Matt S

No worries! I usually take a mayonnaise jar and put a teaspoon of dye powder in the bottom, with exactly one large dollop of PVA glue. Fill most of the way with hot water and stir it well. Once it's cooled a little I put some of the mixture on a piece of leather and rub. If it doesn't shine within a few seconds of vigorous burnishing it needs more glue. If it dries before it shines I add more water. If it doesn't stain dark enough more dye powder. If it doesn't penetrate greasy leather (sits on the surface) it needs a little squirt of fairy. For a neutral or clear burnish skip the dye powder, of course. The mixture is usually noticeably thicker than water, but not a lot thicker. A bit thicker than whole milk, I guess, but thinner than single cream. Burnishing will go much easier for you if you use glue-water than just beeswax, and it won't shag out so quickly with use. In fact (and I don't mean to be rude here) if you think you've been burnishing just rubbing beeswax onto the leather you'll be very pleasantly surprised with the difference! It's handy for slicking slightly shaggy flesh side too. In use I tend to shave the corners off, wet with burnishing compound, allow to soak in a few seconds, wipe off any excess then rub, focussing on a 4" short section at any one time. Your edge will go a little duller before it gets shiny, but persevere and at the stage it starts to grab the tool a little move onto the next section. If you find it's drying faster than you can rub, rewet. Once I've done the whole edge I take a look with light raking across the edge and if it needs another go I redo the above process before it fully dries (PVA is water resistant once it's dry). Then when I'm happy with the edge being smooth and hard I let it well alone to dry for at least a few hours. Then apply beeswax (with heat, a motorised wheel or just elbow grease so it penetrates well) than buff off the excess. Magic. I like PVA because it works well, works fast, is inexpensive, and doesn't go moldy on the shelf nor smell bad. Just given the current batch a sniff and they're fine. Must be at least 6 months old. Most water based glues work well, like I say they have slightly different effects. Wallpaper paste gives a slightly matt, non-shiny finish. Gum arabic is dead shiny but isn't very tough. Hide/rabbit glue gives an easy shine but goes rank in the jar a few days after mixing up and doesn't smell great even when fresh.

Both ways work, depends what you're after -- dissolve in meths for a spirit dye or diluted water-based glue for a colour-and-burnish all in one. Different glues give different effects and work differently on different leathers. If you want a water based edge dye dissolve it in water and a squirt of Fairy liquid to help penetration in greasy leather. I keep jars of burnishing mixture (water, fairy liquid, PVA glue, colour dye and a dedicated applicator) on the shelf, saves making the stuff up each time. Want some to try out? I've got a big jarful of the black stuff, it'll last a lifetime. Can always stick some in the post to you.

Absolutely agree except for one minor point: I believe that the Verdigris corrosion is the salt, formed by the reaction of the copper in the rivet and the leather, which is slightly acidic, under moist conditions. (metal + acid => salt + H2). I'm not sure you'd want to add a basic solution (baking soda + water) as it'll increase the pH of the leather, leading to premature degradation. Veg tanned leather is/should be/"wants" to be slightly acidic -- usually somewhere around a pH of 4 IIRC. The green will be occurring more in the pockets around/under the conchos as those areas will hold water for longer in the event of a downpour or dunking, allowing the reaction to occur for longer. Green stains around hardware indicate copper based (copper, brass or bronze) hardware. Black stains indicate iron (Steel) based hardware -- essentially the same reaction as vinegroon. Not sure if verdigris is harmful to the leather or not. Cleaning might cause more harm than good. It would be good to get some saddlers' opinions on this topic.

I use standard commercial kitchen cutting boards under my hydraulic bearing press (which I use as a clicker press). I buy them online. It's only a little 6 ton machine but it will absolutely bury the knife in the board if you don't pay attention, which not only slows production (have to pull the knife out the board) but also wears the board quickly. When the middle bit of the board wears too much for use I run it through the bandsaw and use the unworn parts either under smaller dies or as handy boards for punching or cutting by hand. I've been known to mill the offcuts into useful little jigs too.

A 111W153 falls into the vast gulf between "old enough to be surpassed by several generations of machine with better capabilities" and "not old/cool/interesting/rare enough to be a collector's machine", nor does it do anything unusual. Local market forces apply but over here you'd be luck to get more than a couple hundred for it. I'm sure it works great, but that machine is built for business and business is brutal. How many serious businesses would rely on a 60-year-old tool if there were just as good quality but far faster, easier to control tools with actual, ready-to-go support, upgrades and safety features available for only a couple thousand $/£/€? By way of comparison I picked up a 212G140 (a newer machine with basically the same capabilities but with two needles) for £113 because I have a specialist operation I want to set it up for with permanent jigs. It wasn't any hidden bargain in a far-off corner of the realm either -- it was on a well known auction site, described correctly and in an area of London with a good mix of well-to-do people and light industry. The seller had offered it to several industrial sewing machine dealers and been turned away.

As well as Abbey another source for UK-made is F. Martin & Son. Good quality and fair pricing. https://www.fmartinandson.co.uk/our-range/

Patchers sacrifice almost everything for the ability to sew in 360 degrees and in very tight spots. They are well suited to repairing or modifying existing items, but not well suited to manufacturing them.

@Simeon54 I think a lot would have to do with the history of the individuals depicted, as we're probably talking about recent immigration to a frontier colony. I appreciate that you might be bound by a NDA but that time period (and the previous seasons of Outlander) would hint at the early Highland Clearances so you might be well advised to look at extant examples and reconstructions of leatherwork from that region, culture and time period and extrapolate those findings through the character's journey, the expected lifespan of any items they may be carrying, and what they may have picked up in the New World to replace or supplement what they brought with them. AFAIK Scotland was never really touched by the strict English guild system, and that had largely fallen out of legal enforceability by the 18th century anyway. Chuck's point that a Scottish cobbler wouldn't know how to make a saddle does stand, but more for technical or experiential reasons rather than gatekeeping (much as a village blacksmith wouldn't know how to make a sword or breastplate). I have a background in archaeology as well as leatherwork and would be happy to discuss things over PM or email if you like. I might be able to dig out some reference books.

Hi Mac, Looks like you've got the right class of needle (DBx1) and size thread (TKT40/V69) for your size of needles (Nm110/S18). If you want to go with a thicker/stronger thread you'll have to increase the size of the needle (usually Nm120 for TKT30 thread or Nm140 for TKT20 thread, though you may have to go up or down a size depending on the results in your leather using your machine), still using class DBx1 needles. Of course that assumes that your machine can take heavier threads. I've looked in the manual and there's not much indication of what size range threads it can handle so you might have to experiment, or find other users of the DB2 B755 for information. Needle and thread sizes are tricky things to get your head around. This chart is pretty handy: https://www.tolindsewmach.com/thread-chart.html In the UK we tend to talk about TKT sizes e.g. TKT40 (which might also be called M40, 40s or even just "size 40") for thread. In the US the V system is used (e.g. V69=TKT40). There's a lot of different thread sizing systems, some only for certain thread materials. These days we tend to use metric needle size designations, since two of the three main needle manufacturers are European. Nm110, for instance, is 1.1mm diameter at the eye of the needle. The old number sizes (e.g. 18) is Singer's sizing system. As to thread strength that's a little difficult to advise about usefully without knowing what you're sewing TKT40 nylon has a breaking strain of around 11lb, for what it's worth, it's stronger than it looks.

Ah fair enough, just thought I'd mention it cos that could be a reason why the timing of the discs is slipping. I run a couple of those Jack servos with needle positioners, and very rarely have an issue once I've got them setup right. The discs will slip just a little bit over time with hard use but by the time it's noticeable it's about time the machine gets a proper service so I do it all at the same time. Well I certainly can't help you there, I leant my bell book and candle to someone and they never came back

Silly question (and I'm sure you've checked already) but is the cup of the sensor completely rigidly fixed to the handwheel? Once before I've had to use one of those extension bosses (original handwheel didn't come equipped for a sensor) and I hadn't sufficiently tightened the big retaining screw. Turns out the extension boss was rotating slightly, throwing the timing of the discs off.

Making for yourself is going to be several orders of magnitude easier than making for others. Shoes and boots are a surprisingly complex business, especially for somewhat technical and safety related purposes like horse riding. I admire someone with ambition. The planning I mention is the order of operations, especially the order of which seams to sew. When sewing an upper together you're essentially taking flat pieces of leather and making an upside down funnel with overlapping and abutting parts. You can't sew every seam in whatever order you like because you either won't be able to reach or you will find you need to sew underneath something that's already been sewn onto something else. Cylinder arm machines look like this: These give better access to sew 3D-shaped objects than flat-bed machines and used to be very common in the trade for closing (sewing parts together) shoe uppers but were largely eclipsed by post bed machines in the first half of the 20th century. To an extent I think that cylinder arm machines still are popular for the job in the far east but haven't done much research into the practice to say for certain. They are more generally useful and more common on the market than a post-bed machine. Patchers, like you discussed initially in this thread, are a subtype of cylinder arm machine that sacrifice almost all other desirable features for a very small arm (for access into tight spaces) and the ability to feed in any direction. After about 150 years of development they still have massive shortcomings, as mentioned upthread. When hand sewing heavier leather (heavier than a welding glove, say) the leather is typically first pierced with an awl, and then sewn with one or two blunt needles. Only the very lightest leathers (e.g. for a dress glove) are sewn solely with a (sharp) needle. As you say, it's quite difficult to pierce leather with a needle. There is a sewing method with a tool called an autoawl which has a sharp, heavy needle mounted inline to a wooden tool handle that integrates these two jobs somewhat but isn't used very often. For sewing soles onto turned-in uppers, you have very few options other than hand sewing of one sort or another. You either hand sew with a £10 hook awl or you buy a finicky £10,000 insole stitcher that weighs 300lb and isn't much use for any other job. Making for yourself is going to be several orders of magnitude easier than making for others. Shoes and boots are a surprisingly complex business, especially for somewhat technical and safety related purposes like horse riding. I admire someone with ambition. The planning I mention is the order of operations, especially the order of which seams to sew. When sewing an upper together you're essentially taking flat pieces of leather and making an upside down funnel with overlapping and abutting parts. You can't sew every seam in whatever order you like because you either won't be able to reach or you will find you need to sew underneath something that's already been sewn onto something else. Cylinder arm machines look like this: These give better access to sew 3D-shaped objects than flat-bed machines and used to be very common in the trade for closing (sewing parts together) shoe uppers but were largely eclipsed by post bed machines in the first half of the 20th century. To an extent I think that cylinder arm machines still are popular for the job in the far east but haven't done much research into the practice to say for certain. They are more generally useful and more common on the market than a post-bed machine. Patchers, like you discussed initially in this thread, are a subtype of cylinder arm machine that sacrifice almost all other desirable features for a very small arm (for access into tight spaces) and the ability to feed in any direction. After about 150 years of development they still have massive shortcomings, as mentioned upthread. When hand sewing heavier leather (heavier than a welding glove, say) the leather is typically first pierced with an awl, and then sewn with one or two blunt needles. Only the very lightest leathers (e.g. for a dress glove) are sewn solely with a (sharp) needle. As you say, it's quite difficult to pierce leather with a needle. There is a sewing method with a tool called an autoawl which has a sharp, heavy needle mounted inline to a wooden tool handle that integrates these two jobs somewhat but isn't used very often. For sewing soles onto turned-in uppers, you have very few options other than hand sewing of one sort or another. You either hand sew with a £10 hook awl or you buy a finicky £10,000 insole stitcher that weighs 300lb and isn't much use for any other job.

If you don't find someone closer to home I'd be interested. Can source the webbing and leather here, and probably the grommets. Can either do labels or hot stamp the logo.

@AriShaster are you wanting to make a pair of shoes (for yourself or a friend), or quantities for sale? If it's the former, Jason Hovater has a very good video class on designing, patterning and making shoes. He works from a lastless system (socks and duct tape), which avoids the difficulty and expense of obtaining a suitable last. His method produces a rather slim sole, which I think is what you're after. (The outsole is cemented to a midsole, which is sewn to the turned in upper.) He mostly looks at hand methods but discusses machine sewing the uppers. In industry this is done on a variety of machines, some quite specialist, but I think that the majority of them can be done one a small cylinder machine with a little planning (as used to be common in the trade) or even a flat-bed if you're willing to do a little hand stitching. Jason hand sews the turn-in upper to the midsole as the appropriate machine (an insole stitcher, often called a Blake or MacKay stitcher) is very expensive, and not much good for much else. You get an awful lot of good information for the price of entry. If you want to produce shoes for sale (especially in quantity or standard sizing), this is a somewhat complex area of the leatherworking business that will require a large investment in time, learning materials, physical materials, and machinery.

I thought that Weaver did a self piercing rivet (w/ appropriate dies for their hand and foot presses) but can't find them on their site now. Maybe worth an email?

Hmm yeah that looks to be an oddball needle class. Did the machine come with an old needle that you might be able to measure? You may be able to figure out an equivalent. Other 44-class machine use a variety of 16- and 31-class needles. Perhaps you could adjust your needle bar height to suit one of these more common needle classes?

It's a ranger, for cutting very tough materials like sole leather. I have tried one and found that it leaves marks on more general purpose leathers.

Many common cylinder arm machines have a larger distance from the end of the cylinder arm cap to the needle than you might desire for this job. You're right, it's not a frequently quoted specification, but one that many leatherworkers would like to know. Often the distance is around 6mm (1/4") or more, especially on walking foot machines. Certain models and subclasses have been built and modified to reduce this but they aren't very common and usually have a short stitch length. I've got around it sewing the bottoms onto cups etc. using a regular cylinder arm machine by making the bottom a little deeper to accommodate but I don't think that that's a great solution. I think that Wiz' suggestion of a patcher is an excellent one.

If it comes to that the price of a new car is a lot to pay for 1000Kg of metal, and what I charge for a belt is a lot for less than 1 SqFt of leather. What you're paying for isn't so much the metal but the skill, knowledge and time that went into the part. If it were me at that price and trouble obtaining the part I would probably scrap the machine (or part it out) and buy another. I know what you're saying, you don't appear to get much for your money and it's a big cost if leather is a hobby for you rather than a business. Might be worth trying to get someone to TIG or braze it back together since you're lucky enough to have both parts. You may be able to find a better price (and a dealer that actually has the part in stock) elsewhere. What you have now is the part number and a baseline price. Up to you to do the legwork.

What motor/synchroniser do you have, and what exactly is the fit problem with the Seiko and the synch? Normally the synchroniser kit comes with one or two screws to replace the one the machine came with (but longer, to compensate for the thickness of the boss). Of course not all fit because different manufacturers and models use different thread sizes. You say that the original screw that came with the Seiko is too small. Do you mean that it's not long enough to grab the threads inside the top shaft, or that it's too small a diameter and therefore loose in the bore of the boss? It's not unusual to have to acquire a new screw, or to modify the existing screws or sometimes the adaptor boss, to get a machine and synchroniser to play nice but you can usually find some off-the-shelf screw that does the job. Luckily Seiko is very open about thread sizes etc. so it's easy to look up what you need for a particular job.

Hi Mihel, The part number for the Adler 167 case opener is 067-00-170-0 and you can find the parts book here: https://www.universalsewing.com/images2/parts_lists/all/5ielk82n.pdf Quite a difficult part to get though, we recently had an issue with a member trying to find the same part for the Adler 67. They are old machines. Difficult to suggest somewhere to get it since we don't know where in the world you're located. College Sewing in England (my go-to resource for parts) doesn't have it in stock and the price is GBP£138 (+ 20% VAT if you're in the EU). Unfortunately the address in your photo links doesn't work. You can upload directly here so long as they are smaller than 1.4MB.

To make slit shaped (rather than round) holes. In fact even a round awl will usually make a slightly raggedy slit shaped hole in leather, but with a diamond awl the hole is not only neatly and cleanly cut (rather than torn) but the angle of the slit is predictable and repeatable. This not only makes a neater, more professional appearance but with slanted stitch holes reduces the tendency for the leather to tear. This is especially the case for tighter/finer/closer stitching, as is common in English style saddlery.

We had a thread about it a while back -- somebody noticed that VB's numbers don't tally with an English/American inch at 25.4mm though they are pretty close. Someone else pointed out that they're pretty much bob on for the old French inch at 27mm. Can't find the thread now. I took the sizes from VB's website and calculated a few values. You can see that their sizing perfectly matches the old French inch. On their own they are close enough as makes no difference but try to match a stitch line marked with a No6 VB portmanteau (left handed) griffe a molar with a stitch line marked with a Dixons No10 RH pricking iron and you'll get a slight misalignment. Not much per stitch but those fractions of a mm will add up over a short stretch. point n° 03 = 9,00 mm between each prong ¦ 27/3 = 9.00 ¦ 25.4/3 = 8.46 point n° 04 = 6,75 mm between each prong ¦ 27/4 = 6.75 ¦ 25.4/4 = 6.35 point n° 05 = 5,40 mm between each prong ¦ 27/5 = 5.4 ¦ 25.4/5 = 5.08 point n° 06 = 4,50 mm between each prong ¦ 27/6 = 4.5 ¦ 25.4/6 = 4.23 point n° 07 = 3,85 mm between each prong point n° 08 = 3,38 mm between each prong point n° 09 = 3,00 mm between each prong point n° 10 = 2,70 mm between each prong point n° 11 = 2,45 mm between each prong point n° 12 = 2,25 mm between each prong point n° 13 = 2,07 mm between each prong point n° 14 = 1,92 mm between each prong ¦ 27/14 = 1.92 ¦ 25.4/14 = 1.81

Yeah it's a bugger. Can't remember where I got it from now, probably a job lot of tools. You're right about the older/English style irons that Abbey sells they look dead like late Dixons. Maybe it's worth emailing Abbey? They're usually pretty good at replying constructively to odd requests. The funny thing is, Blanchard appears to use pouce (Fr. inch = 27.07mm) rather than English/American inch (25.4mm). Pouce hasn't been used officially since the revolution but I suspect was used informally for far longer.

I reckon it'd be worth emailing or calling Barnsley, seeing what they can do. The contact I had for the ex-Dixons iron maker (Leather 4 Craft) seems to have stopped taking orders for them. Otherwise... how handy are you with layout tools and a file? Dixons irons were AFAIK always soft mild steel and almost entirely hand cut, right to the end... As it happens I have a left handed iron marked 6, but it's more like a 6.5 (sits between my right handed 6 and 7 Dixons so the stitches don't line up!).