Wizcrafts

Um, are you aware that Weaver Leather currently has paid banner ads that appear in the rotation on top of every page on these forums? They are indeed a paying advertiser who supports us financially. Refresh the page and watch the banners reload and you will see Weaver's banners. On the other hand, Neel's is not a financial supporter of our site.

Yes we do take donations! There is a section on the home page labeled Support this forum (in the right sidebar). It offers three levels of donation amounts and defaults to PayPal. As for your clutch motor, you can back off the big bolt on the right/front side of the casing. It positions the brake pad vs the clutch. Giving it more slack makes it easier to learn to feather the clutch. There is also a spring adjustment on the control arm that can be played with. It can be set to just barely pull the lever up, or pull it up hard. Make sure you don't tighten it so much that the clutch won't fully engage. You might want to start a new topic that deals with controlling clutch motors, as this topic was about timing machines.

Bradford; The Cowboy CB4500, Cobra Class 4 and Techsew 5100 are all known as 441 Clones. The 441 refers to the progenitor, which is the Juki TSC-441. A new Juki 441 will set you back approximately $5500, base price, plus optional accessories. A 441 clone is half that amount, often with all the accessories. These three brands are sold, serviced and actively supported by advertisers who financially support this forum. You won't go wrong buying any or all of these brands (one each for different colors of thread)! The sewing machine advertisers who financially support this forum on an ongoing basis include (but aren't limited to) Bob Kovar (Cowboy), Steve Tayrien (Cobra) and Ronny from Techsew. Additionally, Weaver Leather is a major supplier, customizer and service provider of the high end Adler leather sewing machines.

The shuttle timing is way retarded. The hook should be picking off the loop much sooner. Perhaps the driving pinion gear came loose in transport, throwing off the timing. The hook should pickup the loop just after the needle moves all the way down, then slightly up and halts.

Claudia; I just approved your help wanted post. Sorry about the delay. I am at work in my shop and only check the forum occasionally.

There are some members who own Chinese patchers and would be in a better position to assist you if you start a new topic. There is nobody I know of who knows more about these Chinese patchers than Darren Brosowski.

DesirCustoms; This (old) topic is about a Singer 29k60 patch machine. Not all patchers are alike. The presser foot in your video is not a standard Singer foot. Please start a new topic for your other brand/model. Also, please take more photos showing the name plate, base, cylinder arm and top parts. Show a picture of how you have it threaded and measure the length of the needle. Make sure the needle is all the way up in the mounting bracket.

I use JavaScript obfuscation on web pages containing "mailto:" links. But, as email use falls to the wayside with the rise of Facebook Messenger, I find that contact forms are better for allowing people to get in touch without revealing my email address. The downside to replying to them is that some of these folks have mail harvesters (spyware) on their computers and don't know it.

Backing off the top tensions and pressures is the key here. What's missing is metal behind the inside foot (the harness outer feet are open behind the inner foot). That is as good as it gets for a two footed machine. Maybe somebody with a machine shop can come up with an outside 441 presser foot with solid steel inline with the needlebar and the same narrow profile as the ones shipping with the machines. The different feed in reverse is a penalty. But, none of the needle and awl machines have reverse.

This reminds me about the differences between modern lockstitch sewing machines and old fashioned needle and awl harness stitchers of yesteryear. The goal of sewing is sometimes just a straight top stitch line with well buried knots to keep the materials from falling apart. Other times the stitching becomes part of the design and the bottom stitches must resemble the top ones, which are sometimes slanted, not straight. This is a problem for most modern sewing machines. Those are times when independent craftsmen (and women) can charge extra for hand sewing for a perfect top and bottom appearance. By properly angling the stabbing awl, one can hand sew slanted stitch lines that match on the top and bottom. Back in the late 1880s through early 1900s, a few harness machinery builders came up with some ingenious sewing machine designs that were able to closely approximate the visual appearance of hand saddle stitched leather goods (mostly on harness and tack). They created "needle and awl machines." This isn't the place to go into great depth about this type of sewing machinery. Perhaps someone will be interested in starting a new thread about them. Suffice it to say that the machines that are still available and have parts made tend to cost double or triple what one would pay for a brand new "441" clone. Learning curves can be strenuous and there is lots of room for error and serious injuries with some of these machines (I know). If one wants a close to perfect top and bottom stitch, one can either locate and finance a working or rebuilt condition needle and awl machine (with very expensive needles, awls, bobbins and accessories), or hunt down an elusive Number 9 or Luberto Classic, or a Ferdinand Bull jump foot, needle feed machine. These machines have one thing in common: no feed dog, a jumping foot and either needle or awl feeding of the leather. Lacking an inside alternating foot (standard on walking foot machines), they don't suffer from the obvious oval or round depressions surrounding the needle holes on the bottom stitch line. I have been able to come close to this appearance on my Cowboy CB4500 by removing the feed dog and swapping out the standard throat plate for one with a long narrow slot, a little wider than a #27 needle. Others have had custom plates milled out with even narrower slots, more suited to a #25 needle. By operating with the lowest spring pressure needed to hold the leather down, this minimizes the puckering on the bottom of the needle holes. Not as nice as a Union Lockstitch, Campbell Lockstitch, or Landis 3, but nice enough to please most buyers of the sewn goods. IHTH

If the check spring throw is too long the top thread will be taut going around the bobbin case. The solution is to shorten the throw by means of the sliding bottom stop bracket, or the curved slot if your machine has that type of spring adjuster. Experiment! The check spring only needs to hold the top thread taut until the needle has fully penetrated the material.

According to the manual, the recommended needles are system 128x3 (round point) and 128x4 (leather point) in sizes 11, 12 and 13. Those sizes are best suited to #33 or #44 bonded nylon thread. The shanks are only 34mm long, which is similar to the needles used in 31-15 tailoring machines. I suspect that the maximum thickness the roller wheel can hold down without puckering would be about 3/16 to possibly 1/4 inch of medium temper chrome tanned shoe leather. I didn't see any mention of stitch length in that manual. Again, post machines built for the shoe trade in those days typically sewed at anywhere from 16 to 32 stitches per inch. Cowboy boots are a good example of this type of short stitch with very thin thread.

And National

Here is a link to Google search results for "obfuscate your email address." There are plenty of suggestions and even an online tool to do the work for you. Obfuscate means to obscure (verb) something; to conceal a meaning from plain sight.

Here is a link to Google search results for "obfuscate your email address." There are plenty of suggestions and even an online tool to do the work for you. Obfuscate means to obscure (verb) something; to conceal a meaning from plain sight.

We have lots of guests posting requests for assistance with their leather work and projects. Many of the responders will be full members of Leatherworker.net. As such, they are accustomed to making use of our private messages (PM) system and also are able to access the email addresses of other members. But Guests do NOT have access to either, nor can you look up the profiles of our members. Therefore, if you are posting a new topic or simply replying to another person's topic and are not a member of Leatherworker.net, make sure you include your contact information. The most common ways of doing this are by listing a phone number, an email address, or a link to your publicly viewable website or blog where you have a contact form, or email link. As for posting email addresses, please take time to read my sticky topic that is pinned to the top of this forum, dealing with altering your email address to avoid having it harvested by spam bots. If you don't have time to read the topic, it boils down to obfuscating your email address so it is broken up into space separated groups and certain symbols (period, dash, underscore, @) are replaced with words. If you posted a topic or request for assistance, without listing contact info and don't get any replies, check back and see if a member has invited you to reply via the PM or email system. Post a reply to him or her and include your contact details. Members; if you are replying to Guest posters and want to offer assistance, either use their posted contact info or show your own in your replies. Make sure you obfuscate your email address before posting it, to avoid spam bots that harvest plain text email addresses from web pages.

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).