Matt S

That's awesome, and thanks for sharing the pattern! I might have a go...

I think that most so-called "oil tanned" leathers tend to actually be heavily oiled chrome or combination tanned leathers, but with a heavy oiling. These don't tend to respond to burnishing, as they don't get affected by water in the same way that veg tannages do. I've had some success doing a sort-of-burnish-sort-of-seal on some chrome tan leathers using diluted PVA and a very fast (3000RPM) burnishing wheel but it's not something I think you can do by hand, nor with the weaker sealing properties of gum trag. Alternatively your options are to paint the edges, bind them, fold them, or just leave them as cut.

Those look great. The very uncluttered mid-century is very cool. I do think that $175 is a little low, but only you know your margins and what your local market will sustain. Beautiful work!

That's a really nice set, great work! Are you making a belt to go with it? Who made the knife and marlin spike? How did you find the brass saddlers rivets? I've only ever used copper, which is fairly easy to dome.

Absolutely perfect response to a rather esoteric question, delivered very quickly by an experienced user and with no expectation of payment or quid pro quo. Thank you. People like you are what makes this website one of the best on the net. I think I'll order the dies and staples as soon as I can get over the $55 Weaver wants to charge me for shipping a few ounces of metal across the ocean, and figure out why they're charging me sales tax when the goods are clearly going overseas .

That's a lovely colour of leather. I doubt you'd be able to replicate the effect on tooling leather but if you wanted to have a go, a leather-specific acrylic paint would probably be a good starting point. If it were me I'd just buy the 50 SQFT and sell the surplus at the end of the project, or use it for some other project.

Now Brian surely you remember your Rumpole: never ask a question in court to which you don't know the answer -- get the guilty bugger to admit it himself! She Who Must Be Obeyed has clearly picked up on the technique somewhere...

Hi all. I mostly die cut and rivet my keeper/slide loops at the moment, which is mostly fine but a little fiddly, slower than I want it to be, and bulky due to the overlap. If the job needs a less bulky loop I butt stitch them, but that's slow. I think ideally I'd machine sew them in the round but I need to sew as small as 3/4" (19mm) loops regularly, 1/2" (12mm) on occasion, and I don't know of any sewing machine that can do that (especially with V138/TKT20 thread). It's not a huge volume (maybe 200 per month ATM) but I want to be able to scale up and reduce the time I'm taking per loop and want to reduce the bulk while maintaining the strength. I think that the most realistic solution is butt stapling. I've tried the sort of stapler you'd use on a carton, which works okay but they're ugly and not as tight as I'd like. What I think would work best is the heavy brass decorative staples used on horse harness loops. It looks like Weaver makes a die set (item #65-6672, click) for their Little Wonder press that does the job. I could probably adapt these to fit an existing press I have. Alternatively Campbell-Randall sells an Italian loop stapler by EGM (click) that appears to do basically the same job. Has anyone who's used these sort of staples please explain the process? Does the loop stock need slits cut in before stapling, or can the staple pierce the leather reliably? I'd primarily be using 2mm/5oz leather, mostly medium temper chrome tan but some bridle also. Are the staples flush on the inside of the loop after setting, or would they need a second operation to flatten them out? How strong are the loops after setting? Would they withstand blocking? TIA! Matt

The Techsew 2750 would be a good choice for wallets but not for sheaths or holsters. You need a far heavier thread/needle capacity for that sort of job and quite possibly a higher thickness capacity. The most popular entry level machines are Chinese clones of the Juki TSC-441, Adler 205, and various variations thereof. All of these are well supported for parts and accessories including flat-bed table attachments. Your suggestions of the Cobra 3 and 4 are far more suitable. Many dealers have very similar machines under different brand and model designations (CB3500 and 4500 I think) so you may be able to shop around for a better price/accessories package/shorter drive. Many of these dealers support this website with banner ads so if I were in the market for one I'd try to buy through one of them. Unfortunately there is no one machine that can sew everything and ideally you would have a separate machine for lighter and heavier jobs. However if you are happy to spend time adjusting and testing between different sewing tasks one heavier machine would probably suffice.

I really am loathed to throw out clutch motors, since they're such high quality, robust units, but struggle to find alternative uses for them and there is virtually no resale value where I live. I think I've junked at least three over the years just so I wasn't stubbing my toes all the time. I did use one as a starter motor for a rotary phase converter motor for a bit, with the brake removed, before I realised that it the whole contraption was overkill and rebuilt it as a static converter. That motor is still kicking about the workshop waiting a new life. I've thought about using it as a burnisher but am leery about the amount of torque it has. I suppose I could build it into a disc sander, a polisher, a dust extractor or some other machine but that would be building a solution and then looking for a problem for it to solve. I guess it's going to remain under the workbench for a bit longer!

My little 1x30 grinder suddenly feels very inadequate. I'm jealous. Looks like a real workhorse! If I can figure out a place to place it I might just have to upgrade...

Operators manual: http://www.duerkopp-adler.com/commons/download/download-text-attachments/Vintage_Manuals_Adler/Manual_Adler_104_105.pdf Parts list: http://www.duerkopp-adler.com/commons/download/download-text-attachments/Vintage_Parts_Books_Adler/105.pdf Both links were on the Sew24 blog page, but perhaps not very clearly marked.

As you say the material and 90% of the work isn't the issue, so much as the finishing which has to be done by hand. Part of the issue is that awl blades are quite flexible so have to be backed up with something like a finger -- fine on a bench stone, not so ideal on a belt or wheel! Even polishing by machine can be very easy to mess up, as most polishing wheels tend to round over the edge when you put it across the blade. I have a drawer full of "pretty darts" to demonstrate that! I've recently acquired a Tormek machine, maybe I'll try that on a raw awl somewhen. Certainly works well on punches and knives. You can certainly stitch with a less-than-ideal awl, especially if you use a stitching chisel (Which punches through the leather) rather than a pricking iron (which tends to not pierce all the way through). However it makes things a LOT faster/easier/neater/less frustrating.

A good stitching awl blade has a diamond cross section, a pear shaped or reverse hourglass profile (starts narrow, swells to a wide waist then tapers off again towards the handle), and is sharpened like a dagger -- that is to say the two furthest apart edges are the cutting edges and the tip shouldn't be too sharp or pointy. The two cutting edges need to be as sharp as possible (preferably sharp enough so you can use it like a knife to cut into leather without it making a noise) and the whole polished to a mirror finish and burr-free. The steel needs to be a composition and temper hard enough to hold a cutting edge for a long time but soft enough to sharpen with normal whetstones and springy enough to not permanently bend or break when deflected or pushed at a cocked angle. That's a very tall order in such a tiny piece of steel, which is why most good quality awls need a lot of work finishing off when you get them, and why "good to go" awls are so expensive. You definitely do want a stitching awl as sharp as you can because it's there to cut a slit through the leather and temporarily wedge that slit open. Leather is tougher than your fingertips -- bloodletting is simply an occupational hazard! As someone has put it before on this forum an awl should be sharp enough you can jab your finger and not realise it until you pull it out and the claret starts flowing. Over time you learn accuracy of angle and can place your supporting fingertips closer to where the awl might poke through without risk of losing any haemoglobin but when you start out using a cork to support the backside of the leather is quite useful. Unfortunately it's a more complex and very fiddly sort of sharp compared with most edge tools. I've been sharpening chisels and knives since I was tall enough to see over the edge of my grandad's bench but still don't think I've cracked sharpening a stitching awl. Nigel Armitage, who's a classically trained saddler, leatherwork instructor, and has sharpened more awls that I've had hot dinners, takes an hour to bring an awl up from "new" to "usable". Handles/hafts are a matter of personal taste. I like them without a flare at the base so I can get my forearm inline with the blade and some sort of flat on the handle so I can index the rotational angle of the blade by touch rather than having to look at it every time. I also tend to put a few turns of amalgamating tape round the ferrule, which helps pull a reluctant needle without putting the awl down.

I've used salmon leather before. The stuff I have is quite thin so needs backing with something more substantial. The pieces were also fairly small so needed to be panelled together to make a wallet or anything larger. I guess that both of these factors vary hugely depending on the size of the salmon that the tanner started with. Practicalities aside it looks and feels really interesting and draws a lot of positive reactions from people.

Drop-feed machines work for all weights of leather -- look at the venerable Singer 7, 17 and 45K serieses, which were bought in their hundreds of thousands by users all over the world, usually in drop-feed-only format, and are copied to this day. They tend to be mechanically simple machines, therefore reliable and easy to build and maintain. However their performance drops off when dealing with multiple layers (layer slippage), slippery under-surfaces, grabby top-surfaces, jobs where dog marks are unacceptable, and when climbing up or down seams. In short their behaviour becomes unpredictable and harder to manage, especially by operators who aren't particularly skilled at, able to or are interested in learning to coax a specific result out of a more difficult machine. Compound feed tends to produce better results in all of these areas at the cost of complexity so when firms like Singer, Adler, Seiko and Juki engineered some beautiful compound-feed machines that could help operators do their work faster and better, users started switching and demand for drop-feed machines... dropped. Today relatively few industrial sewing machines (other than garment-weight machines) are drop-feed -- simply because compound feed is better in almost every way. Seiko, for instance, has been gradually dropping the drop-feed or needle-feed options from several of their lines for years. I imagine that they would be happy to continue making them if there was enough demand. Singer, despite an enormous head-start and having pioneered many innovations that are now standard, didn't really innovate as much as its rivals and were dead in the water as far as industrial machines by the 1960s. From the late 1960s to the 1980s they had closed their industrial machine production at Kilbowie and were rebadging Seiko and Adler machines as Singers. Consider that only the later models of 45K were about the only ones with a reversing feed as standard, and then only a somewhat awkward one with a separate screw to regulate the reverse stitch length whereas Adler had been making Klasse 4s and 5s with needle feed and reverse since before WW2. Nowadays we don't really need to worry about machine balance or complexity because the $1-2000 machine you can buy new is the result of several decades of product development, use and improvement which has made a compound-feed machine easy to use, build, maintain and accessorise with off-the-shelf parts. Drop-feed machines still work but still have the drawbacks mentioned above and IMHO are a bit of an evolutionary dead end.

There's a lot of good information above but I'll try to add few useful nuggets. We don't know what domestic machine your partner has -- they vary considerably in capabilities and thus suitability. I made a cheap domestic explode in a pile of plastic some years ago by sewing two layers of blanket together. Conversely I've sewn some surprisingly heavy things with others, though nothing as heavy as multiple layers of 24oz canvas. The one thing that they have in common is that they are really not suited to sewing heavier items with any frequency or at any speed. As to hemming, sure if you can fold, hold and stitch that weight of canvas you could hem it. Many more modern domestics have an ability to do an overseaming stitch that approximates overlocking/serging but it's not pretty and it is glacially slow. Sometimes you can add a binding attachment to run binding tape along the raw edge, which is a very neat finish if done well but again I have no idea how such a thing would react to heavy canvas. You can also seal the cut edges with a special glue which resists fraying, or just trim them with pinking shears which again resists fraying I believe (that's what my grandma told me, never used them myself). Neither of these last two would be a finish I would want to put on a "done" bag but would be fine for a prototype, a practice piece, an intermediate step before proper finishing or a bag for your own use. Sewing canvas by hand is perfectly feasible. Just think about the number of bags, sails, sacks, buckets and protective clothing that were made and repaired before the sewing machine became popular. A sewing palm and a pack of decent canvas needles will set you back about £20 (not sure how many dollarydoos but I can't imagine it being hideously expensive). There's plenty of decent books and online resources about historical methods of sewing heavy canvas and leather in a nautical setting (a lot of them really quite fun). Alternatively you could get one of those autoawl things, which are used to make a lockstitch in the style of a sewing machine but entirely manually.

First action when my skiver doesn't do what I expect is to give the knife a quick sharpen and deburr. That tends to solve a lot of minor issues, because the leather is less likely to dive under or climb over the knife. Then I check that the foot locking pin is still secure, the foot angle screw hasn't walked out, and that C-shaped spring that applies bias against the front of the presser foot is still providing enough pressure, and make sure that there's no waste hung up in or around the knife. I'm no expert but I've found that reducing the foot pressure on the last corner (by unlocking the presser lever just a smidge as it comes up) and pulling the work away from the machine just a little as it feeds the last corner helps when skiving all around something with corners. This prevents the first/last corner from getting smooshed down under the edge of the knife by the presser foot. Generally, reduced foot pressure makes tearing less likely too, which usually requires a freshly sharpened and deburred knife, and 'just right" setting of the knife distance, feed wheel height and feed wheel spring pressure. Leather is less likely to tear and more likely to behave predictably with a freshly sharpened and deburred knife. I leave my machine setup for maximum knife revs and slowest feed, which gives me best results but your mileage may vary. Oh and sharpen and deburr your knife frequently. Did I mention to sharpen and deburr your knife? What thickness and type of leather are you skiving?

If you don't want to read about sewing machines, don't. There's plenty of information on these boards about hand sewing leather, which is why I started visiting many years ago, back when I was a hand sewing purist who wanted to move past the Al Stohlman level. Want to know how to hand sew a bridle at 14+SPI for a saddlery competition? It's in here. How English "black harnessmakers" (makers of working horse harness) mixed their coad to last a generation of hard daily use? It's in here. How to hand roll linen thread from thrum? It's in here. Silk thread for the finest Victorian and Edwardian styles of sidesaddle? It's in here. Non-toxic alternatives to white lead for whiting thread? Hafting and sharpening awls? Tunnel stitching with a hog's bristle? Single-needle backstitch vs. double-needle saddle stitch for turnbacks? Sewing harness tugs? Sewing over an inch of thickness? Hand sewing with arthritis? Making your own awls, prickers and stitch setters? How production/professional hand stitchers work? It's all in here, often from people who make or made their living from leather (and several generations of their family before them) or from accomplished historical researchers -- and all provided without an expectation of payment. I don't know of anywhere else in the world, online or offline, that this has occurred. Sewing machines are a class of tool that we can use or not use as we choose in our craft -- just as electric kilns are a potter's tool, bandsaws are a woodworker's tool and power hammers are a blacksmith's tool. None of these detract from their craft if used appropriately, and all reduce the time taken to do certain tasks that don't have a better end result by doing them the slow way. If you enjoy the process of hand sewing or think that there is some material advantage to doing so, great. That's your choice. I'd love to hear why you don't think that machine sewn leathergoods are a craft.

Chinese sellers seem to like the idea of hammering the leather onto the die with a nylon hammer. Seems like a good way of tearing up your hammer, knuckles and dies to me. I did hammer a small die onto leather with a soft-faced hammer before I got my press, but the results weren't worth the effort. I once put a digital scale under my cutting board when using my smallest clicking die. It maxed out at 300Kg (660lb) and the leather wasn't cut through. I doubt that you can just press even a small clicker die through leather, unless you and a hefty friend can jump up and down on top of it. Arbor presses seem to work for small dies but I am a big fan of cheap hydraulic bearing presses. Mine cost under £100 and I've cut literally thousands of parts with it.

For most everyday goods it doesn't make a difference... but it is a cool selling point for many people -- like hand cut blind dovetails on a piece of furniture. Nothing wrong with that in the right context. Correctly and consistently saddle stitched seams, using exactly the same thread and SPI, are probably stronger than lockstitch sewn seams but that's usually not the reality. IMHO most of the durability of a saddle stitched seam is because of using linen thread with a decent coad (thread wax) formulated to lock stitches together (beeswax doesn't count!). Punched holes, synthetic thread, slippery thread wax, ridiculously high SPIs... throw any of these into the mix and any actual physical benefits to saddle stitching go out the window (again IMHO, I have no statistical or scientific data to back up this opinion, just experience and vicarious experience). I figure that lockstitch and saddle stitch are different, that's all -- like rivets vs. sewing. You just design and make your goods around whatever technique you want to/can afford to use, which you can only do when you understand the strengths and weaknesses of each method, and the item's intended use.

Hi Mac, welcome to the forum. Your place of work sounds fascinating, I'd love to hear more about it and maybe visit one day when this kerfuffle calms down. Looks like your'e nearly there, but have too large a needle for your thread (or too skinny a thread for the needle). That's what's giving you the "spaghetti down a manhole" look, and probably your stitch skipping, since the thread needs to have some friction inside the hole to form a loop for the hook to grab. What are you intending to sew? The largest thread you'd want to put through a STW-8 with any regularity is TKT20/V138, which is available in nylon, polyester and various polycotton mixes. For reference, the gold topstitch thread on a pair of jeans is usually a soft-laid TKT30 polycotton (one size smaller than TKT20), and 18/3 linen thread is one size larger (TKT13). A size nm140 needle is a good fit for that TKT20 thread. The STW-8 uses class 135x16 leedeles for leather, vinyl and other things that need a cutting point and 135x17 for cloth. There are different point styles for 135x16 needles, which give different effects however the LR type (which gives an even, slanted stitch) is probably most popular. This chart is very handy.

Welcome to the forum and the craft! I do hope I'm not teaching my granny to suck eggs, but old saddles really should be looked over by a saddler, or at least someone with a lot of practical experience regularly. At the very least look very closely at the girth billets to make sure that the stitching is in good condition, the leather isn't cracked, stretched or degraded. These relatively tiny pieces of leather are all that's holding your saddle on -- not something you want to go ping when halfway over a hedge! I was also taught by an old girl (who probably taught Pontius Pilot to ride) to try flexing the saddle by taking a good grip on each point and applying pressure in then out (with the saddle upside down is easiest), listening and feeling for any creaking that may indicate a cracked tree which may not be readily apparent but can change the fit of the saddle when the weight of a rider is added. Not a definitive test by any stretch, but the equivalent of kicking your car's tyres to see if they've got enough air. A saddler, I believe, would cut the stitches around the pommel to pull the tree/seat/flap assembly off the panel to check the tree as part of a standard cleaner and service, but that's tricky to do neatly and even trickier to sew back together. Look over your stirrup leathers carefully too, and consider replacing them if there's any significant signs of wear or stretch, especially uneven stretch (lay them next to each other). If you use the D rings for any purpose (martingale, saddle or pommel bags) look closely at where their attachment points dive into the innards of the saddle -- this leather is often very thin and prone to tearing. As to Tan Kote, that's an acrylic leather finish that has trouble sticking to leather with any sort of grease in it, which your saddle undoubtedly does -- dubbin, tallow, kocholine, oil or any other sort of greasy leather dressing will prevent it from sticking. Honestly I don't think it's got much purpose in an English saddle, as keeping the leather well stuffed with grease should shed the majority of the British weather. The types of leather that English saddles are made from are typically stuffed with grease from the tannery, whereas the types typically used in Western saddles is pretty dry (non-greased), which allows Tan Kote to adhere. Even saddle soap contains grease! Oh and for the love of Mike PLEASE don't paint the thing in oil! Not saying you would, but I've seen that done by a lot of well-meaning people to all sorts of leather goods, including tack. Oil should be used sparingly for softening leather that's gone stiff from losing its oils and fats not for general conditioning or waterproofing. Condition/feed/stuff with a good leather dressing that's not going to over-soften your saddle or leach into your numnah or jods! Again, please don't see any of the above as condescending, I don't know anything about your background or experience and would rather err on the side of caution. Remember that English saddles are a little more... esoteric than Western or even Aussie stock saddles, like a sports car rather than a Land Rover. Lighter weight, less DIY-friendly and a smaller margin for error. Remember also to take my advice with a healthy pinch of salt as I'm no saddler, though I have ridden for years and was a groom/yard-hand/assistant instructor for a while. I'd invite corrections and comments on any of the above from knowledgeable persons such as @jimsaddler, @gmace99, @barra, @Les No6 and @jcuk.

I'd crack out my crapomatic £20 cordless drill with a carbide burr. Cut out what you can, then punch or tear out the rest. Use your finger tip to prevent the "front" side of the rivet from spinning when you get close to breaking through, or overheating. For the double cap rivets just put a dent in the cap as central as you can with a centre punch, then treat as above.

I bought my first real leather machine offn eBay for a princely £200. Still got it 4 years later, it's a backup to a backup that sits in storage, but I refuse to sell it for peanuts. Brilliant quality machine (Adler 67) that is stupid cheap because it isn't fashionable at the moment (fugly design and lacking a few modern features). I've seen them selling for under £100, and I'm not even looking for one. It'll put a Tkt20/V138 thread through 9mm of leather at 2000 stitches per minute all day long and not blink an eye. Something like that would do you fine for what you want to make for decades, or at least long enough to save up for an all singing all dancing machine. I've bought more than a dozen industrial sewing machines since then, mostly now sold on. I make my living making stuff out of leather and I've found that crap tools are not worth their weight in sand, quality tools are worth their weight in gold. The best advice I can offer is to buy quality over features -- a quality used machine that has a limited range of accessories or features retains resale value a lot longer than a newer machine made of cast cheese and is less trouble keeping it working while you have it. Out of your list my preference would be the Seiko -- fantastic quality machine with thread and thickness capacity range around what you want, ready and wide range of parts and needles from every industrial dealer and high build quality. Did i say high build quality twice? I really like Seikos. Juki, Durkopp/Adler, Pfaff, Singer and Mitsubishi are also top quality machines. Jack, Highlead, Global, Sunstar and Typical are all Chinese manufacturers of varying qualities. Apparently some of them are fine when set up correctly but my experience of owning and operating Chinese made machines was not pleasent. Not something I want to put my time or money into again, if I'm frank, and I can service and set up machines myself rather than pay someone else to do it.