Northmount

Acetone (fingernail polish remover) will dissolve many finishes. Fiebing's dye thinner removes some. Deglazer also. Toluene (contact cement thinner) is another. Look at what is recommended for thinners and try that one first. They may remove some of the dye as well. They will dry out the leather so it needs to be conditioned again. Most water-based dyes are very sensitive to being dissolved by the stronger chemical thinners used in non-water based finishes. Even alcohol dyes can be lifted too, but not quite as easily. Hence the instructions to always buff the dye off the surface before putting anything on top of it. Your dye started out in a dissolved form when you used it. Any solvent stronger than water is likely to lift it. Of course water can lift water based dyes too. Tom

Bottom side will never look as good as the top side of the stitch. Needle and thread size chart at Toledo Industrial (and other places too) http://www.tolindsewmach.com/thread-chart.html Tom

Hello from Calgary. You'll find a number of Canadians here too. Welcome Tom

If you press on the pedal a little, it releases the motor brake so you can hand wheel it easier. If you are sewing heavy leather, even with a servo motor, you may need either gear or pulley speed reduction to help punch through the leather at slow speeds. Tom

Hello from Calgary, and welcome. Tom

This is normal. The leather has to be displaced by the needle. Not the same as fabric. Smaller needle, smaller thread can reduce the amount. Leather needles may help. You can pound the rough side down with a smooth faced hammer. Don't go at it too hard! Moistening the leather slightly after sewing and slicking it with a bone folder or slicker will also help smooth it out. Will also help remove feeddog marks. Tom

And the machine presser foot and feeddogs will leave more marks on your leather ... just like we case leather for tooling. Tom

There is a report button on each post. Click on it and give the moderator the instructions or fixes needed. They can help you. Tom

Do a search. There have been a number of threads discussing wood stain as well as wood dye. Stain has additional chemicals that some posters suggest will ultimately cause problems. Tom

Adding to Kevin's comment, fit the added depth as a gusset. Length to go all around the case, width ... the thickness of the tablet plus seam allowance for both edges of the gusset. Tom

Texas custom dies can make cutting dies for you. http://www.texascustomdies.com/products.php. See bottom of page. There are lots of other suppliers around too. For something like "CHIEF" you could order steel, delrin, or other types of plastic stamps from companies like http://www.infinitystamps.com/leather_stamps.html. Do a search here and you will find other suppliers too. Lots of posts have been for makers stamps ... so if you search for them, you'll find them. Tom

They all look great, very bright colour! Nice barbed wire. Tom

Is it stiff turning by hand with no belt and no leather under the needle. If so, something is binding up. Take the needle out and try it. If it is not binding, then the hook or shuttle is binding against the needle and needs adjusted or bent needle replaced. Also had a case where the bobbin and hook were not locked in properly and it was stretching the top thread real tight as it was supposed to pass over bobbin, and would twang as it finally clear the bobbin. It liked to break the top thread. I'm not familiar with your machine so my description of the bobbin area may not match your machine. If it is easy to turn without the belt, then recognize that the 3:1 gear reduction in the motor is making it harder to turn manually, or your belt is way too tight. I hope your have the smallest diameter pulley on the motor, else your are defeating the purpose of getting the gear reduction motor. The smaller motor pulley gives you a slower stitching speed, and increases the torque available to help punch the needle through the leather. On a 227 style machine, I had to add a pulley reducer as well to be able to run the machine slow enough and have the torque to punch through 2 plus of 8 oz leather. Tom

I'd use the pattern from bushcraft just above your last post. It looks better and gets rid of the seam down the front. I just took a look at the corrected pattern near the end of the video. The brim is the same width all around. See the frame grabbed here Tom

Here is another link, more detailed, no front seam http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=103523 Tom

Here is a video with a pattern near the end. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTJCi63O6Uw There is also some good hat making info in this thread http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=40162&pid=249679&st=0entry249679 Tom

You generally don't want to put a light looking straight down onto the article since the shiny spots will bounce straight back to the camera. If you place it shining across the article, from the top or the bottom, it would give deeper shadows for any depressions. On carved/tooled work, would show the textures off much more. For the holster, it may show off the molding a bit more. One thing about digital cameras is, can do lots of experimentation and see the results right away, no cost or delay for processing film. So experiment some more. Good luck. Tom

The picture is quite good. There is not a lot of hot spot reflection, and most people wouldn't notice what little there is. Can see the molding quite well. (Better on my PC than on my iPad. Lots of web photos don't show well on it.) So photo wise, you're doing a great job too. And the holster looks pretty great too. Kept the white thread white! Sometimes very hard to do. Tom Edit: Just saw David's comment, the right side light needs to move down on the right a little so the whole vertical length is covered. I think you are using just one light from the right? Hard to tell. Use 1 from each side at roughly 45 degrees up from the center of the holster. You might have been casting a shadow from the ambient light that dimmed the forward edge. So many things to look out for. Maybe your diffuser over your light needs to be bigger, so the light appears to be a larger circle covering all the holster.

Pretty neat setup. Tom

Decided I better test IE. Looks like IE doesn't work for me either. So it really appears to be browser related. I just tried something that works with IE. Each character has a decimal (or hexadecimal) code that the computer uses. 013 is the code for CR (carriage return). So if you hold the alt key down and type 013 on the keypad (has to be on the keypad), then release the alt key, you get a return. That is how each return has been done in this post using IE 10 in Windows Pro 7. I need to figure out why the Enter (return) key doesn't work here. Must be some setting in IE itself. Tom

Shiny materials will almost always have "hot spots" where the light is reflected into the camera lens. Try to use diffused light where ever possible. Take outdoor shots in the shade or on cloudy days. For indoor shots, you need to collect a few items of equipment to help out. Thin paper, muslin cloth, fiberglass cloth over light sources will diffuse the light and get away from a pin-point source reflections. Reflected light from a flash/strobe bounced off the ceiling will give you diffused scattered light that will help, and will eliminate some shadows. Here are a number of links that may provide you some useful tips. http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-make-a-inexpensive-light-tent DIY light tent, notice there is still hot spots on some of the examples, it didn't get rid of all the problem. http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/lighting/93930-do-you-have-any-tips-using-light-box.html You'll see some comments here about not using a light tent! http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/how-i-took/39101-my-first-diy-light-box-tent-shots.html http://strobist.blogspot.ca/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/other-digital-photography-technique-discussion/203536-how-achieve-look-product-photography.html some highly reflective metal Some where in an old book around here, there was a comment about dusting a powder (same colour) over the item to reduce the amount of reflection. Maybe a simple cure might be (depending on the order of your assembly and work) would be to take the photos before the holster is all buffed up and shiny. Hope you find something useful here. Tom

I use Windows 7 pro and Firefox most of the time with no problem. Try it or try IE and see if there is a difference for you. Tom

Really neat idea and great operation. Thanks. Tom

I use Firefox, Internet Explorer, and an iPad. Have no problems with either of them. What operating system, what browser, what type of computer, what version of each? With that type of info, someone may be able to help you. On Facebook, I have to press shift plus enter to start a new paragraph. Try that and see what it does for you. To troubleshoot something, you need to provide enough information for others to see what is happening. Statements like it doesn't work won't get the help you desire. This applies to all aspects of life and work. So a note to all people here, give adequate background, how did you do it, what did you use? Give the details of what you did and what you expected. We don't have a crystal ball that we can use to observe you! Tom Edit. PS. Does your enter key work in other software? Is it a hardware problem like stuck keys?

Very interesting and unique design. Great job. Tom