Wizcrafts

I have a Union Lockstitch harness stitcher that can sew much bigger thread than #277, into 3/4" of anything under the foot. It is a needle and awl machine. PM me if interested in more details. It is located in mid-Michigan, for pickup only.

Short, tight stitches can be caused by too much top or bottom tension, or both. Also, since your machine has a flat, static foot, too much pressure on it will drag leather and vinyl and reduce the maximum stitch length.

Have you tried moving the stitch regulator knob to the longest stitch setting? If so, and it is too short, remove the stitch regulator knob and manually set its control cam to the longest possible position. The feed dog will only move so far, so you will have to max the setting with the adjuster knob off.

No. You can fit 1/4" under the pressor foot, but it is doubtful you will be able to stitch that much leather, unless it is soft leather. Also, you are limited to using #69 nylon thread and a #18 needle. This is fine for leather garments, or latigo, but not belts, holsters, or harness. Most leather goods 1/4" thick are sewn with #138 bonded nylon thread, top and bottom. A 99K is not equipped to handle #138 thread, or the #22 needle it requires. Furthermore, the 99K is a flat foot, drop feed machine. If you try to sew 1/4" of medium temper leather you will have to increase the pressure spring on the pressor foot, possibly all the way down. This increases the drag on the top grain and will cause the stitch length to vary all over the place and the layers will move out of alignment, from top drag. If you don't increase the foot pressure, the needle may lift the leather as it begins its ascent. This causes the top thread to not form a loop under the cover plate. Without a loop, no top thread is picked up and pulled around the bobbin, leading to skipped stitches. If you must use such a machine, at least fit it with a roller pressor foot.

Since you intend to use this machine to sew upholstery projects you will probably need to purchase a special roller foot equipped with steel rollers. Or buy a flip down roller foot conversion set. Most dealers have these items, or you can find them on eBay. The standard foot may not feed properly, depending on the softness or stickiness of the top grain of the material (leather and vinyl) and length of the project being sewn. Normally, vinyl and garment/upholstery leather are sewn on a compound feed walking foot machine, also known as triple feed. Your machine is single, bottom feed and is designed to sew cloth and denim. Here is your to do checklist: get proper system DBx1 (a.k.a. 1738) industrial needles, in sizes 16, 18, 20 and 22 (regular and leather point), in packs of ten if you now have a clutch motor, get a speed reducer, or a 2" motor pulley (will need a longer belt), or a replacement 1/2 hp servo motor with a speed limiter knob (Toledo Industrial Sewing Machines and other dealers) get a roller foot pressor foot, or roller foot conversion kit (see ) get #69 and #138 bonded nylon thread, in the colors you want to use, two spools each (1 for top 1 for bobbin). I recommend getting 1 pound spools for most used colors. get more bobbins and bobbin cases (with anti-backlash springs) get a quart or gallon of industrial sewing machine oil watch all of the industrial sewing videos you can find on YouTube get the proper long and short screw drivers for the pressor foot, needle clamping screw, cover plate and feed dog screws.

Here is showing how to thread an industrial machine similar to yours. Note, that if you intend to sew upholstery material, whether leather, leatherette, cloth, or vinyl, you will probably need at least #69 bonded nylon thread, in a # 18 needle. For a better appearance, try #138 nylon thread with a #22 needle.Get a speed reducer, or a servo motor with a smaller pulley, so you don't burn up the thread when sewing leather and vinyl. And, keep the machine oiled!

The Juki is an industrial machine, which uses series DBx1 industrial needles, not home style needles. The machine is a very high speed straight stitch machine, designed for sewing denim garments.

You left out the numbers after the dash, which are important for knowing what feed type it is. Roughly speaking, a 5/10 Singer 111 is worth about $250 to $300. A mint condition model might go for $400. Some of the Singer 111 series are straight needle/flat foot and some are walking foot machines. If it is a walking foot machine it should be able to sew upholstery, jeans and medium temper leather, up to 5/16", or maybe even 3/8" (slowed way down and thread run through a silicon lube pot). It uses the common 135x16 leather point and 135x17 standard point needle system, which are available in sizes 14 to 25. The 111 machines will sew up to #138 thread, top and bobbin, but the sweet spot is using #69 nylon. To sew belt leather, or skirting, the machine needs a speed reducer and a 1/2 horsepower (1725 rpm) clutch or servo motor. These machines need to be oiled frequently. They were used in the Korean War to sew parachutes.

Geoff; Check the screws on the gears driving the bobbin shuttle. If there are any that are finger loose, tighten them as much as possible. Make sure that the sliding shafts with gear teeth are not causing the bumps. They should be held in place by the bottom cover plate, under the bobbin area of the arm. Make sure that plate is tightly secured. Also, follow the moving parts under the machine and see if there is any binding at the coupling points. Maybe one gear or connecting rod has become loose??? Check the way the bobbin is inserted into its case. It should feed against the rotation, with the thread feeding through the slot, under the little spring, through the tiny thread hole, up through the hole in the cover plate. If you can track down the cause of the bumps and fix that item, all should return to normal.

If you use a zig zag machine to sew leather that is hard, it may cause the needle to deflect sideways, even when you want to sew straight. That is my experience.

Here is a description of what that Singer industrial sewing machine is designed to sew: "Suitable for stitching such products as blouses, shirts, men's, ladies and children's apparel, uniforms, overalls, lingerie, etc." It will handle thread up to #69 bonded nylon, which has an 11 pound breaking point. It is a tailors' machine, with a small pulley on the flywheel, enabling it to sew at very high speed. The springs that create top tension on the pressor foot and thread are set to garment material strength. You will have wasted you money if you buy this type of machine to sew leather. It simply will not sew 3/8" of veg-tan, especially hardened leather. What you need to sew armor is at a minimum a heavy duty leather stitcher designed from the ground up for slow speed, big needle, large thread size stitching up to 7/16". The Cowboy 2500 is such a machine and is available at a very reasonable price from Bob Kovar, at Toledo Industrial Sewing Machines. His phone number is 866-362-7397. Call him and see what kind of deal he can offer you, or what alternate machines he has in stock, new or used, that will sew 3/8" hard leather, with #277 nylon thread and a #200/25 needle. Be prepared to spend around a thousand dollars for a CB 2500, or similar machine, based on the old Singer 45 class machines. Here is a scan of the product sheet he sent to me for the CB 2500.

I always wanted a Randall stitcher, but had to settle for a Union Lockstitch Machine. It was neat seeing the photo of the old Cyclone Machine. I wonder how many spi it can handle?

BVM; There are special cording/welting feet available for just about every type of sewing machine. They come in various sizes, to place the stitch right next to the right edge of a covered cord. Just figure out which diameter you need for a cord covered with the leather your want to use and order it online. Bob Kovar stocks a good selection of welting feet, at Toledo Industrial Sewing Machines. I have welting/cording feet for my household and walking foot machines. The walking foot and straight stitch industrial machines have a wide range of sizes available, from 1/8" to over 1/2" diameter covered cords.

Good point! There are indeed American made leather sewing machines, still in production, or available as rebuilds. Actually, these should be referred to as "leather stitchers" not sewing machines. They are specially designed to stitch together very thick leather, with very heavy thread. These American made stitchers include: Luberto Classic (similar to the old Number 9) Luberto Cub Tippmann Boss Union Lockstitch Campbell-Randall Pilgrim Landis Ferdinand Bull, et al (I don't know if they are built in the USA) This is not all of them, as you can still get rebuilt Champion, Tippmann Aerostitch and American Straight Needle machines from various rebuilders.

That machine looks like it will handle the materials you intend to sew. You should test the machine first and see if you are able to control it at slow speeds for sewing belt leather. You can also contact Techsew (Raphael Sewing) in Montreal and see what they have to offer. They have several types of leather and upholstery sewing machines, including some super heavy duty machines. The company advertises here and has a good reputation. You won't have to worry about Customs. Their toll free phone number, in Canada, is: 866-415-8223

I'm glad you are open to our opinions, which are very strong on this forum. Most of the pros here have worked their way up through many sewing machines to get to where we are today. While we cannot decide what you should do with your own money we can offer learned advice. My advice is to go with a Cobra, Cowboy, or Artisan long arm 441 clone. I personally think that the best choice would be between the first two, as I know the dealers personally and have spoken to both about their machines. You will definitely get more than your money's worth from our member dealers. They are available personally to answer any questions you have and to fix any mechanical problems that may arise. The Cobra and Cowboy line of machines are custom built to leather-sewing specifications for the US dealers who promote them. Additions are made when they are unpacked, then they are adjusted, mated to a motor/table and sewn off. There is a big difference between a stock 441 type machine and a specially setup leather stitcher. Our dealers install special leather and harness stitching pressor feet, guides and throat plates, plus they make proper adjustments to the clearances inside the machine. A leather sewing machine has to endure a tremendous amount of pounding, as huge needles and thread penetrate 3/4" of often hard leather. I hope this helps.

Off Topic Security Warning! I noticed that several of our members have posted their email addresses in replies on this topic and others. You good folks need to know that spammers send out robot programs whose sole purpose is to scour web pages for email addresses. Every email address that is recognized by these bots is harvested and sent home to a spam database. Your freely posted email accounts will then be spammed. Your harvested email addresses will not just be used to send you spam, but will also be forged in the "From" and "Reply to" fields of spam sent to others. This means you will get bounces or be accused of spamming by recipients unfamiliar with how spammers conduct their campaigns. How to avoid having email addresses harvested You can prevent most email harvester bots from acquiring your posted email addresses by obfuscating them. This means that you need to use spaces, extra words to be removed, substitute the word AT for the @ symbol and use the word DOT instead of a period in your address. The more obfuscated the address is the less likely it is to get harvested. Example: yourname at yourISP dot com (Remove the spaces and convert the AT and DOT) This does make a little more work for people who want to email something legitimate to you, but it may keep a previously un-spammed account from getting into a spam database through a forum posting. For better security you should only list your email account in your profile and tell other members to use the link in the forum posts or your profile to send you email or private messages. Only members have access to this feature. This adds to the work that a spammer must do to reach you and most don't have the time to do so, or even read English as their native language. Another mistake that can cause your email address and those of your friends to be harvested is to send a group mailing using the C.C. field for the recipients. If just one recipient has a malware infection that includes an email harvester, every name in the CC list will be harvested. Instead of CC, use the BCC field. The recipients will only see their own name and the words Unspecified Recipients in the TO field. This is much safer than exposing your entire group of friends to spambots. I have been involved in the anti-spam community for a decade and I see these mistakes frequently. The results are always the same.

You're welcome Hipshot! Let us know what you find after you disassemble the head and pressor foot drive assembly. Once you build up all clearances to factory specs the machine will do a fine job on most projects under 1/4" thick. Just remember, the machine was made to sew boots, not belts.

Todd; The feed dog is mounted on a plate with two screws. You can loosen those screws and reposition the feed dog slightly, hopefully until the needle is in the dead center on the downstroke. If the feed dog plate cannot be moved to place the needle in the center (f.b,l,r), try loosening the screws on the fork mounted to the rear axle, that moves the feed dog forward and backward. Reposition it accordingly (f,b,l,r) and lock it down. The height of the feed dog is controlled by a separate fork on the front axle. By moving it up or down you will raise or lower the maximum protrusion. If the rear fork cannot adjust the feed dog to center it, the gears driving the rear axle might be misaligned, toward the bottom rear of the machine.

The brass shims are a temporary fix for a worn out drive puck. It is best to have a welder braze some bronze welding rod onto the puck, then reshape and polish it for the best fit at all normal angles of deflection, as the drive assembly moves up and down. This will add years of regular service to the machine, well beyond the life of a brass shim (brass is a soft metal). I did the task myself with a propane torch, fitted with a "hot" pinpoint nozzle, not the spreader nozzle. Clamp the part in a big vise, apply the flame directly to the worn puck until it turns red, then touch the end of a bronze welding rod to it. Do this to apply an even layer to the puck. Let it cool, then try it for fit. If it is too large begin filing away weld until you get a good, but tight fit. Buff the puck to a high polish with a buffing wheel and compound, until it fits into the ring without slop or binding. Slightly round the side edges to allow it to rotate inside the ring, 360 degrees. This will yield the maximum possible stitch length, for many years, before the bronze wears down. Steel weld would be even better, but is a little trickier to shape and polish.

Carol in Caro; I use a #18 or #19 needle with #69 thread; #20 or 21 with #92 thread and a #22 or #23 needle with #138 thread. I recommend Schmetz leather point needles. Use the smallest size that does the job and places the knots well into the leather. Read the sizing trick article in this forum's sticky topics to choose the best needle for a given size of thread. You should ask Bob Kovar, in Toledo (866-362-7397), about needles for your Adler. Some of them are setup with shims inside the shuttle case, limiting the minimum and maximum needle sizes. He has shims in various sizes if you need to change over. You will want diamond or oval point leather sewing needles.