Wizcrafts

The SPI rating is the maximum. It is not a fixed value on walking foot machines You should get a machine with a dial stitch length adjuster, if possible. The clicks between stops make duplication of results possible. Floating vertical levers are not nearly so accurate if you change the position often. You'll want a machine with a press down reverse lever. As for stitch lengths, the smallest stitches would go into hems on jeans or dress pants and would be between 8 and 10 to the inch. Soft leather needs about 6 or 7 to the inch to avoid puckering the bottom. Medium density leather looks nice at 5 to the inch. Harder or thicker stacks of leather and light webbing can take 4 to the inch. Tow ropes should be sewn at 3 to the inch, or longer, if the machine will do that length. All this pertains to walking foot machines, not straight stitch. The feed dynamic is totally different. If most of your sewing will be with the same one or two colors in the bobbin, seek a large bobbin machine. Most of the large bobbin non-Juki machines use a size called M style, which holds about 1.5x the amount of a standard bobbin. Juki's large bobbin is known as an LU style that is double capacity to the standard industrial bobbins. The aforementioned bobbins relate to commonly available, upholstery grade, compound feed walking foot machines, like the Consew, Chandler, Juki, Cowboy, Cobra, Highlead, Techsew, etc, etc. There are other brands that have their own large bobbin specs. Also, the big leather stitchers do not use these bobbins.

Most edge binder attachments are meant to fold cloth tape over about 1/16" of material. The so called bias tape is sold on huge reels that are meant to be mounted onto turntable supports on the right end of the table. Some are even mounted vertically. The cloth tape is very slick and flows smoothly through the body and mouth of the binder. Leather tape, if sticky, would probably grab along the way and muck things up. I suspect that you would have better luck sewing thin, non-sticky vinyl tape, or just heavy duty cloth tape over the edges (using a double fold binder). The actual attachment should be a complete conversion kit. It should include a special set of presser feet (left toe presser foot, wide inner foot, with a pebbled surface on the bottom), a special throat plate, matching inline feed dogs and a movable mounting bracket to attach the binder to the machine. Setting the right distance and angle of the mouth of the binder to the needle, in two planes, is important for best results.

Here is how I would sew two layers of 5-6 oz leather that tends to bend down on the edges. Swap the double toe foot for the single left toe foot. Install a #23 (160) leather point needle. Back off the presser foot pressure spring. Rethread with #138 bonded nylon thread, top and bottom. Reduce the tensions in the bobbin and on top, to balance the knots under less overall tension. Set my edge guide to the exact distance that places the needle where it needs to be, keeping in mind that with reduced upper tension, there is less left deflection. Push the leather against the edge guide wheel as I sew. Set the stitch length to no longer than 6 to the inch. If this didn't solve the problem, I would then remove the standard throat plate and the feed dog and install the flat slotted plate instead. This usually does it for me on soft leather or textiles.

Dikman; The thread tensioner unit from the Singer 201 is setup for domestic cotton or polyester thread. The spring is probably very light duty. When you crank it down hard to try to tensions bonded thread in leather, you are compressing the coils too far, causing a disruption in the Force. There is no give at all if the coils are all the way in. Further, there is no room for the thread release to push the disks apart. You should try to find an industrial tensioner unit with a stronger coil spring. Also, make sure the check spring has enough travel and tension. It was probably setup for light duty thread.

Add some travel to the check spring.

Not only do they have carbon brushes, they also come with a spare cork brake. It is a little tricky to adjust it and some people remove their brake entirely. If you do that you'll have to use your right hand as a brake. There is some variance between these motors. My buddy with a Cobra Clas 4 had me install a FS-550 on his machine. Without any tweaking he has 1/2 inch of totally free motion between the brake letting go and the motor powering on. I can't seem to get anywhere near that much on mine (sigh).

I have two FS-550S motors, both equipped with a non-standard 50mm pulley and multi-position speed limiter switches.. One is on a long body Singer walking foot machine, direct to the flywheel. The other is on a Cowboy CB4500, feeding a 3:1 speed reducer. The Singer can be operated (sewing belt leather) at a steady pace of about 1.5 stitches per second, with the switch in the slowest position. Moving the limiter up adds more top end and makes it a tad harder to sew at the slowest speed. I can set it to full speed and still feather it down to about 2 per second, depending on how much coffee I have had. With the pedal down, at top speed, the walking foot machine flies along at about 20 stitches per second. The Cowboy can run at just under one stitch per second with the pedal all the way down. I use this setting to sew fishtails onto belts. Backing off the pedal, I can carry on a conversation and watch the needle move. I recon that it is moving at about 1 stitch every 9 seconds. With the switch set to full speed and the pedal down, the Cowboy sews at about 5 per second. Colt; For some reason, your link goes to my videos page, where three I uploaded are listed. Maybe it is logged in user thang..

Yeah, that's the old style I used to have. I finally replaced it with the Family Sew FS-550s, from Toledo Industrial. It has a rotary switch to limit the speeds. Newer models have a pot instead of a switch. There is a whole topic about mods others have made to these motors and yours. Did you know that Cobra Steve makes variable density attachments for push button control servo motors?

Tom; You must be using one of the old style push button servo motors.

This machine is a shoe and boot upper patcher, plus a patch installer for motorcycle vests and fixing purse straps and tabs. They use light thread and can only sew into between 1/4 to maybe 5/16" of leather. You can totally forget about making sheathes and holsters with it.

This is a light duty, roller foot, post machine. It is meant for sewing shoe and boot uppers, ball caps, Cowboy hats, moccasins and other thin, light weight leather items. The maximum thread size is #69, using a #18 needle. It can also sew in zippers and patches on vests. The stitch length is changed by turning the knob in the center of the flywheel. Turning it clockwise shortens, while turning it c.c.w. lengthens the stitches. The normal range of adjustment is from about 20 stitches per inch, down to about 5 or 6 per inch.

I have a roller foot conversion set for my Singer 31-15 straight stitch machine. It consists of replacing the feed dog, throat plate and presser foot. Once set, you can place the bottom-right edge of the (angled) wheel directly to the left of the needle's point of entry. You get a direct view of where the needle is going to enter the work. Caveats: You'll probably need to screw down the top pressure spring more than is needed for a flat foot with the same work. The angle of the roller sometimes needs to be adjusted for different thicknesses (the roller is beveled). The bottom of the face plate may interfere with the lifted position of the roller and could require you to raise it a bit for the foot to lift completely out of the way.. Thread tensions may need to be loosened a bit on both the top and bottom. There are different diameters of roller feet. Issue #3 won't apply to a factory built roller foot machine.

Bear in mind that the new model has an oil pump. You have to sew fast to distribute oil to all moving parts in the top end. If you don't anticipate sewing at 30 or 40 stitches per second most of the time, go for a Consew 206RB-5. It is manually oiled and uses gravity feed. Sew as slow or fast as you want. Just make sure it has an oil drip pan under the head.

I would set my sights on a new walking foot machine with reverse. The Consew P1206RB is a brand new model and has a built in oil pump. It need to run fast, often. There are no reviews I've seen yet. It has similar specs to the 206RB-5 and may be an upgrade, or a replacement. Ask a Consew dealer for more details. The Consew 206RB-5 is well established and is manually oiled, which is better if most of your sewing will be a very slow speeds. Both Consews use a large M bobbin that plugs in under the machine, on the left side. They will sew up to 3/8 inch, at 4 to the inch, with at least #138 thread. They use the same type 111 feet that are used on most compound feed walking foot machine. If you must buy used, try out the machine first. If it can't sew 1/4 inch of webbing, pass on it. Stick to compound feed if possible. If you can't find one, look for at least a dual feed (top and bottom, with teeth) walking foot machine. It will mark leather badly, but is great for cloth, vinyl and webbing.

I thought those machines used system 135x16 and 135x17 needles. They are longer than domestic needles and come in much larger sizes (up to #25). Larger needles will poke bigger holes. As for sewing with it, get yourself some T70 (a.k.a. b69) bonded nylon thread and #18 needles. That is the basic starting point for most patchers. If you are just going to punch holes with it, the round point needles will make a round hole, as opposed to a slit made by chisel point leather needles.

The needle/thread combination is fine. The machine f-d up. When this happens to me I use the tip of a fine point marker to dot out the knot.

You will have to ask the company what thread they are using, as they are based in Italy. It could be bonded nylon, bonded polyester, polycore, Serifil, Anafil, whatever. What it is probably not is linen thread, which is either used in hand sewing or needle and awl machines, like the Campbell Randall, or Puritan machines.

I use a Cowboy CB4500 and one of my best friends has a Cobra Class 4. These are the 16.5" arm models. They can handle #415 thread, but I've never tried it. I typically use #277 and my buddy uses #207 in his. Have you contacted Ronny at Techsew yet. He can answer all your questions about his machines.

You are probably not going to be successful running waxed linen thread through any closed eye sewing machine. It will clog everything along the path and gum up the eye, nullifying the formation of the loop the hook must pick off. You will need to have a fairly thick stack of leather (~18 - 20 ozs) to bury the lockstitch knots formed by #415 bonded thread.

Are you sure about that? Have you read the tag on the motor? Most sewing machine clutch motors max out at 3/4 h.p. That 2 could be half of 1/2 h.p, which is a common rating for walking foot machine motors. A machine can be slowed down by installing a very small pulley on the motor. I used to put 2" pulleys on all my clutch motors and was easily able to feather them to 1 stitch per second. The typical machine pulley I have had is between 4 and 4.5 inches diameter across the top. So, a 2" motor pulley would cut the top speed at least in half and double the punching power.

The red machine looks like it might be an old Number 9 machine.

In fact, you can keep the clutch motor and add a 3 pulley speed reducer. The ones sold in the USA have up to 3:1 speed reduction, which means triple the torque at all speeds. If you use the middle pulley to drive the machine, you will get 2:1 reduction and torque multiplication. This may be all the change you need. No fussing with a new motor. You will need 2 or 3 new v-belts though: 1) motor to large pulley; 2) large pulley to machine; 3) optional medium pulley to machine (2:1). The reducers have a mounting frame that fastens under the table, right next to the slot for the belt. They can be adjusted laterally and vertically. The untold advantage of the clutch motors is that they can be adjusted to freewheel a considerable distance on the operator's foot. Some servo motors are freewheeling and others are not.

If that old machine is mounted on an old wooden top table and there are four motor mounting bolts, it is probably the very old style continuous run motor with an external clutch. That setup was replaced with internal clutch motors decades ago and they use three bolts rather than four. One can either learn to feather the clutch, or replace it with a servo motor. Some folks can and some can't. The servo motors have three mounting brackets, just like the internal clutch motors. If the machine you are looking at has the three hole motor mounts, the change is plug and play. Remove all the old wiring, pull off the old motor and install the new one and its wiring. The Family Sew motor you mentioned, from Toledo Industrial, has all new mounting hardware and wiring and a switch box. FS-550 motors normally ship with 70mm pulleys. The ones Bob Kovar sells to leather crafters are usually modified with a 50mm (2") pulley. This adds torque at a slight loss of top speed. I have this motor on an old Singer 139 long body walking foot machine, which is like a long wheelbase 111. It can easily be controlled down to about 1.5 stitches per second. Flat out it blasts away at about 20 per second. The speed changes smoothly over the entire range of motion on the motor's control arm. The previous generation of servo motors were not always as smooth transitioning from slow to fast. You can get larger wheels/pulley for the Singer 111 machines. You'd have to measure the one on the machine and call a dealer with those specs. They'll need the diameter across the top of the belt pulley and the bore of the mounting hole. You can use simple math to figure out what top speed you will get by the ratio of the motor to machine pulleys. A new v-belt will be needed. Some folks go as far as buying a 3:1 speed reducer that bolts under the table. This slows the machine way down and triples the torque/punching power. It will be faster than hand sewing, but real slow on long straight straps or upholstery seams.

Glad to have finally been able to help.

These Google search results should help you choose a compensating presser foot. Most of the industrial sewing machine dealers who advertise here also sell these presser feet, along with all other sewing accessories. Please try to support our dealers.