amuckart

One other thing I discovered last night is that if you need to raise the bottom roller significantly -- as I do on a splitter I just reassembled -- it's much easier if you remove the top roller and physically lift the bottom roller with your fingers so you can spin the nuts down instead of fiddling around in that cramped space with a spanner.

If the bottom roller is just slipping against the leather part of the problem may be that the blade isn't sharp enough. With my Sørensen splitter I found that what I'd think of as 'very sharp' in knife terms was only just sharp enough and what I needed was scary sharp to get good results. I don't know if you have any experience with woodworking tools but the blade on my splitter is about as sharp as a really sharp smoothing plane. If it won't pop hairs off the back of my arm with the lightest touch and zero slicing motion it's not sharp enough. This is a very good site for learning how to sharpen things to scary sharp, and the jigs he shows are pretty easily adapted to splitter blades.: http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/sharpen.html The Book Of Sharpening by Leonard Lee is also a very worthwhile investment for anyone who works with edged tools. My splitter was in much the same shape as your one when I got it, and I had to clean it out pretty good to get it running well. I also had to lap the flat side of the blade and completely rebuild the edge because the corrosion had done for the fine angle. If there is any patination or the slightest pitting anywhere near the edge of the blade then you won't be able to get it sharp. If the blade is scary sharp then there may not be enough pressure between the rollers. Try taking the blade out and with the thickness set to zero, raise the bottom roller until it's about a paper-thickness away from the top roller then with the thickness set to maximum put the blade back in and adjust the blade carrier until the blade is about a paper thickness away from the top roller, level it all out and give it a go. I've just cleaned up another crank splitter so I'll be setting it up in the next few days. I'll take pictures of my process when I do and post them on the board.

Ray, Are you restoring a book that actually dates from the 14th or 15th century? If you are, are you a specialist restoration bookbinder? Not to diss your skills or anything, but 600 year old books *really* aught to be restored by specialists, preferrably specialists in that particular period of binding. Something else to remember about corn starch, it's a New World thing, corn coming from the Americas and all so if you want something pre 1500 you'll want to be looking at wheat starch or hide glue, whether rabbit, fish, horse, or cattle.

Hi all, This weekend I picked up my second Pearson #6, head only alas, no stand, but it came with not one but two bobbin winders. One of them is a BUSM one, sans wax pot etc but I can't identify the other at all. It fits Pearson bobbins, but the casting quality isn't up with the BUSM one so I'm guessing it was for some other brand of large boat-shuttled machine. There are no makers marks visible on it. Can anyone help me identify it? Overall view of the winder: This is it next to the BUSM one: The space for the bobbin isn't quite the same as the BUSM one, but the #6 bobbins fit fine. This is the hand wheel. Unlike the BUSM winder, the handle is cast iron Thanks.

Nice work. It's always good to see someone else who's been bitten by the old iron bug! I'm hella jealous of your 31-15, they don't show up in that condition often, let alone with an industrial treadle table. I really want one of those industrial treadle stands to put my 45k on. I'll just have to console myself with the fact that my 1877 UFA is the oldest singer patcher I know of

I have a fair bit of experience with the buttonholer attachments for the straight-stitch singers, and I seriously doubt you'll get one to sew buttonholes even in garment leather. Most of them will barely sew a presentable buttonhole in fabric, let alone anything stickier. I have one that works fairly well in some fabrics, but it's one of 6-10 I have and it only plays nicely with my 201-1. The rest are curiosities, and basically useless for sewing. These attachments do move the material so ideally you need a machine that you can drop the feed dogs on to make these work (the 201 does). for other machines there was a little plate you could put over the feed dogs to make the attachments work. Frankly these attachments were an attempt to bring straight-stitch machines into competition with the (then) newfangled zig-zag machines, but they never worked all that well as far as I know. Have you tried getting a modern machine and feeding a couple of layers of garment leather through it to see if it'll put buttonholes in? Modern machines move the material straight back and forth and move the needle side to side to make the pattern. I don't have access to my one modern machine right now or I'd go try it out but it'll sew through four layers of 14oz canvas without too much trouble, so I doubt a couple of layers of garment leather will pose problems. Your limitation will be what size of 15x1 needle you can find to feed the thread you want. My big question is why do you want to put stitched-in buttonholes in leather? In fabric you need all that stitching to stop the fabric unravelling, but in leather you don't have that problem so you'd be better off with a different edge treatment anyway, surely?

If you find this information, can you share? I'd give my eye teeth for a comprehensive catalogue of Singer screw specifications. Cheers.

(delurking after a few months off the board)Wiz is right about the other parts being for shoe repair but FWIW they're not lasts. Lasts are forms of the inside of a shoe that the shoe is originally made on and are plastic or wood. I'd call those repair anvils. They're used for putting inside a shoe you're resoling and either hammering down a glued-on sole or to just hold the shoe while you work on it. If I were local I'd buy 'em off you because it's a slightly more complete set than I have, but I wouldn't pay more than about US$40 for all of them.

Hi Ray, Try and get hold of Edwin Hale at Hale & Co. http://haleandco.com/ he's got new old stock Barnsley awls in all sorts of sizes and can probably sort you out. I got some fine heel awls from him a while ago. That said, by far the nicest awl I've ever used was made by Dick Anderson at Thornapple River Boots, http://www.thornappleriverboots.com/ he's a real gentleman and a fine craftsman. His website is out of date and doesn't reflect his current prices or stock, but if you send him a picture he can make pretty much any sort of awl you want.

The #6 should handle the lighter stuff, but the problem you'll probably have is finding smaller gauges of needle for it. As far as I'm aware, the #230 is the only vaguely easily available size. The Junker & Ruh has the same issue - needles for it are a bugger to find. It's also quite limited in its throat depth. If you want something for fine work, try and get a smaller cylinder bed machine like a Singer 45k.

That looks for all the world like a Frobana/Gritzner outsoler with the cover missing. Here's my one: You can get needles for them, but unless you get a bunch on the cheap with the machine they're stupid expensive (they make SD.28 needles look dirt cheap by comparison).

Hi DJ, Do you have any photographs of the existing scabbard and closeups of the leather, and are the chape and lockets intact? I presume you have hide glue for fixing up the core? Do you know what pattern the scabbard is? I've build a couple of scabbards from scratch, nothing as late as WWI though (by several hundred years ) but I have a fairly good feel for the overall process. One of the key things is going to be figuring out how the seam at the back was originally built. Once you know that you can generate a pattern by building a tree of the scabbard. Cheers.

Hi CeCe, These are neat machines. I have two of them myself, a W100 and a W111, which has an inbuilt lining trimmer. I haven't yet got mine going though. Needle sizes are listed in the manual as 128x10 up to 128x24. 128 is the Singer needle class, and the 10 or 24 refer to the size. Welcome to the wonderful world of needle classes and systems. Have a search on this board for "needle size" and "needle system" and you'll turn up some good info. I found a really good chart with conversions between various system designations but I can't find it right now. I'm afraid I don't know off the top of my head what the largest it will take is, but I'm sure someone will be along shortly who does. I'm still getting my head around thread sizing myself. There is a manual available at: http://parts.singerc...anuals/236W.pdf that will get you started. The text is there but the pictures are washed out, it's better than nothing. I have an original manual at home but I just moved house so I'm not sure where it is right now. I'll scan it when I can. These machines have a bit of a reputation for having two speeds, off, and flat-out. You can get spray on belt conditioner from an auto store that will give the belts grip and allow you to run the machine more slowly. Good luck!

Hi Mike, That makes sense. The recipe is pretty similar to how I made code for hand stitching but I don't use lampblack. I use black pine pitch if I need black code. No real worry about the sword getting glued in place. The mix doesn't soak all the way through to the grain side of the leather. If it did your feet would get stuck in the boots too

Hi Ray, Is there enough of the surface left to figure out whether they were originally made grain-in or grain-out? I'm curious now. If they're grain-in then I'd put money on them being jacked. If they're grain out it's still a possibility, but I wouldn't put so much money on it. Heh, I've just read the thread on spit-polishing and the descriptions of bulling boots in there. When I first read this question I didn't understand what the phrase meant It's not the same, no. I can't remember where I originally got the term 'jacking' from, possibly Baker's Black Jacks and Leather Bottels, possibly Garsault (quoted below), possibly elsewhere but I understand it as a process of impregnating leather with hard, black, resin/wax mixtures to render it hard and water resistant. It's worth noting that while this process involves heat, the process as I understand (and practice) it relies on the resins impregnating the leather to impart the stiffness not a wet heating as in cour bouille. As far as I can tell the waxes are added to cut the brittleness of the rosin and help carry the mixture into the leather. It's really an impregnation process, not just a surface conditioning. It has the advantage of being restoreable too. If the finish cracks or the scabbard gets bent some heat and more jacking should fix it. Even applied to the flesh surface of leather it's possible to get a very high finish. The URL I posted in my original reply has pretty good descriptions of the process, one of which I'll paste in below: "Having one pair of boots... over their boot trees and previously wet, but now dry, take a coarse wood rasp, which is rubbed over the whole boot-leg to remove the fluff which stands up on the flesh; after this you proceed with the jacking/waxing... The place for jacking/waxing must be a room with a chimney, paved or tiled [NB-- "...where there is no fear of fire" in one edition]; near the top of the chimney, outside, is attached an iron chain which dangles to within six inches of the floor or there-abouts. You ready yourself for jacking/waxing by putting a small portable stove or lit brazier on a table to your left, on which you place a kettle containing the following recipe: One pound of yellow wax, two pounds of colophony, which is pine rosin, and lampblack to suit. You also furnish yourself with a swab, this is the name of a large dauber formed from a bundle of linen rags bound together, and have on your right, on the ground, some loose straw... Begin your task by lighting a little straw, which you wave under the bootleg to singe it, in other words to burn the rest of the fluff from the leaher that the rasp did not remove; afterward dip the swab in the BOILING [NB -- emphasis added] jacking/wax with which you coat the entire bootleg. Then continually rotate the boot-tree with your hands over a steady straw fire so that the heat makes the jacking/wax penetrate. You put on six sucessive coats in the space of an hour, being very careful to occasionally moisten the bootleg so it will not scorch, and so it takes two hours time to jack/wax one pair of boots. The bootleg now jacked/waxed, leave it to cool... When the bootleg has been jacked/waxed, and once more is thouroughly cold, it is full of lumps caused by the boiling jacking/wax with which it was coated and saturated; to remove them take an old knife, and using the blade as a scraper, scrape off all these lumps, then rub with a piece of cold wax that you spread very evenly with a stiff brush or burnishing stick, etc., and you finish-off by polishing and shining with the palm of your hand". -- M. de Garsault, 'l'Art du Cordonnier' [Paris, 1767] Now this is a full century later than you're after, but I think what we're reading there is a plausible explanation for the preparation of 'Black Jacks' and other hardened black, waxed leather goods that go back well before the 17th Century and is at least a reasonable starting point for a plausibly accurate technique to treat your scabbard leather. I'd love to see pictures of some of the ones you've made. As an aside, since I've quoted from it here, Al Saguto of the Colonial Williamsburg foundation released his translation and interpretation of Garsault's work this year. It is a pretty deep read but is utterly invaluable for anyone with an interest in historic footwear and leatherwork and I recommend it highly. It's not a stretch to say Al is the worlds foremost living expert on this period of shoemaking and the book reflects that deep knowledge.

Hi Ray, My first reaction is that if you're doing this work for museums then surely they have some extant examples for you to look at, or at least photographs of them? If the ones you're working for don't, get in touch with the Royal Armouries at Leeds. If anyone in Britain has some, they will. You could also look over at www.myarmoury.com and see if there's anything in the forum archives there, but it's a big forum so you have to be pretty good with the search. There are a couple of ways I think this could go. Jacked leather, or leather-over-wood. Earlier swords were generally found in wooden-cored scabbards that were covered with fabric then thin leather (or fancy fabric, or whatever). They got their stiffness from the wood, the leather was just there to hold everything together. Purely speculating, but if you're dealing with documented leather-only scabbards then I'd guess they were made grain-in and jacked on the outside with a mix of rosin a touch of wax or oil and lampblack. Singe off any hairy bits of the flesh side and daub the mix in hot so it soaks in. Do that for several coatings and then burnish the hell out of it and you'll get a great smooth surface and it'll harden up the leather nicely. There are descriptions of jack boots and helmets made like this from the 18th century that are described as being as hard as wood. Look here: http://www.personal....leather/hl.html under the heading "LATE ADDITIONS" near the bottom. That's all 18th-19th century, but it's perhaps a start. Really though, the folk at Leeds are probably your best bet. HTH

This does bring up something I've been thinking about a fair bit recently, seeing as I have 20 or so antique treadles and hand cranks, which is that it would be really useful to establish a library of decals photographed in a standard way (fairly easy with a tripod) that could then be used to create SVG versions of the decal sets. The fun part is figuring out how to flatten the graphic so that when you print is and then transfer it back onto the curved machine head it still looks right.

Hi Wiz, As far as I'm aware, the short version is that you can't. You could get a second-hand ALPS printer and print your own on water slide decal paper if you can find or draw the the graphics to print out, but that's sufficiently difficult that nobody I'm aware of is producing them for anyone else. You'll probably have more luck finding an absolute mint condition redhead machine than you will finding replacement decals.

Another question about my machine for people who know more about them than I do. On my machine, there is a an open-topped box at the back of the machine with a pipe that goes through a hole in the chassis of the head to the front of the machine (ignore the needle, I poked it in to make sure the hole did go all the way through like I thought). On the catalogue page I linked to above, and on this picture from Badger's post about his second machine there is a tube coming off the front of that pipe to a box under the bed where the needle comes down past the shuttle. Here's a picture from my machine showing the needle at the bottom of its stroke protruding into the space where it looks like the box attaches On the catalogue page there's what I'm guessing is a burner under the box too. My guess is that this is the "patent top-waxing apparatus" mentioned in the catalogue, but I am curious as to how it's purpose differs from the top wax pot, and if/where I can get such an apparatus for my machine (Badger, do you use yours?), since if it is what I think it is it might be fiddly and messy but it would be right useful for some of the sewing I plan on doing with my machine.

Hi John, Sadly the geometry is all wrong, and trying is practically guaranteed to strip the corners off of the bolts. Oh yes indeed. I have over 1500 pictures of my Pearson & Bennion A1, taken as I stripped it apart. Pictures of this will all end up on my website eventually. Me too, but it's a little while away yet. I imagine it's going to be a long process to rebuild her and I've got other machines in the pipeline at the moment. I've got a 5-in-1 and a 45k I'm working on right now and as soon as I've got myself a set of 4- or 8-point sockets I'll finish my A1, then a couple of post-beds, then I can start thinking about whether to start the #6 or do the bell-knife skiver. Having cleaned and oiled it it looks like it'll sew Ok as it is but I haven't built a bobbin winder yet so I haven't had a chance to find out. Cheers.

Here are some locally-hosted pictures of it. I plan on getting the base sandblasted, but using evaporust and soda blasting to clean up the head parts since sandblasting can re-profile the surface of the metal. The stand in this picture is missing the bolt-on shelves. I have them, but one of them is broken so I need to get it welded up. The pitman rod has been replaced with an ugly chunk of galvanised steel. I have the nice shaped original wooden ones for my A1 so I plan on making a bigger version of one of those to replace it with. This is about as bad as the rust gets. Luckily this is restricted to the feet of the stand. Here are a couple of shots of the back of the machine, which there don't seem to be many of on the forum. The machine when I got it was covered in dirt but has a relatively light consistent patina of rust without any deep pitting I can see. The cam tracks in the main wheel are a great example of something that must have taken a highly skilled patternmaker to make originally, but which are ideally suited to modern CNC machining. When I have the machine stripped down I plan on contacting the engineering department at my local university to see if I can get the parts scanned with a 3D scanner. The shuttle seems nice and sharp but I haven't got the machine to the point of being able to sew with it to find out yet. Serial number 7536. From reading other forum posts I'm guessing this puts the machine in the 1920s somewhere. The flywheel has a sort of 'roped' design on it, which is different to the square linear design on Badger's second one. I'm curious as to how many designs there were. The roped decoration can be seen in this image from Moore Leather's post of BUSM catalogue pages but there isn't enough paint left on the needle bar actuator arm of my machine to tell if it had the roped decoration on there too. Seeing as I'm going to have to repaint the machine I'd really like to work out what the original livery probably looked like. The one in the catalogue pages has a quite different stand to my one too.

Where did you find your information on the Scandinavian sheaths? I'm familiar with sheaths of this type from medieval reenactment since this is how the vast majority of medieval knife sheaths were made, often with two layers of leather flesh-side to flesh-side or with a wooden core for bigger knives (and swords). If you're interested in seeing examples, there is a book Knives and Scabbards published by Boydell Press (originally by the Museum of London) and available from David Brown Book Company that has details of many examples of medieval knife sheaths constructed like this.

I see Frank Jones over on the HCC forum has sorted you for a source of these in the UK, but I thought I'd just append a little info on here for future searchers. As far as I know these were originally shoemakers tools and are variably called a "fitters hammer", "closers hammer" and "paste hammer". Colin Barnsley at Woodware repetitions is the man to talk to in the UK about getting good ones: Woodware Repetitions Ltd. 47 Mowbray Street Sheffield S3 8EN tel: 0114 2726060

Nice work, and well done for using the actual clan badge, not the arms of Ramsay of Ramsay as so many people do in that sort of situation.