Matt S

Could be worse, I know of one tannery where it's 14 months...

I've seen one where the "pivot" was made with a turks head, prevented from slipping down with some large fencing staples.

Le Prevo probably has all you need to get started in one shop. Only exception is scrap/offcuts but there's some reasonably inexpensive hides available, either in their regular or clearance ranges.

I use these too. At about £1 a pair I can afford to have one tied onto each machine with a piece of string, plus one on the bench and a few spares here and there. Always one to hand when I need it.

I'm not sure of any sellers anywhere near you so you might get stuck with online sources. Le Prevo often has some low-price stuff in their "odds and sods" page. Again it depends on what sorts of leather you want to use -- if you want to practice techniques specifically for a type of leather get as similar leather as you can. I know it might seem obvious but if you want to make cut-edge chunky wallets from tooling leather, buy some cheap chunky tooling leather. If you want to make thin wallets from supple chrome tan leathers with edges that have been skived and folded, get some cheap thin supple chrome-tan.

I look forward to seeing what improvements Weaver makes to the Cub. I was really tempted to scrape together the pennies for one several times. Partly for practicality, partly for the ready parts availability, partly because I love the solid simple effectiveness of the Pearson-derived mechanism. I'd be very pleased with a motorised version especially if it had reverse. If it's cordless I think I'd sell a kidney to buy one.

Depends what you want to make, and what sort of leather you want to ultimately use when not practising. Probably the cheapest you can buy is upholstery offcuts/scrap. Somewhere around £5-10 per Kg... but about as much use as a chocolate fireguard if you want to make tooled knife sheaths, for instance. Where are you in the UK? You may have a shop near to you that will let you rummage in their remnants bin, or a leatherworker who'll let you rummage in their offcuts bin.

Sharpening, IMHO, is a bit like edge burnishing or saddle stitching -- there's a lot of approaches to the same destination, beginners find it harder than they think they ought, and once it "clicks" you wonder how you ever found it difficult. (This latter aspect also manifests itself as "why are you finding this difficult" once the trials of learning have been forgotten.) I've been sharpening tools since I was in primary school, and rarely had much money spare so had to make do with what was around. I've sharpened with natural rocks, broken grinding discs, cheap oilstones, second-hand stones, paving slabs, old bricks, files, sandpaper, all sorts of things. Ruined a few tools along the way but I'll dare say that while I'm no expert I'm pretty competent these days. Here's the secret: most things that are slightly abrasive will work. It's the proper technique that's key and that can only come with practice. Use what you got and works for you. For me that's usually a cheap double-sided oilstone slathered in whatever oil I have lying around. Then a fine stone if I'm feeling fancy (dunno what it is, some local stone I was given years ago in Asia), and a strop. Lots of stropping. With compound. Using this method I can take a knife from "hammer" to "razor" in a reasonable amount of time. Nowadays I have a felt wheel on a motor, which is a fantastic timesaver but a major hazard to the untrained or inattentive. If the bevel needs redefining I'll start with my belt grinder, at about 150 grit.

A welder is actually on my shopping list. I agree a bloody useful skill to have but I haven't welded in 10+ years, and I'm not sure I'm going to trust any of my beads to hold several tons of pressure at chest height any time soon... Suppose I should call up my welder friend and see what he'll do for a bottle of whiskey... Yes I guess it might be worth it to see if Harry will let me have a go on his, just to see what the capabilities are -- even if I do have to traverse half of the world's biggest circular carpark.

For a few years now I've been using a small 6 ton hydraulic bearing press for my clicking needs. It was cheap, doesn't take up much space, capable of many jobs and doesn't consume electric or make noise. It's also fairly resistant against attack by idiot. However it's only got 13" of daylight between the two uprights. It takes about 4-5x pumps of the handle to cleanly click leather up to 4mm thick. I have 12x12"of steel as a bottom plate and a few upper plates up to the same size. I have to take multiple "bites" at anything longer than that. Now I could live with the slowness but the awkwardness of having to nibble away at longer pieces, let alone splitting up hides into pieces small enough to fit within the frame, is getting rather old. I'm also getting some distortions in the clicked pieces from moving the leather mid-cut. So I'm looking at my options. It occurs to me that this is a topic that could interest a lot of leatherworkers. My essential requirements are: Able to click pieces up to 12"/300mm without moving the leather (4mm thick). C-shape (open) frame or a very large O-type frame. No slower to "click" than my current press -- say 3 seconds. Machine no wider (or easily broken down to be no wider) than 26" due to access issues. Machine no larger than 36" wide when assembled (space available in shop). Desirable requirements: as low initial cost as possible (say under £500). Quiet running. As low weight as possible (say under 200Kg), or at least easily broken down to lighter pieces (access!). Able to click longer pieces as long as 30" (750mm) in one hit, or at least not having to move the leather to do so. I'm not ambitious or anything am I... Obviously a professional swing-head or beam press would be my best option. However I have extremely narrow and awkward access to my workshop and only the smallest swing-head clickers will fit. The Atom SE8 is typical -- a bed 24" wide by 12" deep and 12x12" head. About 430Kg, which is potentially manageable. I'd have to click anything longer than 12" with multiple hits, but that's a compromise I'm willing to make. SE8s and similar 8 ton clickers don't come up very often and a new one would be well beyond my means. Second-hand they can be as little as a few hundred up to several thousand £ depending on age, condition, model, location etc. There would also be additional costs of moving, refurbishing and phase conversion on some examples. Tippman pneumatic clickers have an open frame, an acceptable weight and size, and cycle pretty quickly. I even already have a compressor. However they are very expensive to import (only ever seen one second hand and that was on a Hebridean island, which is about 12 hours' drive and a ferry trip away... weather permitting...). Further while the Tippman designs are C-frame they are not swing-head presses and the size, even of the larger model, means I'd have to move the leather (with knife embedded) for longer cuts. Manual toggle-link clickers like the Lucris and its various cousins (Cowboy and Noya) would be quite lightweight and easy to setup onto a bench, which allows storage underneath. Maybe I could even integrate it into a layout bench. No noise (apart from grunting). Cost about £1500. However I'm worried about the size and the 4ton capacity -- seems a bit wimpy. There's also limited ceiling height in this workshop, which might be an issue if I extend the handle. There's a small manual clicker press that's got 4x pillars, a toggle on the top and a capacity somewhere around the size of my nutsack hand. It's not something I will even consider. I've looked at building a simple open-frame press with a bottle jack that swings out the way but realistically it's beyond my enginerding abilities and paying a professional to build one would proabably work out to be an expensive option, and I wouldn't have the fancier features of some of the other options. I can't find a bearing press any wider than 24" between the uprights. Other than that such a thing would most of my other requirements, so long as I fabricobble some upper and lower plates. However it occurs to me that if I bought one that had a bolted rather than welded frame I might be able to produce some longer upper and lower frame pieces, essentially giving me as large an O-frame as I can fit in the space. Not much change out of £500 for such a machine that fits my size desires, and no improvement to the clicking speed -- in fact potentially a slower speed if I can't find a smaller/faster bottle jack than my current one. (Air-over-oil jacks are limited availability here and all seem slower than my humble 6tonner.) If I am able to leave the jack just loose enough to slide along the top rails I could have a poor man's travelling head press... maybe... (Something like this... just longer/wider... and a worse paint job...) Sealey import a 10ton C-frame bearing press that might work with a little modification. About £300. Very compact. However I'm worried the manual pump might be a bit slow and I would be dubious about hooking up a hydraulic powerpack. Mostly cos I'd prefer not to spray hydraulic oil all over the shop (again). Is there an option, a solution or a problem that I've missed? Do I need to just pick one or man up and deal with my current situation? Am I overthinking it? Do I need more coffee?

Garment leather is normally sewn with a glover's needle (sharpened chisel tip like a leather-specific machine needle) rather than with an awl. (Well, it's normally sewn by machine but I assume that's not an option.) The fabric lining probably goes entirely behind or within the fold of the leather edging.

Potentially interested. I take it it's in Beverley?

Unless you're stamping with a powder-actuated nail-gun, you'll be fine.

Engine hoists are optimised for moving relatively small, dense pieces of car small distances. There is not a great deal of space between the legs or below the hook on most cheaper models, and the further out you have the arm sticking the further its weight-carrying capacity gets derated. The common 1000KG/1ton models are only good for 250KG at full extension, which isn't very far, and you've not got much margin for error on a 510lb machine. I used such a hoist to move a bulky 350kg/770lb splitter a few months ago. It's doable but we had to get creative with the rigging.

This. I have a Jack servo with a needle positioner/synchro. On power-on it spins until it reaches its programmed position. If the machine can't turn, or the sensor isn't fitted, it spins for about 2 seconds. On a similar motor the fix would be to set the syncho position to "none" or "off".

Coats Nylbond. TKT20 1500M, TKT40 3000m. Both around £10/cone (+VAT) in small quantities.

Danish Man, welcome to the forum. That fine old machine is an overlocker or serger, which is for stitching over the edge of fabric, so it doesn't unravel. Not often used by leatherworkers, except in making fabric linings for bags. If you don't get much response here, perhaps there is a dressmaking/tailoring forum that you could re-post the question on?

The wooden-back ones? Yeah I've used a few of the smaller ones. The price is far better than having a "real" one made in the UK, though the delay can be a factor. I find them okay for low-volume stuff. Some of the listings let you choose between Chinese and Japanese steel. No idea if there's actually a longevity increase or if it's just a way to increase the price a little. Not being able to see through the die, and the problems of stripping the piece out of the die make them a little awkward to use. Sure beats hand-cutting repetative, intricate parts though.

I still want to buy a desktop laser for various purposes. However, in the mean time I have ordered 2x pieces of laser cutting from Razorlab. One piece is a set of 3x smallish cutting patterns in 3mm clear acrylic that fits on their P2 template. To my mind this will be the most popular sort of job for small-scale leatherworkers. Cost including delivery and VAT was about £20. The other is a bunch of pieces of 3mm MDF from their P3 size (for low cost and some heat resistance) as drop-on guides for my embossing press. Cost including VAT was about £30. Both designs consist mainly cut lines, with a little heavy raster engraving for labels. Playing about with a few design variations, the "make cost" reduces substantially with a little optimisation. I took £2 off the cost of the acrylic piece just by "commoning" the cut lines on the acrylic design. So far it's been fairly straightforward. The website checks each file as you upload it for certain things, like line thickness. This was the most frustrating thing -- I had to make a lot of adjustments to the files -- but was 99% user error. Shipping and VAT were added at the payment stage. Impressively, I placed my orders about 0200 this morning (yeah, I don't sleep much) and they had both shipped 12 hours later. When they turn up I'll let you guys know what the precision and finish are like.

Don't forget to check the timing before you put your foot down...

If it were me? I'd save the money and continue to use my £60 bearing press.

Old-style hardware stores are great. We have one of them down the road. I was looking for a mattock for a garden project recently (needed to move a fair chunk of clay soil but not enough to mechanise the job). Tried 5 different DIY and trade suppliers. What few had listed one on their website had no local stock. Walked 5 minutes down the road into the hardware shop. Picked one off the wall, paid over my £20, exchanged the traditional joke about burying the mother in law and I was away back down the road. 15 minutes after I left the house I was chopping lumps of clay out of the ground the size of a car battery. Contrast against the local big-name DIY shed, where I can barely find someone to take my money, the prices are all wrong, and 9/10 pieces of wood looks like an avante-garde corkscrew.

Keep an eye out for used bell-knife machines, they're fantastic once you get the knack. I don't know what your situation is regarding mobility or willing helpers but there's bargains which occur near where I live -- £300 and good timing will buy you a used skiver most months. Hopefully something similar will come your way soon. Otherwise, have you tried a skirt shave/french edger? They're more of a straight push motion than a skiving knife, and easier to control. I use mine all the time for skiving. A Japanese style skiving knife might work for you too -- it looks like a wide bladed wood-chisel and is a push forward rather than push across motion. I used to have the more complex version -- the Scharffix clone. I spent far more time and leather than I ought trying to get it to cooperate. I suspect that the one I had was flexing too much with the leather I was putting through it. IT would work, for a while, then randomly plunge through. Fred you may find better success with your design -- it's got fewer moving parts so I suspect it's far stiffer.

Normally it's the black thread that's stiff and awkward! 138/TKT20 thread is about £10 per big spool. Sounds like something's gone very wrong with that red. Unknown brand/condition/age/provenance thread that doesn't play ball isn't worth the aggro, whether you're leathering for fun or profit. Put it in the circular file, replace it if you want, and get sewing.

My workshop rarely gets as hot as yours does, I'm sure. However my contact cement (proper toluene stuff) does thicken over time. To avoid this I use one of those glue pots with the lid. I try to only decant from the big tin what I'll use that day. It doesn't stop evaporation so I do need to add thinners every now and then but it does slow things down a lot, since I'm opening the tin far less often. It also reduces the amount of vapours hanging around the shed, is less messy than working directly from the tin and provides a handy place for the glue brush to sit. https://www.leathercaresupply.com/products/ts-boy-glue-cement-adhesive-pots?variant=12934815973459