Northmount

If you have a business name, registered, you don't need to buy a membership at Tandy, and you get the elite pricing. Most places, cost less to register a business name than the elite membership costs. You don't need to incorporate a business, you can run as a proprietorship, and work it in with your personal income taxes. Each has their advantages. Even though an incorporated business has limited liability, you, the President, Chairman of the Board, etc. still can be found liable for your errors. A corporation also has a lot more record keeping to be done. So small time business or busy hobby business, you may find it well worth your while to register a business name. Of course if you are doing your business dealings under the table, no taxes, it doesn't make a lot of difference. Tom

Fantastic. Great ideas and really great work. Tom

Motors have reduced torque at low speeds. So when you are trying to go slow through a difficult part, there isn't enough torque to punch through thicker or harder leather. Then you either hand wheel it, so now have only one hand to guide the leather with, or you step on the pedal harder, and ... Whoops, went further and faster than you wanted too! So adding a speed reducer lets the motor run faster, so it has better torque output, plus the torque amplification due to the speed reducer, now you can run heavier leather at low speeds and keep both hands on the job. I have both a speed reducer and a servo with 3:1 gear reduction. Can go as slow as one stitch in three seconds, so can stop at any needle position, and make complicated turns, all without hand wheeling it. My top speed is a little on the slow side, but I'd sooner have it a little slow and have the torque I want at low speeds. Tom

Use neatsfoot oil or extravirgin olive oil (EVOO) to lightly oil the leather after it is dyed. Some people also lightly oil before applying the dye. Don't apply too much. More is not always better. Neatsfoot oil darkens the leather more than EVOO. Let the item sit 12 to 24 hours after oiling so it can soak in evenly and any splotchy areas will even out. Hard to make it look perfect immediately after oiling without getting too much oil on. So don't panic. Uneven or blotches will disappear after sitting. Tom

Don't try to replace the wires that go into the field windings. Be careful of how much bending you do next to the field windings. You don't want to break them off. You can get some heat-shrink tubing at electronics or electrical parts stores, or Lee Valley. You can unsolder the ends of the wires from the connections away from the field windings. Carefully remove the brittle cracked insulation. Slide the heat-shrink tubing over the wire and heat it with a hot air gun. Some people use a butane lighter, but you are safer and have more control with the hot air gun. Resolder the connections. The armature commutator looks really good. Don't do anything to it as long as there are no grooves that need to be cut out. It makes better contact with the carbon impregnated smoothly worn surface than it does with bright copper. WWII bomber's electric servos were failing on the way back to Britain after bombing raids over Germany. The failures were finally traced to shining up the commutators during servicing before the flight. When you replace brushes, replace the springs too if they are separate. Weak springs, poor contact with the commutator. Hope this helps get it back together and working. Tom Edit: I just went back to look at your pictures. The brushes and springs look good. Make sure they slide freely in the brush holders.

A natural dried leaf surface is fairly smooth between the veins. So my preference is less matting. But, leatherwork is also art, and it is the artist's interpretation that counts. Toss a coin! Tom

Ditto what BeaverSlayer says, It is an oxygen scavenger used to preserve foods and prevent oxidation. Also used in steam boiler water treatment to reduce the residual disolved oxygen level to less than 20 ppb. Tom

How much can you disassemble without doing more damage? If there is room to work ... You can lift the leather away from any backing material. Cut a patch to be inserted behind the leather. May need to skive the edges to reduce the transition around the patch. Use a slower setting glue and work it into the surface of the patch and the underside of the leather. Press it all together and let it set. Depending on what if anything is behind the leather, you may be able to use a roller to help press it together and roll out any bubbles. I've done this with leather jackets and had an almost perfect repair, hard to see or find after it was finished. Didn't have to rip the lining out of the jacket. There is no glue that will hold the leather edge to edge. Also as the leather is very old, dried out, etc. it would only tear beside it if it did hold together. You may need to remove fuzzies from the edges to provide a cleaner edge to work with. This type of repair can be used for small cut or tears as well, however you may have to cut the small tear longer to give enough flexibility and room to work the patch and glue in behind. There is a post somewhere here about a material used to fill in cracks on shoes that may be used to fill in surface cracks. I think it was sort of like a latex and painted on in layers to build it up. Before you start doing the repair, try to condition the old leather by working a little neatsfoot oil or other leather conditioner into the surface of the leather to make it more flexible, but DON'T saturate it. Glue doesn't stick to oil, and you don't want the oil getting on the clothes of anyone that sits on the chair when you are finished the repair. Take your time, go carefully. Tom

When you add a hint of green, I would keep it closer to the stem. The outer edges of the leaf dry out first, so shouldn't have any green left. And I like it without the green. Looks like an inverted carving style, which is fine. Been doing some myself. But as mentioned, reduce the amount of matting. The leaf surface in nature is smooth between veins. Tom

There should be a piece of leather, sort of like a welt, between the outside and the lining leather. It should be the same thickness as the magnets. Punch a hole for the magnet to rest in. Glue the magnet plus welt to the outside layer. You can use a layer of strong cloth over the magnet to the welt. Then glue the lining in place over all of it. Depending on where your folds and stitching lines are, you could do some decorative stitching to provide some more strength. And you may need to skive the edges of the welt to help it blend in. Mount the magnets in a welt in the purse body as well. Won't likely need any extra reinforcement so no cloth. Make sure your magnets are placed with the right polarity before you glue up. As a side note, I tried using just a thin roughly 24 AWG piece of sheet steel in the flap to keep the bulk down. It doesn't hold as well as using magnets in both pieces. If you do use a steel plate in the flap, use several magnets, and larger diameters, like 3/4 inch to get enough holding power. Do a mock up to see if it has the strength you want. Tom

Fantastic! Tom

Or punch a hole in the belt to fit, epoxy the leather to the metal tip, then cut or file off the excess post, or take the post off completely and just epoxy to the belt. Tom

Pretty good for 6 days! You already know what you need to work on, so the next step is more practise. And when you think you have practised enough, do more practise. Tom

And you can attach a flat bed adapter to a cylinder arm machine. Depending on what parts you are sewing, sometimes the flat bed makes that part of the job easier. Tom

Pretty nice. Lots of color. Check the tension on your sewing machine. I notice in the first couple pictures, the knot is pulled up too high. Tom

Looking pretty nice. Keep it up. Tom

Warm them with a hair dryer to see what they do. If it is fat, will tend to melt as it gets warm. Tom

To help reduce the wrinkling in the lining, form the leather as you glue the lining in so that it is curled about halfway to the position it will be when fully folded. I assume you are concerned with the flap. Note that the flap will not return to flat as it has to stretch the lining to do that. If you can't tolerate not being able to return to flat, then you can design (force) wrinkles in the location you want by gathering a little extra bulge in the lining as you glue it. Try it on some scrap pieces first to see if it is doing what you want it to. Tom

Some use 50/50. I think it is something you have to play with a bit to find what works for you. Also try a search here for thinning clear lac. I'm sure I have seen comments several times. Tom

Works fine for me. You likely have a root kit virus, pointing you to a rouge DNS server. Search for malwarebytes and install it and run a scan. Also download tdsskiller from support.kasper.com/5350 install it and run it to detect and fix. I had a similar thing a month or so ago, also related to google searches, but couldn't get any results from a google search. Hope this helps Tom

I second using a hair blade. Try the fine and coarse to see which looks the best. I'm tending to the fine blade, since the thistle is wispy. Tom

The catalog has some description. I'll abbreviate their descriptions. Live Oak - Best, top quality, long life, superior performance, excellent carving, tooling, dyeing, oiling qualities, American sourced Oak-Leaf - Good, premium import, excellent tooling and embossing, occasional blemishes and brands, fine hand carving leather Craftsman Oak - Economy, imported, medium firm temper, stamp, carve and dye well, low cost, may have brands, blemishes, insect bites. Tom

Check that your leather scraps are vegtan leather. Depending on the bag of scraps you got, there may be leather that isn't suitable for stamping. If you haven't cased the leather, read up on how to properly case leather before carving and stamping. See http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=19121&hl=%20casing%20%20tutorial&st=0 casing tutorial by Hidepounder (Bob Parks). Dry leather doesn't take impressions well. Tom

It would be great if people would read the last few posts in a thread instead of just the first one or two. Look at post number 88 immediately above your post. Tom.

Try applying very light layer of glue to both pieces and let set a little before pressing them together. Or use contact cement, but still keep the layer of glue thin. For very porous surfaces, you may need two coats if the first coat soaks in and dries to quickly. Two thin coats are far better than a heavy coat. Remember for contact cement to let the glue set until almost dry (very little tack) before assembly. Press together with a roller after you have positioned the seam correctly. With most contact cements, you have little chance of repositioning the parts if you aren't lined up correctly. Avoid getting any glue on surfaces that are to be dyed and finished. Will show up after the dye or finish is applied. Tom