Wizcrafts

I have a side business refurbishing, repairing and selling old iron domestic sewing machines. Whenever anybody asks if they will sew leather, I bring them into the shop and show them what real leather sewing machines look like.

Guest posters are not members, thus cannot use our PM system. You will have to either provide Guest Kolten with your contact info, or convince him/her to join LW.N. If you post an email address, be sure you obfuscate it to avoid email harvesting bots.

That is a Singer 15-91, with a built in pod motor, which, according to ismacs, was built on April 8, 1953. I used to have a 15-91 and found it well suited to home sewing operations on cloth. However, it is by no stretch of the imagination a leather or even a vinyl sewing machine (been there, tried that, gave up). Parts are readily available and it uses standard domestic needles.

I read the specs of that machine, via Constabulary's link, and saw that its longest stitch length is only 8 to the inch. That will work okay with #69 thread (#16 or #18 needle), but not #138 (#22 or 23 needle).

The Singer 29 series machines were made repairing for shoe and boot uppers, as well as mending tears in pockets and sewing on patches. The bobbins are tiny, the size of three or 4 dimes in a stack. and the maximum thickness the 29k58 can sew and still move for another stitch is just over 1/4 inch (maybe 5/16"). The presser foot has teeth on the bottom which are the sole means of moving the leather. The maximum stitch length of a pristine machine is 5 to the inch into about 1/8 inch of shoe upper leather. The stitch length diminishes as you approach 1/4 inch. You will be limited to using #69 bonded thread. While not any good for thick material, large thread or production sewing, they are unbeatable for mending purse straps, installing new zippers into purses and sewing cylindrical items up and down the narrow-ish arm (it gets fatter as you approach the base of the machine). The bobbin end is 1 inch across.

I would consider the CB3200 an excellent machine for sewing leather belts and holsters. It can actually sew 1/2 inch with very heavy thread that is way beyond the capacity of a walking foot upholstery machine.

This is not a requirement by any means, but is still a valid suggestion and my opinions. Leatherworker.net is supported by a select few advertisers who pay our operating expenses for the server and software licenses. Big forums like ours cost more to host than most individuals can usually afford to pay out of their own pocket. It would be doing us a solid if you would click/press on the ad banners on the top of every page for advertisers that are dealers of things you may want or need and inquire about these items. If you need needles, bobbins, motors, belts, machines, repairs, accessories or parts, please ask our member dealers first before you buy on eBay or somewhere else. Our machine dealers are very knowledgeable and are experts in setting up leather sewing machines. Some know part numbers by heart. Even a small sale is of value as it tells the company paying for the ads that their money is well spent. Many of our advertising dealers are also members here and some are frequent posters on this forum. I see dealers helping members with machine problems all the time on the forum. All of our member dealers offer free phone or email or sometimes PM support for machines they sell. These are good people and deserve our support. Plus, when they sell you a machine, know that they have gone over it, adjusted and oiled it and sewn it off. You won't be getting a drop shipped box from the Orient, but a functional sewing machine.

As we welcome new members from around the World to Leatherworker.net, we moderators often have to act as controllers of some discussions. There are long standing customs that our existing members know and adhere to, but new members are not always automatically aware of. Some of the main things that need to be explained are as follows. Include your location in your profile When you setup an account, or after you've set one up, please include your location. Often times members will request information about getting parts and service. Without seeing where they are located, some answers may be completely irrelevant to those people. At least list your state/province/territory and country in your profile. Add your city if you wish. You will receive much more meaningful replies to your requests for assistance when responding members see where you live. Start a new topic for a new question This is becoming a thorn in the side for a lot of our members and is regarded as "bad Netiquette" on many user forums and online communities. If you have a question to ask that is not directly related to an existing topic, start a new topic rather than interjecting it into somebody else's topic! New topics usually get a lot of targeted responses from people who are well acquainted with the subject. Posting questions that are unrelated to existing threads, especially in older topics that have dropped off the radar, will lead to aggravation for long time supporters, screw with the indexing of our content by our search engine and in some cases end up with the same questions being asked in several threads at the same time. Don't ask/post the same question in more than one topic at a time Asking or posting the same question or statements into multiple topics during a short time period is known as "cross posting" and is bad Netiquette. This causes confusion when the members who reply do so in more than one topic. It can lead to moderators splitting off the unrelated questions into other or new topics. Sometimes the answers to cross posted questions can get lost during these splits. If there is no ongoing topic that specifically deals with a matter you want to inquire about, start your own New Topic. Do so by pressing the Start New Topic button on the top right of each forum page. Edit your mistakes during the window of opportunity in which edits are allowed for members.. If you find that you want to change something after that time has expired, contact a moderator via the Private Message system about the matter. Copy and paste a link to the post. If you need help learning how to do this, read by blog article titled: Tutorial on how to Copy and Paste text Email addresses should not be listed in plain text in your posts! In the beginning the Internet was a nice place where people freely exchanged theories, ideas, fables and knowledge. Folks used to list a contact email address in plain text so people could either read it and type it into a new mail message, or copy and paste it. Then came the robots... The robots I refer to are called "Harvester Bots" or "Spam Bots" and their job is to scour web pages and forums in search of plain text email addresses. When they find these addresses they save them and upload them to databases on servers under the control of professional spammers, who are also the owners of the Bots. The Spam Bot Masters who compile these email databases then sell bundles of millions of fresh email addresses to other spammers. We all know what happens next as spam fills our inboxes. Instead of typing a plain text email address (e.g. person@emailservice.com), break up the words into space separated groups. Instead of the @ symbol, type out AT, or at, or something else that will make sense to a common human user, but confusing to a robot with limited programming. Note, some advanced harvester bots can identify some common methods of email "obfuscation." Still, some obfuscation is better than none. Use our private message (PM) system for contacting other members privately All registered members have access to our forum's PM system, which sends and receives private messages that are not published on publicly viewable pages. You can use it to exchange email addresses, phone numbers, directions to you location, or to make deals for sales and purchases off the grid. Learn to use the PM feature. Note, only registered members can use PMs. Guests cannot. If you post something for sale, or that you want to purchase, or you want somebody to contact you about repairs who may not be a member, you must either convince them to join the forum, or type your contact info into a publicly viewable reply. If you do this, remember to obfuscate your contact details. Please respect existing members' replies to your questions. Every now and then I will be reading through the latest replies to various topics, some of which are older, maybe last updated 2 to 5 years ago, and some newer member will reply and find fault with the last posters in those threads. All I can say is that this is disrespectful. If you publicly disagree with somebody's statements that are technical details about certain sewing machines, adjustments, tweaks, or sewing techniques, unless you have professional credentials as a trained or highly experienced sewing machine mechanic, you possibly dissing somebody who does have those credentials. This will not gain you many friends in this community. Know that there is often more than one way to get the same results when it comes to industrial sewing machines. If a dealer replies to a topic, he probably has more experience than somebody who just acquired their first or second sewing machine. Not all questions get answered There are some members who ask for information about machines that we don't know anything about. It may take some time before somebody with knowledge of those machines replies to the question, if at all. Don't take this personally. We are a community of people who sew leather, often on similar brands of machines. If nobody on this forum knows about the machine you asked about, you probably won't get any replies. Use our search engine before posting a new question A lot of new members, or members new to industrial sewing machines will ask the same types of questions over and over. You can use the forum search engine to try to see if your question has already been dealt with and answered. You can tell it to search one particular forum, or all of Leatherworker.net. This topic is locked for comments, except for moderators who may add to it.

I have a domestic machine like that one in my leather shop. Even after tweaking it I could barely get it to sew 6 ounces of apron suede with a #18 leather point needle and #69 bonded thread. Plus, it needs to be hand wheeled to start sewing into suede. Veg tan of the same thickness would be even harder for it to penetrate and hold down. I recondition and sell old iron Singer domestic machines as a side business. The only ones that I've had and sold with confidence to people wanting to sew leather were a Model 27 and a Model 128. These machines from the turn of the 20th Century have bullet shuttles and long cylindrical bobbins. They can handle up to #92 bonded thread, if you can locate #19 or 20 leather point needles. Otherwise, they easily sew 9-10 ounces of bridle leather with a #18 needle and #69 bonded thread. Having a very large handwheel helps them punch through the leather much easier than smaller wheel models. Plus, they were able to sew 5 to the inch at 10 ounces. Anyone needed to sew over that will need to buy an industrial (preferably walking foot) sewing machine that was built strong enough to sew leather. This leaves out all of the straight stitch tailoring machines (I have a 31-15 and previously had a 96k40 and know their limitations).

Not bad to my eyes. I've sewn on a couple of soles with my Cowboy CB4500 (using the inline foot set from Toledo Industrial Sewing Machines) and it didn't look any better than what your Landis did. Maybe you can rig up a temporary flat bottom plate and trim the high side of the bottom of the foot to eliminate the unwanted push.

Since your conchos use Chicago screws to attach them to a belt, why don't you just get a hole punching tool and punch holes for them into your new belt, then screw them on yourself? The actual hole diameter for Chicago screws is 3/16 inch (aka: #6 leather hole punch). As for the corners protruding on bends, that is difficult to fix short of cutting out the area used be each concho to countersink them, so to speak. That will require either a two layer belt, with the top layer having the cutouts, or a steady hand with a leather gouging tool. The three piece buckle set also needs to be fitted. I missed that when I first posted my reply.

The OP requested interested parties to send him a private message (PM) through the forum. If you join Leatherworker.net as a member, you will be able to send and receive private messages. If you join, please list your location to help narrow down answers to questions you may ask.

I merged the duplicate topics into this topic. All is present here.

I think that this thread and needle chart may help you choose the best combinations.

Eddie; If you live in the USA or Canada, you can buy a Family Sew servo motor from any of our member dealers whose banners appear on top of each page on Leatherworker.net. Many of us are using the FS-550s, which has recently been replaced with a newer model: FL550. You can order it with a very small 2" pulley that really slows it down and adds a lot of punching power. If you edit your profile to show your location, we can recommend a dealer closest to you.

Cogged, if possible, because of the tiny motor pulley. Definitely use type 3L v-belts rather than round leather, which will tend to slip a lot under load.

Marcus; You didn't list your location. According to your IP address, you are probably located in or near Georgia, in the USA. We do have leather crafters in Georgia who can make your Santa belt. If nobody else answers your request, contact me via the form on my website, at: www.rw-leatherworks.com Regarding tooled belts, they can only be tooled once. The impressions are stamped and carved in and are permanent. Your buckle is smaller than most Santa belts, which tend to be 4" wide. What you would need is called a taper belt, which is narrower at the buckle and billet ends.

Needle System 135x17 (round) or 135x16 (leather)

Loosen the screw on the right end of the Latch Opener lever, push/pry the opener to the left for more clearance, then tighten down the screw. It should just pull back on the boon case as the top thread comes down and off the needle. Then it should begin to move left and release the case to pass the top thread as it goes over and under the bobbin case.

Sticks; Have you read about the Family Sew servo motors? I have to believe that somebody in the UK sells this brand. This motor starts spinning at 1 rpm if you so desire. It doesn't have a lot of torque at the slowest speeds, which is why many users add a speed reducer. I have this motor powering a big Cowboy CB4500, through a 3:1 speed reducer. I can sew 1 stitch every 8 or 9 seconds if I had reason to do so. Once in motion it penetrates the thickest stack of leather (unless the belts slip). The same motor without a speed reducer powers my long arm walking foot machine. I can hold it at a steady pace of about 1 to 1.5 stitches per second at the low end, with the speed limiter all the way down to 350.

The case you linked to doesn't look that bad. Does the seller guarantee that it will fit the camera? If so, it can be treated and dyed. Loose stitches can be gone over, even by hand needles if necessary.

I meant to say that this camera is a clone of a Leica III-F

The camera is a clone of a Leica F type. I'm not sure if the lens collapses onto itself, like some of the Elmar and Summicron lens did. At any rate, the hump for the lens will be much smaller than for modern DSLRs that have telephoto lenses. I have sewn camera cases and can tell you with certainty that it requires a Claes, Singer, or Adler large bobbin patcher set up with #92 or #138 bonded polyester thread. There is a lot of gluing involved of inside linings and outer covers. This job, depending on the condition of the original case, will not happen fast, or cheaply. Scott; have you considered looking for a Leica F case?

If you look up a couple of posts, you'll see that the OP sold his machine in November, 2013.

Black thread tends to be very twisty due to being double dipped. Try reversing the direction of the bobbin inside the case.