Matt S

I think @amuckart, one of your countrymen, documented his adventure importing a 441 clone directly from China and setting it up. Might be worth a read. Buying a machine sight-unseen, from a semi-anonymous dealer who is essentially unreachable in the event of something being wrong with your machine, is a bit of a gamble. Proper, decent dealers do more than simply uncrate a machine and put a hefty price-tag on it. There's a lot of steps involved in checking the machines, making sure they're correctly timed, cleaned, setup for leather and such. This is also the stage when the real QC checks are made. Do you know how to check that the shuttlehook is burr-free, or how to swap out the lower-shaft bearings if those in your machine are bad? If the intention is to save a few $, it is my opinion that importing a single machine directly is a false economy -- especially if you're intending to use it to make stuff for profit. If you can't find a certain machine in your country that's a different story.

Wooden patterns, I think.

Yes Mike it's the same video.

For fabrics and textiles yes the old domestics are pretty good, especially if speed isn't very important. Proper, "real" casting, machining and fitting. I've got one myself, it comes in handy for certain things and doesn't take up much room on the shelf. $50 is a great buy and what you'll learn is certainly worth the price of admission, IMHO. However leather is a very different animal (pun intended) than fabric. The motor is but one limiting factor when you try to use a domestic machine on leather, and you'll come up against a hard stop before long. Think along the lines of someone saying "why buy a lathe, you can just lay a pillar drill on its side!" From first evidence they look like they do the same thing but there are fundamental and massive differences in construction that massively affect their capabilities and how long they'll last when pressed into a role for which they are unsuited. Domestic machines maybe, but there's plenty of good quality modern industrials still being produced to this day. I like vintage machines (I run a 100-year-old heavy harness stitcher, amongst others) but modern machines are frankly better in every regard except for one -- aesthetics. Look inside an Adler, Pfaff, Seiko or Juki from any time period and it'll impress you. Being a machinist you may be interested to know that Johansson made the first set of gauge blocks using his wife's sewing machine, modified for lapping. Oh and here's an excellent film from the Singer factory in Kilbowie, Scotland in 1934 that I bet would interest you. Not an injection-moulded part in sight!

That's very likely a chrome tan leather, which doesn't really burnish. Those edges are painted. To replicate them you'd need a small quantity of leather edge paint, which is readily available. It's entirely possible to get a good painted edge by hand, but tedious and probably will not end up as nice as the factory one. Every particular paint is different but usually you applies a careful bead of paint to the edge with the point of an awl or pencil, and allows the paint to dry thoroughly. Then the edge is either rubbed with a warm tool or with fine sandpaper and repainted. These steps are usually repeated several times to get a good rounded edge like you have there. After the last coat has dried it's usually given a polish with some beeswax and a canvas wheel.

Any 45K is worth £25, whatever the condition, IMHO. The flywheel alone's worth it. I'm tempted to take up your kind offer, but for the fact I've got 2 already that don't see enough use.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt because your attitude and approach come across as naive, ungrateful, ignorant and (yes) patronising. I wrote most of that off to issues we all face when communicating online getting our tone and meaning across without the usual communication clues of voice tone and non-verbal cues. The fact that English is clearly not your first language (with clear errors in syntax and word choice) only amplifies this so I allowed further leeway. It appears now that it was a waste of my time giving you the benefit of the doubt. We have plenty of people on this forum for whom English isn't their first or even second language, and they don't ruffle the feathers that you have. It's got nothing to do with whatever language is your mother tongue. In essence you're seeking/demanding peoples' professional help for free, without apparently doing any homework, and simultaneously considering that their expertise (and that of their profession generally) are valueless. I suspect you may have reached the limit of how much help you'll receive here without a massive attitude adjustment. If you think nuclear physics is something you can do with a bit of experience and reading a book I'm very glad I'm not your neighbour. And if your online personality is anything like your offline one I'm glad again.

That bag design is optimised for quick manufacturing in quantity, getting maximum yield per hide (if it is actually leather), multiple specialised machines, die cutters/clicker knives and a lot of non-leather material. Assuming that your sewing machine is suitable for the task you'll probably find difficulty reproducing it without a skiving machine to get the edges crisp and the seams fairly flat. The corners are indeed turned/folded, probably around some sort of filler or stiffener board. Most of these individual operations can be done by hand with some practice. If you were to disassemble the bag you might find that the individual panels were stitched as a final assembly step, rather than before assembly. The straps are indeed edge painted, which can be done by hand but is a slow process. I like an awl or pencil for applying edge paint. Do you have any leeway with altering the design or does it have to be an exact copy? Have you negotiated price yet? How many bags are we talking about?

Apart from you, apparently. As before I will give you the benefit of the doubt and think something may be being lost in translation (I take it English is not your mother tongue?). I'm going to spell it out for you: leather-working is a skilled collection of trades. You cannot just pick up some tools and a piece of leather and start making money without some experience, or using the experience of somebody else. That experience is hard-earned and valuable. Sometimes experience is lent out for free -- I'm always pleasantly surprised at the amount of advice, patterns and "how to" guides available for free, from people who have spent a long time working leather. But you have to start at the basics and work up from there. To demand everything given to you on a silver plate is naive, bordering on insulting. You wouldn't go to a collection of tailors and say "I have a sewing machine, how can I get free instructions to make suits, I've never sewn anything before. I want to sell 10x suits per month at $500 per suit." I'll leave you with a pearl of wisdom my grandad taught me: If it were easy, everyone would do it. If everyone's not doing it, it's not easy. If everyone does it it's not valuable.

Does it resemble this motor? I found the clutch material to be cork, which had glazed over time resulting in squealing and loss of power. I took the easy route and managed to simply turn the cork over, hopefully pushing that problem several decades further down the road.

@Michael You want to replicate an established brand's design of wallet and have already set yourself a selling price, but didn't know how it was sewn together or what the cost of your primary raw material would be? Do you already have the half-dozen different machines that will be used to reproduce that design, which is optimised for rapid quantity production, and have the skills to operate them effectively? What about the dozen-plus custom cutting dies that it will require to cut the pieces with speed and without distortion or error? What is your unique selling point (why should the customer buy from you rather than Samsonite or anyone else)? It may be that something's being lost in translation but I think you may be putting the cart before the horse.

When burnishing thin/soft leather I pull/hold the leather taught while holding it against the wheel. If you have a dremel-mounted burnisher you'll probably have to either mount it on the bench so you can use both hands for the leather or have someone help you.

Lisa Sorrel is the queen of leather inlay/onlay and therefore hand skiving. Look her up, she has a vlog on Youtube and a beautifully illustrated book. I learned a lot about skiving from her youtube videos.

What's the symptom with the knife shaft -- is it refusing to turn, or is it not shifting left/right when you try to turn the knife advance wheel? Has the machine suffered rust or impact damage? Got any photos of what's going on?

Any idea how/where/why the knife shaft is jammed? There's not a huge amount of stuff in there. Couple of bearings and a worm gear to move the knife left and right. Is it rusted? You might do better with a proper penetrating oil than WD40, which is really for displacing water. There's a lot of you can use, including specificly formulated stuff at various prices from £reasonable to £lots, but kerosene/paraffin oil, diesel fuel or automatic transmission fluid are the usual improvised penetrating oils that you might have knocking about.

All tools that rely on a sharp edge dull with use. Some take longer than others. Many don't arrive as sharp as they can be. Sharp tools are not only safer to use than dull ones but also they tend to make better work. I tend to strop edge tools every time I pick one up. Edge bevellers I strop using a piece of heavy linen thread rubbed with beeswax and then polishing compound. One end is held under the bench with a tack. I use a strip of scrap tooling shoulder, treated similarly, for stropping inside my French edger/skirt shave. The backs of these tools I do with my normal flat strop, which I use for knives, awls etc.

GA5/CB2500. It's a clone of the Adler Klasse 5, itself a clone of the Singer 45K21. $1400 from Toledo Sewing (one of this site's sponsors), or $1100 if you can make do without reverse. I love the 45K designs, and think they're very capable, reliable machines but there are better machines out there. Triple-feed will have your layers slip less, allow you to climb easier, and will mark your leathers less. CB3200 is about $1900 and a much more forgiving machine that will require less tweaking when changing jobs. However if you really want to keep the machinery costs down a 45K clone is more than capable of what you want to use it for. You may have difficulty adjusting a heavy machine to work well on wallets and other lighter items. It depends largely on your skills and experience adjusting mechanical devices, plus how much patience/time you can dedicate to that job. But since it's a hobby for you I expect that speed and ease of adjustment is less important than budget constraints.

If your tension nut is that close to falling off the stud you're either running at incredibly low tension or you're getting extra tension from somewhere else. The nut should be somewhere near the middle of the stud in normal operation, or at least within the middle three quarters of the threaded length. Any chance you can post a photo of your thread path? If you're getting results you like from your machine, generally speaking, keep going how you're going -- especially now you've figured out the lifter. However if it were me I'd be leery about having something so out of kilter on my machine. But then I never knew when to leave something alone! As a small aside I hardly ever use the lifting lever on any of my machines -- the pedal is far more convenient, and it'll lift the foot higher than the lever anyway. The lever is handy for licking the foot "up", though.

These are probably interconnected; if your tension is cranked down all the way (maximum or near maximum) the tension discs won't move apart. What happens if you reduce bobbin and needle tension?

Just re-read your question. Is your needle thread a or near full tension (screwed down on the beehive spring)? Because if it is the tension won't be released when you lift the foot. If this is the case you are more likely to have other issues too, such as the thread cuttign into the leather. If your needle tension screw is most or all of the way down release it about halfway, adjust your bobbin tension to roughly match, then adjust the needle tension up or down to balance the stitch. Your machine will work much smoother. Or if the needle thread tension is normal, ignore everything I just said and look for the little pusher pin. I've had the tension unit back out from the casting a few times. Not enough that you'd notice but enough that the pin couldn't separate the tension discs enough when the foot was lifted. They are wonderful machines, with very little documentation online, which I hope to alleviate. Very Victorian beasts. They'll sew your hand to your leg given half a chance but would take a week to do so. I'm glad to embiggen your vocabulary! (Word comes from "Fudd", a partially-derogatory term in firearm collector circles for ignorant gun owners, especially hunters -- think Elmer. Fudds are people happier to repeat something they half-remember reading in a book than to fact-check or even do some original investigation themselves. Fuddlore sticks around like shit to a blanket even years after it's disproved.)

Check the Seiko parts manual for your model. They are pretty good at not only giving their part number for screws but also the thread information. Your screw is probably defined as a fractional size rather than decimal -- something like 7/32". Should make for easier searching once you know the quotable size, even if you go into a hardware store.

How do Bill! I'd love to see some of your chequering work. There are similar techniques that are/were used to decorate leather, especially keeper loops and box keepers on fancy harness. Not seen much today but was popular 100+ years ago. I expect that you'll find a lot of your skills transfer.

No, but this idea was mentioned in an enthusiastic hobbyist's video on one particular model of domestic machine that became popular, and appears to have become part of the fuddlore very quickly. I've owned over a dozen different lock-stitch sewing machines, domestic and industrial, and operated a good few more. Full gamut of 1800s to current manufacture. Chinese, German, British, American, Japanese. Not an expert but a wider range of experience than many operators. I have never come across a design that released thread tension as it stitched. In answer to the OP's question, as mentioned already the vast vast majority of industrial designs release the thread tension as the presser foot/feet is lifted, either by hand or foot, but not at any point in the normal stitch cycle. Most machines have a check spring which takes up slack thread after the stitch cycle TDC (when the take-up lever reaches its highest point), when the needle thread is at its lowest tension, which on a domestic machine is often quite low. This might lend some credence to the idea of the thread tension being released but it's definitely not, otherwise the check spring would return to its lower stop immediately. The one exception I've come across is the wonderful but obsolete BUSM/Pearson No6 heavy harness stitcher, which doesn't release tension on lifting the pedal but does to an extent during one portion of the cycle. Even then it's not a proper release of tension as upper thread tension derives from about 4 or 5 points and only the first one of these (the thread clamp IIRC) releases its vice-like hold at any point. If it didn't the machine wouldn't be able to draw new thread. It's an odd beast designed over a century ago and operates quite differently to what's common these days.

Brian I would be very interested, as I am with everything you post. Profitability is one of the things I struggle with.

No problem Mike. Really jealous of your clicker -- I can't fit any but the very smallest powered ones through my shed door, and that's too small to do what I want! So I'm stuck with my handraulic machine.