Matt S

Thanks Tom. Guess I'll stick with the knife and save up for a bell skiver.

Has anyone tried one of the Scharffix paring machine clones that have been comihttp://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/152035434768g out of China recently? They are black rather than green and take double edge razor blades. Seems like a good deal at £100odd rather than £2-300 for a genuine one.: An example listing Would such a machine be suitable for my purposes? I'm looking to pare the edges of 1-2mm thick leather, chrome or veg tan, for turned edges.

I use Renia 315 for general purposes. It works fine unless the leather is particularly greasy, and that can cause problems for most contact cements. It's water based so no nasty fumes. Available from Algeos. Copydex can be used too, possibly the latex-type glue mentioned by johnv above. It smells a bit fishy as you apply it but after it dries is fine. Again water based so no fumes. Normally you apply it to one surface and press until dry but it works quite well as a contact cement if you apply to both surfaces and allow to dry before bringing the surfaces together. You can get it from the highstreet in a little bottle with a brush built into the lid which is nice. Only real problem is it gets a bit gummy if you have to stitch through it.

The stuff used for seat panels on English style saddles. It's soft, thin, has a pronounced grain on the hair side and a uniform sueded finish on the flesh side. I suspect it's chrome tanned sheep but I'm not entirely sure. What is it?

For some reason I never thought of using coad on Tiger. I'll have to give that a go.

It really is so much better than straight beeswax when using linen thread, I don't know why more people don't use it.

I have them. This thread prompted me to try them (I have quite a few pricking irons...). No the between-prong edges aren't polished. The shafts are a bit shorter than I am used to. But the marks are regular and even. For £16-17 I can't complain. Very few things in life are perfect.

Gmace on here has a YouTube channel with some great tips. One on rotary punches is to put a scrap of leather between the anvil and the piece you want to punch. This not only protects the cutting edge but makes for a cleaner cut hole. I guess this might help with your problem too, where I think in order to complete the hole you might be squeezing so hard as to bend the punch tubes. I find that if I use a scrap on top of the anvil the punch is much easier to use.

How long should I expect a well burnished edge to last? I mainly use good English bridle and some plain veg for what I produce. I can get a good smooth, hard, shiny edge all sorts of ways. Sometimes even quickly. But within a month of heavy use, they start to shag out. My longest lasting results are with the following technique: 1) Edge and quick sand at about 320 wet & dry 2) Plain water hand burnish. By this stage it's getting smooth and shiny 3) Power burnish with beeswax on a felt wheel, then buffed with a piece of cloth 4) Repeat step 3, a little heavier 5) Neutral edge kote, hand burnishing when half dry Is there something I'm doing wrong, or is this to be expected? Is there something I could be doing better? Am I expecting too much?

Blueguns are about £50 in the UK, not cheap for a one-off project. Inexpensive airsoft revolvers may be a bit cheaper but Sharkey will need to know some more details about the gun, mainly the frame type and barrel thickness.

Power control is not normally as simple an affair as a variable resistor.

George Barnesly single point knife. Cost about £13 + tax and needed sharpening but miles better than a utility knife. New utility knife blades may seem sharp but put them to a strop and you'll understand a new meaning of 'sharp'. The main problem is they just aren't a convenient shape for cutting comfortably, intricately or safely in my experience.

Do you cast your thread over each stitch? See Nigel Armitage/Dangerous Beans' videos on saddle stitching for an excellent example.

The smallest I have seen are Osborne #14, the shaft of which is around 1/10" and the head 5/16" diameter.

Which piece of the cow are your belts from? Also, which direction?

You are working from the assumption that they "neutralised" the iron salt striker (such as vinegroon). (I put neutralised in quotes as it is not a true neutralisation; veg tanned leather has a natural pH of around 2 -- and the idea of adding baking soda is to bring the pH back to this level.) That would assume not only an understanding of the chmical processes going on but also a concern that not doing so would detriment the leather (turns out, it does). This also assumes the use of an acidic striker; Will Ghormley soaks his leather in a rusty water barrel and I don't reckon that would do much damage. I suspect they simply flushed with clear water, as a chap at Sedgewicks apparently recommended (only hearsay, can't quote it). If you know what Sedgewicks is, you'll put some stock behind that.

You mentioned in another thread that you want fine stitching. If so you might want to move your stitch holes closer together, 5mm is equivalent to 5spi and quite coarse. Consider that in English style saddlery that 8spi is traditionally "regular", 10spi "good" and 12spi "fine". For 8spi standard 18/3 linen works well. PM me your address and I will send a few feet of a couple different thread sizes.

Jud, where are you located? Batchelors does a good line in well priced pre dyed veg tan. It's thicker than you want but they have an 8" splitter in the workshop, and arrangements can be made. Also metropolitan leather lists pre dyed veg shoulder on their site, any colour you want (colours other than Black and dark havana by arrangement) and can be split down as you like (1.5mm is listed). About £75+carriage+VAT for a double shoulder from memory. They also list bridle similarly.

There we are, family portrait. Left to right: Geo Barnsley 4SPI (Was told this is for spacing boot nails, but if so don't see why it's marked in SPI rather than PPI if so.) 5 SPI x 1-1/2" (probably Dixon) 6 SPI x 1-1/2" modern Dixon 7 SPI x 1-1/2" (unknown) 8 SPI x 1" (probably Dixon) 9 SPI x 1/2" Dryad (marked in PPI) -- fine little thing, lightweight and refined 10SPI x 1-1/2" (unknown) 10 SPI x 1" left handed (unknown, ground down Dixon?) 11 SPI x 3/8" Dryad (non-slanted teeth) 12 SPI x 1/2" (probably Dixon)

Ask 10 different leatherworkers and you will get 11 different answers. I try to avoid anything with petroleum products or silicone; I don't think they're any good for leather but can't prove it. In England and Australia horse tack is traditionally treated with rendered animal fat to maintain suppleness and add water repellency; it works well and is/was cheap, but it takes many effort-laden applications to achieve a good result in raw leather and isn't always the kindest on the noses of more sensitive folk. (English or English-style 'bridle' leather, 'harness' leather, stirrup leather and suchlike have been curried with grease at the tannery.) I like to use dubbin I mix up myself from equal parts lamb tallow and cod oil, plus some beeswax. About the only leather-care that everyone agrees on is to keep it clean, don't force-dry it and don't over-oil.

I replied Dixon and 'other' to the question; I own 9 (actually had to count), mostly second hand. Think I ought to flog a few! Incidentally I was under the impression that Le Prevo's irons are from Dixon? They certainly look the same and there aren't very many English makers. Don't know what the best is, but mine work.

It's largely an aesthetic choice. I prefer a slightly chunkier thread to stitch size than is traditional in English work. A rule of thumb that requires mixing metric and Imperial measurements (in 18-lea based thread) is one yarn per mm between stitches. e.g. in 5SPI we have 5mm between stitches (a chunky rate not much seen in English work but popular in American style rifle cases etc.) I like a 18/5 linen. In 7SPI (good for belts and general work on medium-length stitching runs) 18/4 looks good. In 8SPI (quite fine in American terms but a basic standard in English saddlery) we have 3mm between stitches, and a 18/3 linen thread works well. As I say I prefer a chunkier thread to stitch size than normal in English style work so I roll my threads from a slightly heavier yarn (12 lea) than the numbers quoted above. Best course (as with most things in leatherwork) is to make yourself a sampler using scraps. Set yourself up some pricked lines in whichever stitching rates you intend to use and try a different thread of each size in each one. Remember to label it, then stick it somewhere you won't lose it and refer to it when making each project for the look you want.

You know, I hear this a lot but never really seen any evidence to back it up. I suppose the theory goes that synthetic polymers like whatever tiger thread is made from have a biodegradability several orders of magnitude lower than that of linen. This may be true but we cannot look at that in isolation. I am no materials scientist but the vast majority of synthetic gear I have had fail has been due to ultraviolet exposure. Considering that a lot of leather gear will be exposed to sunlight in the great outdoors I think that this is a valid concern, and could well lead to 'rotting' (or at least failure) of synthetic threads before the equivalent failure of a linen one. Ron Edwards speaks to this in at least one of his books. While research in this area has improved massively over that past few decades since he wrote of it, I consider this to be a major factor in the longevity of my outdoors gear. Linen is surprisingly tough. Plenty of old horse tack is still held together very well many years after its production -- and you should see how filthy a lot of it gets before being put away wet. It doesn't rot as easily as some will have you believe, especially when treated with natural antimicrobial substances when waxing; beeswax, pine rosin, tars and whatever else people use all contribute to this, including in repelling water. Linen too has a further advantage in that it is much less slippery than synthetics. Ask any sailor or marlinspikesman who has worked in both types of material and they will all tell you about how frictionless synthetics are. As an example in traditional materials like linen and manilla a splice may only need three tucks to secure it but in synthetics five or eight may be recommended for the same work -- and then the whole lot whipped over for safety. This may seem like a great thing to ease stitching but it will reduce the ability of each stitch to 'lock' into itself. Indeed there are reports on this forum from experienced saddlers of having tack in to repair where the linen stitches have been worn completely away on both sides of the work but it is still held together strongly by the nubs of the stitches as they pass through the leather. Remember also that stronger is not always better. As an example in fine cabinetmaking animal glue is often used in preference to the more modern PVAs and epoxies, despite the latter being much less hassle and considerably stronger. The reasoning is that if you knock over your lovely slender-legged side table, with animal glue there is a weak link; the glue pops and the leg remains intact, a simple job to repair. But with PVA (which is often stronger than the wood itself) you will have a broken table leg -- an expensive part to replace and that's before you even consider extracting the stump from the joint. Similar deliberate weak 'safety' links occur in electrical fuses and truck half-shafts. With leatherwork we might sometimes want the stitching to be the weak link that gives way before the much more expensive leather tears out, though I admit that such occasions are rare. I don't want this to seem like I'm beating on synthetics. They certainly have their advantages in some aspects, I just prefer linen -- for the above reasons plus tradition and aesthetics. Synthetic polymers (not only in leather thread but also in clothing and other areas) are a lot less expensive for the manufacturers to produce, and very consistent but are not perfect in all situations. I think that linen gets a bit of an unfair hard time.

Dubbin is a conditioner (with some water repellent qualities) rather than a finish; as Gump says it never truly dries. That is what makes it a good conditioner. Many people will tell you that it will 'rot' leather or stitching long term but I disagree on the condition that the dubbin doesn't contain any petroleum products (many shop bought ones do). What it can do is hold grit against and between the fibres of your leather and stitching, which over time may wear them out faster.

Most likely soling leather. It's damn tough.