Wizcrafts

There is another way I use to lock in the stitches when I can't sew over or do Poor Man's Reverse. Sew two or three stitches, raise the needle after the thread goes around the hook on the take-up cycle, lift the feet and pull the work back two/three stitches distance, then drop the feet and sew through those stitches again. You can even go back and forth over one stitch a couple times using this technique, but I recommend at least two stitches. Use the same technique at the end of the stitch line. Raise, pull back a few, then sew over to the end.

You're welcome Tom! I just bought a Singer 211G156, which is similar to yours but has reverse. Mine has a clutch motor which works like a charm. Its first job was sewing a flag patch onto a biker's padded denim riding vest. The next job is sewing a new 4 x 7 foot white heavy canvas face onto a customer's pup tent to replace the torn original. One suggestion I have for you is to buy different needles for canvas/cloth/webbing and leather. Leather sewing is best done with either a chisel/slicing point or a tri/diamond point needle while the rest is best done with round point (cloth) needles. Leather point needles tend to damage the fibers in cloth and vinyl materials. The needle "systems" are 135x16 for leather and 135x17 for cloth and vinyl. Sail cloth and Sunbrella should be sewn with round point needles. Suggestion 2: Buy bonded polyester thread for outdoor projects that will be exposed to UV, water and rough elements. Nylon thread will be damaged by the sun's rays and temperature swings. It will become brittle and break much sooner than polyester thread. I just got some 1 pound spools of bonded polyester thread from Toledo Industrial Sewing Machines for use on canvas and leather jobs meant for outdoor use. This will especially include any motorcycle seat replacements.

I have a box reducer on my Singer 168 post machine. My Techsew 2700 has a 2:1 wheel reducer that came with it. My Cowboy CB4500 has a 3:1 wheel reducer. All of these have Family Sew motors.

If you have the needle plate and countersunk head screws, install it, catching the tab on the bobbin case inside the gap in the throat plate. If you don't have that plate, do not operate the machine under power until you buy a needle plate and the two mounting screws!

Since this topic is about clutch motors, I will chime in. I currently have 3 machines equipped with 1/3 or 1/2 horsepower clutch motors. Two go directly to the machine and one goes through a 2:1 reducer. I have adjusted the action on these motors for a smooth gradual engagement with a fair amount of slack before they engage. There is a trick to keeping the slack and that is to tighten up the spring that pulls the control arm upwards toward the motor. Sometimes that spring is left loose enough that the control arm drops from its own weight (and the attached foot pedal) almost to the point of engaging the clutch on its own. The adjustment is usually done with a wing nut on the right side of the control arm. You may have to secure the left side of the shaft the spring rides on if it rotates with the wing nut. If the clutch is too grabby it can be sanded down or have a little oil or grease smeared on one side, then wiped off. There are small pulleys available to slow down clutch motors. I have a 2" pulley on the way for my newest 1/2 HP, 1720 rpm E-Z Clutch motor that powers a Singer 211G156 that I just bought from a boat upholstery shop. With the existing 3.5" pulley I can easily feather it down about 2 stitches per second. With the 2" pulley I should be able to do 1 stitch per second, steady, when needed. Disclosure: I have been sewing with clutch motors since the early 1960s. My Father had a tailor shop and he taught me to sew on his Singer 31-15 when I was in my very early teens. When I got into leather work, in 1984, and began acquiring sewing machines, they all had clutch motors which I adjusted to suit my preferred foot action. I didn't even see a servo motor until 2010.

I have a Techsew 2700 (predecessor of the 2750) that I got used. It is a light duty cylinder arm machine that uses Singer G size bobbins and maxes out with #138 bonded thread. It can sew over a soft 3/8 inch seam, but doesn't like it. I leave it setup with #69 or #92 thread for sewing thin to medium work up to about 1/4 inch. I have a Cowboy CB4500 for knife sheathes and all gun holsters and rifle cases that uses #277 or #346 thread. Both of these cylinder arm machines have table attachments that I use when necessary, but not otherwise. I have a flatbed machine in my shop for sit down sewing of flat things, like vests, jackets, phone cases, guitar straps, etc. It uses thread sizes 69 through 138. While there are some heavy duty cylinder arm machines currently available that advertise they can sew 1/2 inch of leather, it will probably not be 1/2 inch stack of hard (wetted, shaped, glued, dried and dyed) veg-tan leather sewn with heavy (#277 or #346, top and bottom) thread that can withstand drawing and reholstering a handgun, possibly in a panic draw, or competition situation. However, if the sheathes and holsters you make don't exceed 3 layers of 8 ounce veg-tan, the aforementioned machine might do the job well enough to call it Macaroni.

My first servo motors were brush-less and started with a jerk at either 100 or 200 rpm. To this very day there are still a lot of brush-less servos that do the same as before. On the other hand, all of the brush servos I've had start spinning from zero and increase gradually to whatever maximum speed has been set on its knob (pot or switch).

I believe I bought an open inside foot from Leather Machine Company (Cobra). Check their website for presser feet and accessories. Otherwise, CowboyBob Kovar might be able to supply you with an inside foot that's sliced down the center.

Yes! Just back off the foot pressure screws to the minimum needed to hold down the leather as the needle and thread comes up. This will minimize the poke makes on the bottom that are caused by the inside foot pressing down hard around the needle and into the big slot in the feed dog on the bottom. If your machine has a separate spring adjuster over the inside foot, back it off as far as tolerable, leaving the outside foot to hold down the leather.

I have a friend who has an unwanted Singer 111w116 compound feed walking foot machine. It can only be used with System 135x16 or 135x17 needles up to a #20 and thread up to #92 bonded (but preferably #69). This machine would be perfect for sewing upholstery leather, wallets, canvas, denim and vinyl. Machines like this are fairly rare compared to the heavier duty 111w153 and 155.

My very first industrial sewing machine was a Singer 96k40 tailoring machine. I didn't know it was a tailoring machine. The dealer said it could sew leather. He lied. I bought it to sew a leather vest I was making from a Tandy Leather pattern pack. The machine simply stopped feeding anytime it met a new layer, like the fringes on the upper back. Even when I lifted the foot on top it skipped stitches, then broke the needle. The bottom feed only is unreliable and tends to just slip if the bottom layer is slick, like pasted flesh leather. Fast forward 35 years and there is a Singer 31-15 head on the floor in my shop. The table it came on is now housing a Singer walking foot machine. It easily climbs over seams and sews almost 5/16 inch of medium density leather with up to #138 bonded thread. Walking feet alternate up and down. Compound feed machines also have a moving inside presser foot that moves in sync with the needle and feed dog. This is triple feed and the layers stay aligned and feed reliably compared to bottom feed machines. Read my sticky article at the entry page of this forum about the type of machine you need to sew leather.

This is a servo motor that can run so slowly that you won't need a needle positioner. If the motor alone doesn't spin the machine slow enough, the speed reducer lower down the page will. I have 3 machines equipped with this motor and a speed reducer. They can run so slow it's like watching grass grow. If I increase the speed setting knob to the maximum I can get about 5 or 6 stitches per second. One of my walking foot machines is fed directly from the same motor, which has a 2" pulley. It can easily poke along at about 1.5 or 2 stitches per second with the speed knob turned down low. I can easily stop it on a dime! When I max out the knob it flies at about 15 stitches per second. I hope this helps.

I use double sided Venture tape that is sold by Wawak.com. I believe it is made by 3M and comes in 60 yard rolls, in these widths: 1/4", 1/2", 3/4" and 1". This tape is very aggressive and has good hold on leather. I even use it to secure patches to be sewn over pockets on Biker's vests as well as for securing zippers for sewing.

I have owned two Union Lockstitch machines that both sewed 3/4 inch as built. I learned to tweak them to sew 7/8 of an inch. These are the opposite to a Campbell-Randall lockstitch in that they are needle fed instead of awl fed. Seeing as how the needle is always smaller than the awl, it can flex in thick stacks of leather, dragging back the expected stitch length. However, since the maximum length is a tad over 1/4 inch and most stitches I sewed were 5 to the inch, the loss from needle flex was a non-issue. As for the appearance on top and bottom, it was better than what I get on my CB4500. Nothing beats a needle and awl jump foot machine, possibly with the exception of a needle feed jump foot machine that has no feed dog or center foot. Ferdinand Bull and Luberto Classic/Number 9 machines were in that category.

The one you are interested in is the Adler 30-10. It is a long arm boot patcher with a very small bobbin. I have a related machine: the Adler 30-7 that has a larger bobbin. These machines are for light duty patching and repairing jobs. Most users thread them with #69 or #92 bonded nylon thread. They max out at about 5/16 inch and are not a good machine for sheathes or holsters. Worst of all, they are top feed only and there are deep teeth on the foot. You should consider becoming a member here and reposting your questions in our Leather Sewing Machines forum. If you remain here as a guest, all replies have to await a moderator's approval to be unhidden. You won't have access to our private message system either as a non-member.

You can use Google to search Leatherworker.net for all discussions about a Landis 16. Or, use our own search box for Landis 16 (select "all words")

Do you have the correct needle system and is the rib on the left and scarf over the eye on the right? The shuttle has to pick off the loop on the inside of the needle to form a stitch. Is something causing the loop to dissolve before pickoff time? Look at your check spring motion and make sure it moves up as the take-up arm goes up, holds the thread taut until the needle reaches the feed dog, then lets go as the needle moves down below the surface. There are adjustments for the strength and range of motion of the check spring and they affect the quality of the loop.

Maybe the brakes are slick and need to be cleaned off???

Silence to questions about a particular brand or model is an indication that people on this forum have little or no experience with that machine. I would rather say nothing about something I know nothing about than let you know how little I know about the subject. I can tell you that having a dealer nearby who stands behind any machinery he or she sells is priceless and can offset the unknown. Get some kind of warranty and a promise of assistance when you run into problems.

Make sure the top thread is feeding solidly through the tension assembly and that the tensioner is not releasing until you raise the foot.

Check on the Weaver Leather Master Tools Cub web page. There are some positive reviews from actual buyers.

A few years ago, @Cobra Steve was mailing out variable density light filters that we could insert between the light source and the sensor in the brushless motors everybody was selling. The filters gave very smooth control of the startup speed if properly positioned (and if they stayed put). I don't know if he has any light filters left, but it might be worth inquiring. He owns Leather Machine Company (Cobra), an advertiser here with banners on top of our pages.

You must have a brushless, pushbutton controlled servo motor. Those are horrible for slow speed use. I discarded all of those and replaced them with brush servos that have a knob on the front to limit the speed. These motors start at zero and gradually speed up. The motors I now use come prefitted with a 2" pulley. This lets the typical machine to sew at about 1.5 stitches per second, depending on the diameter of its pulley. When I need even more slow speed control, I add a speed reducer (shown on same page as above linked to motor).

From my personal experience with sewing machines, just because a given needle bar and throat plate/feed dog will clear a #25 needle does not in itself mean that the shuttle or take-up/tensioning system can handle #277 bonded thread. I found that only the largest leather stitchers can actually handle this size thread efficiently and pull its knots well up inside the leather. I also learned that trying to force feed #277 or #346 thread to a machine that wasn't built with this in mind will damage it.

You should be able to open the faceplate and loosen the set screw or screws securing the presser bar to the lifting cranks and lower it until the presser foot makes contact with the throat plate. The best rotational time to do this is when the inside foot has just barely touched the feed dog. That's when the outside foot should still be in contact with the throat plate. Don't forget to re-tighten the set screw after lowering the foot!