Matt S

@Kovant if you truly want a variable speed you might need to look at a 3 phase motor/machine and a variable frequency drive (VFD). Those little machines with "variable speed" tend to bog down under any appreciable load because they have a very simple variable speed circuit that just cuts out a proportion of the wave according to the dial setting. Also, in my experience, those small DIY/"light/occasional trade" bench grinders have a short duty cycle meaning you can't operate them under load for long before they overheat. Alternatively some higher-end machines are available which allow selection of a couple of speeds (using pole switching I think), but I don't know if these will give you the needed range or granularity of options. A pair of cone pulleys between motor and wheel will give you a wider range of speeds with the added advantage of higher torque at low speeds but the disadvantage of fiddly speed changes and general bulk. As I'm sure you know, professional shoe makers and repairers use a big finishing machine for this purpose, with wheels and attachments for grinding/sanding a polishing. They are large and expensive however. I believe that they turn relatively slowly, as I was recommended to not turn one of the big horsehair polishing brushes faster than 900RPM and they tend to share an axle with the sanding wheels. Depending on your budget and space, maybe consider a good quality belt sander with variable speed. The 2x72" types that knife makers use look great. Or, for a cheap option not used very often, stick a sanding drum in a basic bench/pillar drill with variable speed. Prolonged radial force will wear out the bearings but that'd take a while to do. Plus the drill has many other uses. There is no particularly ideal RPM for leather. Machinists talk about "surface speeds" (how fast the cutting edge of their tooling moves) which I think is more useful, and use the spindle speed to calculate it. If you have a 2" sanding wheel and a 8" sanding wheel on a 3,000RPM motor the sandpaper on the 2" one will be doing 1,572 feet per minute and the 8" one 6,288FPM. With equal pressure applied the 8" wheel will remove material faster than the 2" one but will be hotter and more likely to burn. Within a certain window it's possible to adjust your pressure to not burn the leather on whatever speed sander you have. I have one of those ubiquitous little 1x30" belt sanders which can either burn leather in seconds or be make a beautiful clean edge depending how heavy handed I am that day.

There's a comprehensive UK-oriented resource list on the Leatherworkers UK Facebook group.

If it's a rebadged German skiver it may be a Fortuna, the archetypal bell knife skiver. Original parts are available, if pricy.

That's a good point. How long before your edges shag out? I found that adding glue makes the burnish go faster and stay slick for longer in use.

Pretty much! Bullock is from Old English buluca (from bulla + the diminutive suffix -uc -- "little bull"). Can mean either "young bull" or "castrated bull". Usually the latter in the modern era. Bollocks is derived from Old English baluc (bal meaning "swell" or "inflate" as in "ball" or "bellows" and same diminutive suffix -- literally "little swellings"). That's far too similar for me to think that it's entirely coincidental, especially considering my ancestors' love of a good pun and their earthy sense of humour. There's also "ox", of similar Saxon antiquity, which is a (usually castrated) bull trained for draught work. We haven't done that here for a long time, yet J & FJ Baker specifies that they select "ox hides" . Having been there, got the tour and nearly fallen in the liming pit the fresh hides I saw were mostly from black-n-whites and somewhere around 40-50SQFT. That can't be a young calf (calfhides I buy are around 20SQFT). The colouring implies either Holsteins or Fresians which means dairy but they claim to only use oxen so I'd say they use hides from "surplus" dairy bullocks raised to optimum meat value. You sure that's not creosote you're thinking of? Bitumen is the thick stuff they use on roofs and roads, usually either melted or mixed with solvents to make it workable. I can buy a can of bitumen from a DIY shop but creosote has to be bought from agricultural factors... or you just buy it online and claim "yeah sure I'm a farm, honest, please deliver it to my suburban flat" It's the stuff that telegraph poles and railway sleepers are soaked in and makes a lovely whiff on a summer's day. Depending how cooked off it was of those two I would imagine bitumen would be a lot more palatable in a bottle but I'd be bloody thirsty before I chose it. Most people I've spoken to who make blackjacks and costrels today use beeswax or brewer's pitch.

Looks like someone scavenged the feed wheel driver shaft, with its associated worm drive, to supply another machine. Maybe you can track them down and steal them back? The other issues aren't so bad -- the presser feet and guide can be ordered if of the standard design or probably wouldn't be too tricky to make. If the slop in the knife-pulley arrangement is in degrees of rotation (i.e. not slopping left and right or up and down) that's normal -- a result of the coupling which allows the knife to be adjusted left and right. The knife guard can be built too if you really want one -- my skiver is too old for a guard so the previous ownerpanelbeat one from brass. I wonder how close to fitting the "standard" Chinese replacement parts would be? Otherwise again it wouldn't take too much trouble to get a piece of bright shafting of the right size (probably a standard inch size, but if not turn it down on a lathe until it fits) and needs a cross pin at the business end to mate loosely in the slot at the back of the wheel. The gear would be expensive and hard to replace but you could just leave the shaft long hanging out the back of the head driven by a separate motor. Or failing that just replace the feed wheel with something smooth that closely matches the shape of the stone and you may be able to feed the leather manually. If it's for a hobby and you like tinkering it could be a fun project.

I've taken the word "minimal" literally. Possibly too literally... You'll need something for making small round holes for rivets, studs etc. Punches (the sort you hit or the sort you squeeze) are ideal, but with care you can drill these too. You'll also need a substance for burnishing your edges. The usual Tandy answer is "gum tragacanth" but I've never got good results with it. Almost any water-based glue diluted in water works well. Have had good results with gum arabic, woodworkers PVA, and hide/rabbit/pearl glue.

@TonyD1948 Is that leather definitely veg tanned? As a general rule only veg tanned leathers can be edge burnished. For other tannages (e.g. chrome, which looks likely judging by that photo) you have to go with another edge finishing method -- edge paint, fold, bind etc.

Kid as in "young goat"? I don't know where in the world you are but here in Britain most leather suppliers will do at least one type of veg tanned russet goatskin. Usually around 1mm thick. I don't know exactly what properties are required for leather for making a pair of 1880s kidskin evening gloves but goatskin seems to me like a logical place to start.

No problem sir, we all start from somewhere! Ah, in which case the 168W would have a slightly increased accessibility advantage over a 206 than a 207. I've never used a 168W but I'd lay money on it having very similar upper limits to your 206 in terms of max thickness and max thread size. Probably a smidge lower, plus no reverse feed. Unfortunately I'm not sure it'll be up to that. There are heavier post-bed machines but they're not very common. For a holster you'd be looking for what I think of as the "harness" weight class. A Singer 45K, Singer 7, Adler 4/5/104/105/204/205/304/305, Juki 441 (or one of its many clones), that sort of thing. Flat-bed is more common but cylinder-arm tends to be more versatile.

That's a price I would consider acceptable... if I had a use for such a machine. The 168W is a post-bed upholstery-weight machine. Designed for sewing shoe uppers (not soles), hat crowns, bag bottoms that sort of thing. With care (or building a little add-on table) a person could use it for sewing wallets, purses, dress belts etc., but not anything heavy like holsters, knife sheaths or gun/tool belts. Apart from the ability to sew "into" certain hollow shapes I don't know how much utility you'd get out of it beyond what your Consew 207 can do.

Mine is one of the cheapy (~£300) no-name ones. Green steel case. Electrical non-compliance aside it works fine. I've cut 6mm+ flinty dry russet veg with it just fine. Cut miles of thin strips for keeper loops. Used the roller section on hundreds of strap glueups. Trimmed a 4mm thick (10oz) laminated belt blank perfectly clean just yesterday. Could have saved a lot of money in leather and time buying one years ago. Is it possible that you've got the nylon roller too tight? That could cause some binding.

@Vinces0583 try emailing J & FJ Baker. They're a traditional pit tannery in England who are amenable to "special orders" and if it's something that can be done I expect that they can do it. I can't vouch for whether you'll like the price or lead time though! Do you need large panels or specific parts of the hide for your mysterious project? Some parts of a beast's hide are thicker than others and if you can make do with small parts where grain is irrelevant you might be able to find that more readily than entire hides or large cuts. Remember a cow's whole hide is about 50 SQFT once the less useful pieces are trimmed out. That's about a third the size of a single garage for context. The likelihood of getting a whole hide at that thickness is, I reckon, much less than being able to get "bits" at 20oz/8mm.

Makes sense to me. The roller could conceivably be either smooth or textured. If the top of the contraption is open, as it appears, the mass of the thing could be adjustable by adding or removing weight. I've seen machines that operate on a similar principle used at a US tannery but can't remember where. I think the machine pushed the roller back and forth along a fixed area and the hide was manipulated across the bed.

Lovely looking bag Bec! Online, in no particular order, I use J Woods, AA Crack, Le Prevo and Abbey. If you use Facebook look for the Leatherworkers UK group. Lots of resource lists and you will get a lot of UK-based users' experience -- especially useful if you're looking for something specific. Other than "veg tan" (which is a very wide church) and dyed what qualities are you looking for?

To which hand-operated skivers are you referring? The Chinese copies of the Scharffix, which take the razor blades, are junk in my experience. They flex too much (causes lumpy skiving and tear-through), need a fair bit of grip strength to use, and are easy to cut yourself on. A real Scharffix may work better, but I have no experience of those. I don't know what hand issues you have, nor what skives you are doing, but I have a range of skiving knives and a bell skiver and often just skive using a skirt shave. I think it's called a French edger where you live. It's a simple push motion, which might work better for you. One of these: Well that depends on the leather. "Veg tan" covers a huge range. Certainly you can use a bell skiver on some veg tanned leathers. Most you see are for skiving lighter leathers like what you'd make a soft bag or a wallet from, or lining a shoe. In order to skive heavy, stiff leathers the usual bottom-feed-only machines might need the usual stone feed wheel swapped to a steel one with ridges, or you might have to go with the less common and more expensive top-and-bottom-feed design. Good dealers will demonstrate their machines on samples of your material if you provide some.

My strategy with tools is thus. It's partially based on having a small workshop: (1) Unless you luck into a ridiculously good bargain or something usually unobtainable, only buy tools as you need them not as you find them. There's not much sense in having money and space tied up with "just in case" tools that you never use, except for emergency/safety stuff. I'm glad to have that fire extinguisher on the wall and would be happy if I never have to use it, but I don't see it as a waste of money or space. I don't know why I have 3 different sets of loop sewing jaws when none of them fit my sewing clams. (2) If you're confident that a tool will help you, buy they best quality tool you can afford -- a good quality tool will last longer, be repairable/serviceable, will retain more value if you decide to sell it on, will help you work faster/easier/cleaner and will be cheaper in the long run ("cost per use") over a lower quality one. Generally price correlates with quality. A few years ago I needed a 1.5" crew/oblong punch and bought an Ivan (cheap, from Taiwan) for £25. It crumpled on the second hole. I bought a replacement from Osborne (made in USA) at double the price and it's many times the value to me in terms of a clean and consistent cut, reliability, and ease of use. Inflation also means that, were I to sell it tomorrow, I would probably break even on what I paid for it as well as the the value of what I made with it. That Ivan brand steel pretzel now has almost zero value. (3) If you're not sure whether a tool will help you evaluate its utility by borrowing one or buying the cheapest version that will function for your intended use. If it's useful use it until it wears out or holds you back and replace it with the best quality version you can find. (4) Every so often, declutter by putting everything you haven't used in a while into a box. Put that box somewhere a bit inconvenient, so if you suddenly need to use it you can get it. If you haven't used that tool for a while you probably don't use it and can sell it or give it away. Again, this doesn't apply to the fire extinguisher or a tool that you genuinely use for an occasional specific job. (5) At the risk of echoing rule #1: if you're not a collector you don't need every tool. If you're happy making a crew slot with a round punch and a knife, keep doing it!

I used to hand stitch keeper loops, then had clicker dies made up to rivet them. That was faster but found them too fiddly, bulky and small variations in the leather resulted in significant variation in the fit of the loops. Machine stitching is possible with the correct combination of loop that's long and flexible enough to pull to to the side for stitching and a machine with enough access to sew just the bit of loop you want. A holster/stirrup plate and/or a cylinder arm machine which stitches close to the edge of the cylinder. After getting some advice on this forum I started using loop staples and haven't looked back since.

Well done getting it working, but easy on the sodium bicarb. Veg tanned leather is supposed to be mildly acidic (pH around 3-4 IIRC), and if you take it above its as-made pH it'll break down quite quickly. On the rare instance I use vinegaroon type products I just wash the thing out in plain water rather than adding bases. This brings the pH up a little, which is close enough to its "natural" pH that I think it makes little odds.

Ron Edwards, an Australian bushman, horseman and general craftsman who grew up in his family's saddle shop, had this to say when making a nail bag: Heat, sunlight, salt and water (from the environment or the user) significantly affects leather. The effect on veg tannages is especially noticeable. Over time the oils, greases and waxes that are added at the tannery or on the manufacturer's workbench are lost and so the fibres of the leather shrink, get brittle and do not slide smoothly against one another. Some treatments (such as oil) are far quicker to leave than others (such as grease). This is where periodic cleaning and dressing of the leather comes in, which is sometimes called "feeding". Proper maintenance of leather gear has largely gone out of the average population's skillset, at least where I live. I've had to show grown adults how to apply a tin of Kiwi and a pair of brushes to their smart/formal shoes. Or even the concept that they can/should be polished every now and then -- let alone periodic cleaning, inspecting and greasing their belts. Like Ron Edwards I find it worthwhile to take into consideration the skillset/mindset and workload of the user when choosing materials. People likely to be outside in all weathers tend to get recommended chrome tanned goods rather than veg tanned.

Short answer: yes sewing across a strap does weaken it. Real-world experience of low-strain, low-stakes items means that with a little care in the design and manufacture it's not weakened enough to make any difference in the real world. Look at the countless examples of dress belts, wallets, watch straps and cartridge belts that are sewn the "wrong" way and last for decades in daily use. In stitching across a wallet (e.g. for a spring tube money clip) I would be more worried about stitching too tight to the tube so it strains or deforms, or so loose that it might fall out, or about selecting the temper of the leather, or about a dozen other things before worrying if the leather might tear. Long-winded answer: Engineering in the more general sense is sometimes described as "the art of balancing the ideal with the possible". Making a wallet out of a 1" stack of top quality leather would make it robust but undesirably bulky, heavy and inflexible. The other extreme of folding and stapling a couple bits of garment leather would be frail and stretchy. Hitting the middle ground sweet spot between those two extremes, while also hitting other marks like "subjective aesthetics" and "cost control", is the unwritten goal of what we leatherworkers do. Just as hobbyist and artisanal woodworkers may eschew such modern things as particle board, biscuit joints and CNC cutting, so too do hobbyist and artisanal leatherworkers often eschew things like tubular rivets, edge paint, machine sewing and yes even stitching across a strap. There are circumstances where any of these materials and techniques may be inappropriate. One solution (which works well for the hobbyists, artisans or person otherwise wanting to keep things simple) is to reject them all. "Never sew across a strap" is a fairly foolproof and reliable way to eliminate the potential problem of that strap tearing off. "Don't sew across a strap if it's likely to tear within the projected lifetime and use-case of the item" is a far harder rule to follow because it depends upon a lot more bits of knowledge, which may not be available. Experience (direct or indirect, statistical or anecdotal) starts to fill in a few of those knowledge holes and may provide a different answer. Certain trades tend to err in one direction rather than another. Boatbuilders are very unlikely to use biscuit joints on a boat hull because they're likely to fail in a marine environment and somebody die. So too saddlers may choose to never stitch across a strap because if you do that on a girth/cinch it's under a lot of strain and if it fails somebody could die. Build a coffee table using biscuit joints and it's not only far less likely to fail in its expected use, but if it does the worst outcome is some spilled coffee and a stained carpet. A wallet maker is similarly free to be less strict with their selection of materials and techniques -- no wallet is expected to hold a 200lb man on a 1500lb horse in all weathers at 30MPH. The thing with engineering is, when you have unquantified or hugely variable materials and fastenings, it's difficult to calculate for. Leather is a hugely variable material so there's no specific numbers to plug into things like shear force calculations. We rely on common sense, experience and rules of thumb to develop ranges in which those numbers are likely to fall. The more datapoints we have the narrower those ranges can get but it's really all just an opinion and judgement call. That's why leatherwork is and art! ;-)

I'd also throw my vote behind having a cutting die made. If your hand punches don't work, something's going wrong. Have you sharpened them? They're basically knives or wood chisels, but wrapped into a ring. They don't come sharp and need maintenance. If the plugs aren't ejecting try to see where they're hanging up -- maybe rough tooling marks or a sharp shoulder at the top of the bore where the plug changes direction to come out the ejection port. Smooth any roughness with a fine needle file, a rotary burr or some emery string or something. Remember that small punches are tricky to make cos they're so tight inside. I'd expect a 2mm punch to be used on a watch strap not a dog collar. The buckles I use for my 1/2" dog collars use a 4mm punch. As a more general note I think that beeswax isn't a great tool lube for leather -- it's far too hard and sticky. I prefer glycerine or saddle soap, or if the leather is very hard, thick or grabby plain old dubbin/grease. Dip it every now and then soo as it gets grabby again. Oh and on drilling leather yeah it's not a great practice but it can work. I like it for when I've painted myself into a corner and have to make a high-aspect hole (narrow hole in a thick stack of leather). I've found better success with brad-point ("lip-and-spur") drills than twist drills, since the former score the fibres around the circumference of the hole for a neater cut. Back each hole up with a piece of scrap wood to avoid blowout and move it along when it gets torn up. Spinning a punch, even a mediocre one, in a drill may be a better solution, so long as your drill runs slow enough and your punch runs true in the chuck. That's how they drill paper AIUI.

Weird, cos the article linked in your signature (on a particular manufacturer's website, promoting the capabilities of their machines) appears to be written by "An Lee", rather than "Zach". If you're anything more than a poorly disguised shill for a Chinese manufacturer of laser cutters perhaps you could provide an an article you are proud of enough to put your own name on? Or show your own work? Otherwise, I declare "cobblers awls".

Hi @ClassicCrafter, is that US-based thing non-negotiable?