TomG

I have used brass plated double cap rivets for years now, but now need to use the solid brass for one of my customers. My question is, how strong are they compared to the plated rivets. They will be putting a lot of force on them. Thanks

I don't supposed that you'd want to share the recipe, would you?

I use 1 of 2 products. My standard is Leather Balm with Atom Wax. I rub it in heavy on the back not quite as heavy on the front. After each side, I roll it and flex it that turns my strap from stiff and dry to limber and flexible. I've also used Mink Oil Paste with the same results. That also makes it a bit waterresistant as well.

I use Leather Balm with Atom Wax (Fiebings) and after rubbing in front and back, pull the belt over a smooth, rounded desk edge on top and bottom. For super dry leather I've also use Mink Oil Paste with great success.

Cool. That's why I suggested checking When I was looking at a new Consew 226 at a local dealer, it had the servo with the knob. I saw several like that, but this one was the main one I remember was on or off and not variable.

Looks good, but I've seen them for a little less from time to time. My only concern would be that servo motor. The ones I've seen with that knob on the front can vary the speed with the pedal pressure. The knob sets the top speed. The pedal is just on or off. You might want to ask the seller. Since it was installed by a commercial place, they may have a different version or had modified it.

Does anyone know where I might find a set of these adapters? Tandy has discontinued them. I mainly need the one on the right. I want to cut off the post and attach it to a heat embossing machine to heat emboss and foil stamp

Inkscape is free, very popular, VERY powerful and has lots of YouTube tutorials. I'd suggest getting the Fusion 360 (free version) and Inkscape and try them both. Do 2-3 tutorials for each and see which suits you. Personally, I use Coredraw as we also do custom screen and sublimation printing. I learned it fairly easily, but I had tried Adobe Illustrator and had a mental block with it for some reason.

Howdy all. I have a relatively new Consew 227-R2. I was sewing some dog tag leads and the needle must have hit a hard spot in the leather and shifted, making the needle slam into the bottom dogs and snapping the needle. Had it happen before, so I figured no problem. Well, Problem... It had apparently pushed the needle bar up, because I couldn't pick up the bobbin thread. I checked the timing and the needle was well above the hook when the hook was at the needle. I had a marked needle that I used some time ago when I had to replace the needle bar, so I inserted it properly, positioned the hook and adjusted the needle bar to the mark. It seemed to sew OK but I quickly found I have 2 issues, 1) When the presser foot is all the way up and locked in place, the guide at the bottom of the needle bar hits the presser foot as I raise the needle to thread it. 2) As the bobbin gets low, it begins showing in the top threads. When full, it is nearly perfectly centered between the pieces. No tensions were altered. So, why would the needle bar hit the presser foot when it didn't before? And, how do I adjust that? Did I do something wrong when adjusting the timing? Any ideas as to the bottom stitch coming up? Photo attached.

There is homopolymer and copolymer type of Acetal. Homo is Delrin and CO is not. There is also HDPE. You want the Homopolymer. Check and see exactly what you bought from each. Please let us know what you find out.

A couple of things here. First, I would dump the deadblow hammer. You can still get bounce with them. Get a 2+ pound Maul or Hammer. rawhide is bet, but the new Poly Mauls work well too. Next, don't just moisten the leather. Wet it thoroughly and evenly. Allow it to dry until it LOOKS almost dry, but is still cool to the touch. Use your cheek on the back side. Now, he's a key to getting better impressions on thin leather. Put a piece of 8oz or thicker under it and stamp. The thinner the leather, the less fibers you have to compress into a the image. The scrap piece lets the impression hold better. So.. Yes, you CAN wet the leather and stamp it while soaked, but you will find that many times you get squishy impression edges and the details will fade as it dries. You can also see the leather distort and do other weird things as it dries. You can also spray the surface and let it dry a bit and then stamp. The key here is to properly case your leather. Casing is basically getting the moisture to the core of the leather but have the surfaces almost dry. You can get away with these shortcuts on thicker leather, but thin benefits from using the proper method. For heating, you can use a gas stove, alcohol lamp, or even a propane torch. But beware. The newer Tandy stamps are pot metal and even a gas range (stove) can actually melt them. A propane torch will turn them to slag in a heartbeat.. For now, just case as I described and use the heavy scrap leather under it and on top of your granite slab. Oh. You can dye first, but leave and top coats or treatments off. They can block the water being absorbed.

I use Leather Balm.with Atom Wax to coat and seal the leather. i then mix neutral Fiebings Antiquing Gel mixed with white acrylic paint (or choice of other color) and apply with a dauber. i let it sit for just a minute and then use a cloth folded into a stiff pad to wipe it off. Think Block dye technique. Refold to a clean side and flat wipe again. Repeat until no more comes off. You will likely see speckles of White in the pores of the leather. Most of this will probably come out later. Let dry well. Use another stiff pad to apply 50/50 Resolene using same method.Flat wipe. You are not trying to get it in the depressions right now. You should see some or all of the speckles disappear. Some leathers just seem to have pores too large to get all of the color out. but most look pretty good.

I no longer use SS. I use Leather Balm with Atom Wax. 1 coat only. Apply your antique. Personally, I prefer the Fiebings version. The EcoFlo stained through the LB at times. I leave it on just until the surface starts to turn dull. I then wipe it off using a thick, firm pad of cloth as if I am block dying a piece. I don't want it digging into the impressions and wiping the gel out of them. I let it dry overnight. I then use 50/50 resolene the same way. Like a block dye. I wipe it once, turn my cloth over so it's a fresh side, wipe it a second time and then let it dry overnight. Done. Understand that Resolene is essentially Acrylic floor wax and hasx ammonia in it. By its nature, it will strip the gel out every time you wipe it. It cuts through the previous coats and take them off or smears them. If you need another coat after the first ones dry, use a brush and stroke in 1 direction only and only once. But it's tricky. There is a frequent poster here by the name of Dwight who I believe has a lot of experience doing just that. You might search for him and ask him. You can also do a search in the forums. This question has been answered a number of times before. Good luck

I think they are referring to the Black LB/AW. Fiebings has stopped making all flavors except Neutral. I spoke with one of their chemists a year or so ago. He advised me that you can take some of the EcoFlo leather dyes and mix then with the neutral LB/AW and have an equivalent for the discontinued products. He didn't know the ratios and advised me to just do small samples and start with maybe 5% dye to 95% LB. What I did was make brown and black. I dyed some sample pieces and used my test batches to see the results. To be honest, I actually found little difference between the Neutral and the "best" brown batch and on the black, I saw virtually no difference whatsoever. So now, I just use the neutral for everything. BTW, I make a ton of dog collars, belts, key fobs and such. I use the LB/AW for almost everything and love it. I put it on after the dye and buff it well, then, if I have any stampings/engravings, I apply my antiquing on top, let it sit until I see it just start to lose it's "gloss" and then wipe it off as if I was block dying a piece. After it dries overnight, I apply 50/50 resolene, again, using a block dye technique applied quickly. This takes off any excess antiquing with ripping the stuff out of the impressions.

You can use deer skin to line them, but why bother? Lightly sand the back. Use Leather Balm with Atom Wax top and bottom and rub in well. That makes for a fairly smooth finish on the bottom, unless it's an absolutely crap piece of leather. Follow up with some Mink Oil paste or SnoPruf. That will help waterproof it to a degree. You'll find that the collar will also absorb oil from the dog's skin and soften up nicely in short order.

As Northmount said, I've found that the vast majority of Fiebings dyes will require at least diluting 50/50 with alcohol. Some of the heavier pigments may require more alcohol to get the color you want. I used old prescription bottle that I had washed out to make small test batches. I'd do one at 50/50, one at 25/75 and one at even 10/90. (Dye/Alcohol). If it changed too much, I'd play with 40/60 or 60/40 depending on what I was trying to achieve. For example, I used 15/85 of Oxblood to make a light pink. What you will find is that at some point the color will start looking washed out and not be a true color. Royal blue is an example of that which I first saw that effect. One note... if your state allows it, get some 10ml syringes and use those to to your ratios. That save wasting dye. As you do your samples with each, be sure to write the ratios on each test piece. When you are all finished, you can usually dump all of the samples back into the main bottle without much effect on the original dye color. This is especially true if you are buying quarts. Oh.. You want to make sure that you are applying the dyes the same way and same amount to each sample. The best way I found to do it is a quick dip into the dye and let dry. Use a 1" wide piece to dip. In and out....

Try the drill press or hand drill route

I used to make a spacing strap our of nylon webbing and brass grommets. I would chuck a standard punch into my drill press. Set to a medium speed and use it to bore through the webbing. The punch generated enough heat to melt as it cut and I had perfectly cut holes. I used both wood and plastic cutting boards as backers.

As Hildebrand said. This is normal. Let me see if I can remember how it was explained to me. Picture a doughnut. If you measure the diameter of the outside and of the inside, they are different, of course. Say that the outside is 3" across and the inside is 2" across. Using the formula for the circumference, c=pid, the outside circumference is 9.42" and the inside is 6.28". And, since the circumference is equivalent to the "length" around the circle, you see that there is a 3.13" difference in length. In practical matters, you'd have to figure the diameters based on the thickness of the leather - if I remember right, it's something like outside diameter - thickness x 2. As for mixed tannages, people glue Chrome to Veg all the time. BUT, regardless of tannages, measure and glue everything up flat, not curved.

Oh Lord, Dwight.. You are not doing that at all. That's basically what I've been doing. I sort of pull the bobbin thread intil it "feels" right. and adjust my top tension from there. I was just blabbering about a "wish" <g>... I thought that might have contributed. I haven't had a chance to play with it and do any fine tuning. Woke up sick this morning.

Thanks. I THOUGHT I had that happening on my test sews after the repair. I'm going to breakout some good scrap and go back through all of the tension setup steps. That being said. I just discovered that both of the presser foot tensions were very light. I never thought to check those. The way my hands fed the 2 different pieces was different and I was probably holding the test piece down a bit without thinking about it. The leash was mainly making sure it fed straight :-) I'll know for sure shortly.. I do wish there was a way to precisely adjust the bobbin tension. With our 12 needle embroidery machines, we take the bobbin carrier out and hang 4 quarter taped together to the thread and bounce it. We adjust the tension until a bounce drops the stack and then stops. Easy-Peasy

First, thanks for all the help earlier on my needle bar issue. I replaced it and checked timing and it looks OK, I think. But, I was sewing on a leash today for a repair and the stitching is for crap. I did not mess with bobbin tensions or top tensions during the repair. Sewing with 138 and 22 needle. Now, the leash is sort of soft, well-used VegTan. I adjusted the stitch length to use the old holes. My test piece was a lot better looking, but not 100% perfect. So, I guess the question is.. Can the quality and firmness of the leather affect the stitch quality in this way? Photo shows top side and bottom side.

Been there. done that on a few mechanical machines. Like I said.. unless I KNOW it's a press fit, I check with others who might know. I just finished installing the new bar and did OK. It took a little experimenting to figure out how to reassemble, since a couple of parts did not want to cooperate . The main issue was the very tight tolerances on one of the sliding bars behind the rocking arm. Had to take abreak and ease up on my back, but now going to check the hook timing. Later

I'm in the process of replacing it now, but kind of stuck. I have the feed dog removed, loosened the clamp screw on it and it drops dpwn just fine.. except it hits the edge of the bobbin assy. I need about 2mm of movement to allow it to completely drop out. I've removed the screws that I THINK should allow the needle rocker frame to slide a little but it's not budging. I'm not comfortable forcing anything until I know it needs to be forced. That part is the pivot pin that the rocker goes on. I put in a call to Bob and will probably hear from him sooner or later. If I find it's OK to pry that pin out a tad, I'll be golden.

Nothing you can do. they are made from stamped metal. Once they start to bend, they are toast. Don't worry about throwing away cheap trash. You probably paid around $10 or so. Say $15. If you had it for 3 years, that's $5 a year! Go invest in a good, solid punch. I have the one I bought from Tandy about 12 years ago (around $25 on sale at the time) and use it almost daily. I either polish.hone the tubes in a drill press when they get dull or I simply buy replacement tubes. Try to get one with a replaceable anvil and you will have a tool that will last you a lifetime. You'll never regret it.