks like the "tape" is double folded. If true it would greatly limit the binding material to either very thin leather or cloth bias tape. I am envisioning approximately a 1 to 1.5 ounce thickness limit for a double folded leather tape. Or, maybe it can double fold heavy grade upholstery vinyl, like Naugahyde.

That is the wrong machine for holsters. The 29-4 is a cobbler's shoe upper sewing machine. It is meant to sew 4 to 8 ounces of leather. It can sew into 1/4 inch of soft to medium temper leather, but nominally with thinner thread than is suitable for securing a holster. The Singer 29 series manual recommends wetting the leather if you need to sew 1/4 inch of hard temper leather. The teeth on the foot will dig in even more than on dry leather and leave horrible tooth mark patterns. All that said, the 29-4 "can" be fitted with a #22 needle and the dime sized bobbin threaded with a few yards of #138 thread. You will be lucky to get 8 stitches per inch and the knots will tend to stay visible near the bottom layer.

You are going to have to contact a custom attachment shop to have one built to your specifications. Perhaps you could purchase an inexpensive folder to use as a sample to have one made that can do what you want in a metal fabrication shop. The last custom folder I had made cost me $428 and it was for double folding 1.25 inch bias tape over the edges of thin orange honeycomb vinyl safety vests used by Police and road workers. Before getting a custom binder it was hit and miss. With that binder the results were professional. Professional results can be sold to critical buyers. If you were to contact an Atlanta Attachment Company with your requirements they could give you a ballpark cost for a custom build. What would it hurt to send an email to Cowboy/Hightex in China asking them for the capacity of their big folder, or if they can modify it for you?

I forgot to mention that the $450 price also includes a synchronized moving mounting bracket and actuator linkage for a CB4500 (etc).

It looks like the top tension is already too tight, or the bobbin is too loose. That's why there are knots always visible just under the top surface. Try tightening the bobbin tension screw about 1 turn. If that doesn't help, back off the top tension nut. Check the top thread path all the way from the spool itself to see if there is any thread binding along the way.

@Nightshade I have an entire sewing room full of industrial and non-industrial sewing machines. Some are heavier duty than others. What I have learned over the decades I've been doing this are that one should purchase the best built machines that can perform particular desired jobs best and with the least downtime and that have plenty of aftermarket or real market parts available. To that end, while my primary bevy of machines are all walking foot or patcher machines, I do have one straight stitch tailoring machine that is best used on garments and satin linings. That machine is a 1920s Singer 31-15. It shares an industrial 20x48 inch table with an early model Singer 111w153 walking foot machine. I swap out the walking font machine for the 31-15, move the knee lever and adjust the motor position to accommodate the bottom feeder. That ancient Singer machine does a beautiful job on materials too light for any walking foot mechanism. Best of all I only paid $180 for that machine, including the table (Craigslist ad). I did swap out the old clutch motor for a servo motor I got from Toledo Industrial Sewing Machines. If you search your local (SC) Craigslist you can probably find some inexpensive low speed (manually oiled) Singer or Consew sewing machines, or even real Juki machines at a price you can afford. Then you will have enough left to order a brand new CB3200. BTW: Since you plan to sew holsters and sheathes, consider saving up for a full blown CB4500 instead. It sews over 3/4 inch, while the 3200 stops at 1/2 inch.

I asked Bob Kovar about this edge binder set and he says they are available by special order for $450. Bob owns Toledo Industrial Sewing Machines.

The Juki DDL-227 is not a walking foot machine, nor a leather machine. It is just a high speed straight stitch machine meant to sew cloth garments.

I use #277 bonded nylon thread, top and bobbin, with a #25 leather point needle when sewing holsters up to 1/2 inch thick. Beyond that I switch to #346 thread, top and bottom, with a #26 needle, and increase the stitch length a bit. My current holster machine is a Cowboy CB4500. A sticky topic is fixed at the top of the list of topics when you enter each forum. I happen to have such a topic that has been locked and remains in its place near the top of the entry page of the Leather Sewing Machines forum. That topic is labeled: The Type Of Sewing Machine You Need To Sew Leather. All of the topics that don't move down with time are called "sticky" topics. It is done by our forum's software.

As needle size number increases, so does the diameter of the business end. As the bonded nylon or bonded polyester thread size increases, so does its diameter. There are very few sewing machines that can even approach using 1mm thread. None of the ones in common use or new ones for sale from our dealers can do much more than 1/2 mm diameter. Only needle and awl or shoe sole machines can use 1mm thread.

The UFA is a small bobbin patcher machine. It was designed to sew shoe and boot uppers with thin thread. The intended thickness is limited to about 1/4 inch. The foot has to have enough clearance left to lift off the leather and move forward for the next stitch. The thread handling capabilities are too small for the thickness needed to hold a holster together. Lastly, the maximum stitch length of a factory new patcher like that was 5 to the inch at about 1/8 inch. Even if a holster edge could fit under the foot and the foot had enough jump left to pull it along, the maximum stitch length would likely drop to 8 to the inch, or less.

Been there and done that. Installing a roller equipped or an even feed foot does improve the feeding of two layer seams. But, both types reduce the available clearance under the foot. If the original foot allowed for sewing 1/4 inch of material, a roller or even feed foot may only allow between 1/8 to 5/32 inch. Also, in order to sew a veg-tan leather belt on a model 66, the foot pressure spring screw may need to be cranked all the way down to keep the leather from lifting with the ascending needle.

Buy System 135x16 leather point needles in sizes 18, 19, 22 and 23. This covers a bonded nylon thread range of v69 through v138. If you are going to sew cloth or woven material, buy 135x17 round point needles in the appropriate sizes. Your machine can use up to #138 bonded thread. It can also sew with thinner thread than #69. Here is a thread and needle size chart to help you choose the best combinations.

Your Singer 66 is a straight stitch, bottom feed machine. It can never be a walking foot machine. Those have three bars coming down. Yours has two. It will always only be a bottom feeder. That said, the model 66 can sew with #69 bonded thread and a #18 needle, which is its maximum size. The maximum thickness sewable depends on the density and collapsability of the material. Cloth up to 1/4 inch is doable. With leather you will likely max out at about 8-9 ounces. It is possible that your mileage will vary.

#5 zipper teeth are exactly 5mm across. This is the standard measurement system. A #4 is 4mm. A #10 is 10mm across, et al. However, the vertical height varies a bit as the size increases. It would be best to buy one zipper of each size and composition to ensure accurate 3D printing of your alignment parts. I mostly use #5, #7 and #10 replacement zippers on jackets, boots and purses that come in for repair (the customer usually specifies the width, or else I replace the same size as original). Most are either brass or aluminum teeth. But, I also use the much taller and stronger Vislon hard plastic tooth zippers. The vertical profile is much taller than metal or plastic loop zippers. All are YKK brand. IHTH

I neglected to mention that APC Back-UPS' are also surge and noise protectors. One bank of sockets have battery backup. The other bank has just surge and noise protection. If one is planning on using such a device to protect a motor, the unit would have to be at least a 750 watt protector, or it would pop the breaker. Alternately, look into the Tripp-Lite Isobar surge protector multi-outlet power boxes. I connect my music amplifier and mini-power packs to one that goes to all of my gigs. They have great protection and fast breakers. There is noise suppression to (via an LC filter).

My computers, cable modem and router are plugged into APC battery Back-ups boxes. My TV is also plugged into an APC. I don't even consider it an option. It is a basic necessity in my World. I prefer the 650 to 750 Watt/Hour models. The batteries are good for about 3 years. Then you buy a new battery.

It appears to be a Singer 143w2 zig zag machine

Either a dealer or an enthusiast with a caliper will have to find time to measure their machine's output shaft to answer that. Knowing Singer, it will be some bizarre diameter, somewhere between right and wrong.

The time and materials cost will probably exceed that of having them milled and finished at a machine shop.

One of my buddies had a touchy motor on his Cobra and Steve sent him a new motor at no cost. I had a motor go bad on my Cowboy and Bob sent me a new motor. I have no doubt that Techsew does the same for their customers. All of our supporting dealers try to go the extra mile (km in Canada) for their customers. The supporting dealers all run ad banners on top of all of our pages, with a new batch of 6 shown each time you load or refresh a page.

RockyAussie; Would you mind posting the new details and .stl file links in our 3D Printers and Lasers forum? There are a few members lurking there that would appreciate seeing this. You can link to this topic in a post you make in that forum. I for one will try to find somebody with a 3D printer to make your zipper guides for me (our usual 3D printer guy just moved). I mostly use #5 YKK zippers in Biker wallets and money belts. But, I do use a #4 or 4.5 on occasion.