Matt S

What SPI are you after? Maybe they would be willing to make you one custom? Alternatively, some of the people who used to work for Dixons are making irons again on their own hook. I wonder if they would be willing to do something to your spec?

Abbey England. They're now part owners of Sedgwick.

Barnsley do their irons left handed. I don't know if that's the same as a portmanteau iron but my impression is that they're the same thing.

Maybe, but after many attempts at dubbining the snot out of them I've given up and they sit in the boot cupboard gathering dust these days. They're a pretty close copy of the US WW2 para boot and while they fit great (having moulded to my feet) the uppers just go rock hard, especially around the ankles. I've toyed with the idea of cutting them down to ankle height but they'd still be pretty stiff. I don't know what the solution for this problem was "back in the day", if there was one. I suspect it's a combination of different boot styles, thinner/softer leather, lots of grease/pitch/tar, and boots/shoes with a shorter lifespan. As I'm sure you know native Americans brain tanned their hides (a type of tawing really) rather than veg tanning, which isn't so influenced by water. I'm not aware of any commercial brain tanning in the UK, but I do know that there are several hobbyists who do it if you want to try the stuff.

Jammed threads + brute force = slipped timing. It can even happen from a hard crash or needle strike. It's possible that the screws holding the needle bar or hook driving gear weren't fully tightened by whoever was in your machine last. Better that the needle bar slips upwards (easy fix) or the hook driving gears slip on the shaft (slightly trickier fix) than something expensive goes ping. More modern machines have a safety clutch on the hook driving shaft which (in theory) disengages when the balance wheel tries to move a jammed hook. What's in your welt? If it's something hard like nulene or wire you are likely to get the needle bar slipping upwards, or a broken or bent needle. Tempting as it might be, don't brute force the wheel round if you get jammed! Cut out what threads you can reach, take off feet, needles, bobbin, needle plates and whatever else you need to to get to threads and remove the work. Pull out what's loose and apply gentle pressure on the wheel back and forth to see if you can loosen any other threads. Make sure all errant threads are removed before turning the machine over, and do it the first few times by hand (no power). Check that the machine is running okay on a piece of scrap before putting your work back in.

Singer 211w151 looks an excellent machine for your purpose!

I went "there" this week. A normally very reliable sewing machine (that I rely on) started having tension problems and skipping stitches after a needle change. Couldn't balance TKT20/V138 thread reliably in 4mm/10oz of leather, which is ridiculous. Knot was either not being pulled up into the seam, or a single click of the tension knob upwards and it was sticking out the top. Rethreaded, nothing. Fresh bobbin, nothing. Changed needle thread, nothing. About time it had a service anyway so I retimed the hook (which was a few degrees off) and the synchroniser while I was at it, still got problems with tension. Stripped out the hook assembly, gave it a thorough clean, inspection and reassembly, whereupon I lost the bobbin tension spring retaining screw while removing the spring to clean under it. Two hours on the floor sifting through the sweepings came to nought. Luckily I keep a backup machine so I transplanted the missing screw, put it all back together and still had the same problem. Then something went "twang" in my brain. Yep, I'd not fully seated the needle when changing it out. Needless to say the machine worked just fine once I'd pushed the needle fully up into the needle bar and reset the hook timing. Only 6 hours' production time lost to a schoolboy error...

Pfaff 5487-814 looks like a chainstitch machine intended for cloth. 99% of the time with leather you will want a lockstitch machine. Not sure where in the world you're located but you should be able to get an adequate machine for your needs and budget, though it will involve a lot of legwork and homework to ensure you get something that will meet your needs. There are very few hand crank machine around these days, electric motors became popular over 100 years ago and most lighter machines have a handwheel too small for practical hand cranking. If you just want to buy something that you know is going to be suitable you'll probably have to up your budget. Again not sure of your location but assuming that's US dollars, you'd need $1-1.5k for an entry level new machine.

I have a pair of boots with veg tanned uppers. I wouldn't recommend it, every time they get wet they dry hard. Even just foot sweat would be a problem I reckon.

I expect that they are chrome tanned, or with another process which does not respond in the same way as veg tanned hides. Is the ostrich glued to the veg tanned liner throughout?

I have an Adler 67 (might be a 67-72, can't remember). It definitely shouldn't be stiff to turn over, though it shouldn't freewheel either if you see what I mean. Without thread or material in the machine, is it equally stiff throughout the stitch cycle or is it stiffer at any particular point? I'm not sure if a broken bobbin case opener should make it stiff to turn the wheel, unless the broken part is rubbing on something. Did your husband take the shuttle hook assembly down any further than what's in the photo? If you rotate the basket relative to the hook at a certain point you should be able to remove it. Make sure to clean under this thoroughly with solvent then lube with a suitable oil before reassembling. The clearances under here are really tight -- even a short length of thread or an accumulation of oil and fluff can jam it right up so this could be a source of the problem. Also check the bevel gears that drive the bobbin assembly (could be too tightly meshed, I guess, or claggy grease in the box). Try not to take the gears out of mesh though, or you'll have to retime the hook. I guess also the timing belt could be tensioned too tight, or maybe just very old and stiff. Anyway, once you sort out this issue you'll be very pleased with your machine I'm sure. I think that Adler 67s are real "sleepers" at the moment -- boxy and fugly but very solid, reliable and fast machines that can be picked up for not much money.

That's interesting and useful to know, but as I say hide glue is IIRC cooked from untanned (raw) hides so doesn't directly bear on the efficacy of tanning processes killing anthrax.

Isn't hide glue cooked out of raw (untanned) hides and hooves? Anthrax is endemic in domestic and wild herds around the world. It can be transmitted from even centuries old remains, or from handling dry bones and horns. @juli From the CDC: Source: https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/specificgroups/animal-workers/exposure-protection.html My limited experience of Indian tanned leather echoes that of JCUK: some okay, generally very nasty stuff. Much of it is, I believe, from rather unwell beasts due to cultural practices so the quality of the raw hide isn't generally great to begin with. To use a rather crude phrase (that is accurate in more ways than one -- see JCUK's comments about tanning methods) you can't polish a turd. Just about all of the finished leathergoods I have seen coming from India are very low quality leather too. I've used a few sides of American steer that were chrome tanned in China, which was okay but I found it quite crunchy under the knife, possibly due to excessive remaining chrome salts. It wasn't dyed consistently and the colour ran. Not much of a representative sample I know but that is my experience. May I ask why you are considering leather from India and Asia more generally?

I can now confirm that they are M8x1.0.

That looks really neat and would work well for small items. Sadly for me I often need to put bigger bits of leather on my bench than there is bench space, so the goosenecks wouldn't work in my application. A dedicated glue bench (with glass top for easy cleaning and a vented hood) would be great, but not really practical in my limited space, especially with the long pieces of leather I frequently have to glue. I take your point about capturing smells. Not a huge amount of data on the website, I'll shoot them an email.

I'm looking at something similar for my small (150SQFT/15SQM) workshop. I have to either heat or cool it >50% of the year so just running the extractor fan is dumping expensive energy out the wall. I don't have many health issues from the fumes but don't want to develop them in the future either. Plus it's more pleasant for others to come into the workshop if they're not going to choke after 5 minutes of conversation. What I'm looking at is the small air filtration systems aimed mainly at woodworkers. They can have active carbon filters fitted in addition to the dust filters, which supposedly are good at removing organic solvents and lower-end systems don't seem very expensive. @Danne you would have to weigh up the aesthetic and noise concerns yourself but if you could mount it near where you'll be using the glues I reckon that this will go a long way to keeping your flat less noxious. This is the sort of thing I had in mind: https://www.axminstertools.com/axminster-craft-ac15afs-air-filter-106179

Aye, there's a lot of Scots went west in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Many of the earliest white settlers in the Appalachians were Scots. The Hudson's Bay Company actively recruited Shetlanders and Hebrideans to explore the interior of what we now call Canada. They used to joke that they were going for the improved weather. Half-joke, anyway. Anyone who can scrape a living from the sea around one of those little dots of wind-ravaged Atlantic granite has to be some kinda hardcase. Tom that looks great! I like that you're not trying to make an exact copy of the one you've seen, putting your own twist on it.

A skirt has a hem. Kilts do not. Men have been wearing kilts for working and fighting far longer than your country has existed.

Hi @Ferryman, thank sounds right up my street. PM inbound.

Having done plenty of both, I far prefer my hands to smell of kerosene when I get home so I'll take you up on your proposed exchange!

There are brogueing punches for doing similar work, which have two or more punches next to each other. This helps to lay out the spacing on brogued shoe uppers. However you'd have to adjust the circumference of the disc to some multiple of the spacing on your brogueing punch for that to work properly. If I were making a one-off for my own satisfaction I would take inspiration from the decoration and lay the whole thing out with a compass/dividers. That's probably how the original piece(s) what inspired your example was done. Maybe use a protractor and calculator if that's a method you're more comfortable with. I'd expect layout to take over half an hour per piece, probably closer to an hour. Cutting and punching would take maybe 15 minutes using a drive punch and a knife. If I were doing it on the clock, and especially if I were making more than one, I'd draw the punching and cutting pattern on CAD. Print it out, a squirt of temporary spray mount on the back, stick it on the leather, punch and cut, them peel off and decorate. Punching and cutting wouldn't be any faster than with hand layout. Larger quantities would be an obvious candidate for a custom die cutter. I would send RFQs to several die makers but with all those wiggly edges and punch tubes I'd be expecting to the cheapest quote to be several hundred £. Zero layout time, and a few seconds to cut and punch. Of course in these quantities a metal embossing plate for the decoration (including a line for sewing) would be a no-brainer.

First result I found (to see what shape the thing was) appears to have them for $125. Might be worth the price to avoid any hassle and get making shoes. http://www.shoesystemsplus.com/Landis-1-in1-Round-Cutting-Blade_p_452.html There's a few ways you could approach the job, but I would be very careful about spinning the blade under power. I would see if I could set up some arrangement where I could advance the blade into the stone in controlled amounts at a controlled, measured angle and turn the blade by hand -- similar to a milling cutter grinder though obviously not needing nearly so much precision. Ideally I'd use the water-cooled stone on my Tormek, as that has a precisely adjustable guide bar for stability and would avoid any heat issues. If that weren't an option though I would build a jig for my small belt grinder, with a a fine belt. Heat would be a big issue but I could probably mitigate that with an air nozzle zip tied to the grinding jig. Once the main grinding was done, I would lap the backside flat on a piece of wet & dry on a piece of glass. Just take the burr off and no material off the backside, as Bruce says. Then, depending on what results the new edge gives, that may have to be repeated with a finer grit, and finally a strop. Not having a ranger machine in the shop, what range of blade diameters will the Landis tolerate, and how far will you have to grind to get the nicks out? Having now typed that all out, if it were me I would be mashing the "buy now" button so hard the website would be wincing. Jealousy is not a becoming look.

For comparison after tax I buy Coats Nylbond from my supplier at about £10 per king cone (1500m of tkt20/v138, 3000m of tkt40/v69). I think that those are 1lb each. Its top quality thread, never any problems with it. AFAIK barring UV damage strength of nylon thread is much of a muchness for any particular size.

Brilliant, thanks! I've got that tap on hand already. And when I inevitably snap it, there's a whole bin of them in the hardware store!

This is one of the several reasons why I like using a pricking iron and awl in the traditional English technique -- you just need to prick the front while flat, glue the gusset in place, then sew. The holes are opened one at a time with an awl as you sew. If you prefer to punch your stitch holes, you'd probably have to do it after the gusset is bent in place to avoid having to match up holes in gusset and front. You just have to get creative in how to back up the lip of the gusset when punching.