Northmount

Did you use bonded thread? Thread that is not bonded tends to fray and unravel easier. I recently (accidentally) purchased a pound of unbonded thread, so I have lots to practice with now!

From some old stuff in a bin, wallet/billfold: Back 3-1/2" x 9-5/16" Interior 3-1/8" x 8-15/16" Merry Christmas

These are the same instructions with my servo ... however someone was kind enough to drop the "with" so it says "press up button 2 times" ... Merry Christmas

You can cut a slot in a short length of 8-32 screw with a narrow hacksaw. The slot will be a little wide but works as long as you don't reef down like a muscleman.

If you replace a 3" motor pulley with a 2" pulley, the speed is reduced to 2/3. See the natural mechanical relationship?

Go back to see your friend. Examine the cover closely, make some notes and sketch how it appears to be put together. Different book sizes will require alterations to the pattern, so it is best to start with your rough sketch and adapt to fit. Recording a few measurements would be helpful if your friend agrees to it. Then file the info where you can find it later! Then you will have the info when there is a demand (or desire) to make one similar to it.

Works fine on my Firefox 8.0 in Windows XP. I have adblock and a bunch of other stuff, but none of it interfered with my test just now.

Great work. I enjoy looking at your designs. Tooling, color, everything is great.

Here is another link that might help http://www.tandyleatherfactory.ca/en-cad/home/infoandservices/leatherguide/leatherguide.aspx

I had a small item to tool a short time ago and decided it would be a good idea to glue it to a piece of hardboard to make it easier to handle. I used rubber cement ... used to the kind that stationery stores sell, and peels off nicely. Well, I used Tandy Rubber Cement by Barge! (Craftsman #S-5274) It does not peel off easily. I had to slice it off the board when I was finished. A couple drips on my desk didn't peel or roll off nicely either. So if anyone is intending to use rubber cement for a temporary application, get the stationery store kind.

Both UPS and Fedex charge brokerage fees on items shipped from the US to Canada. The lowest charge with UPS is about $47. You get hit with this charge at the door. The fee may be larger as it is also based on the declared value. People should be able to clear the items through CBSA (Canadian Border Services Agency) according to all the rules and regulations, but UPS really doesn't like to give up their fat fee for doing next to nothing. If you are interested in people's experieinces, take a look at http://trueler.com/2...ating-avoid-it/ You will find others too if you Google for brokerage fees. I don't like paying the fee, but my time is worth more to me than driving out to the airport and standing in line arguing with a CBSA agent (or UPS). If you ship via USPS, then Canada Post does the customs clearance for you. They charge a $5 (now $8.50 according to Denise, thanks Denise) transaction fee plus any federal and provincial sales taxes that are applicable depending on the province the importer is in. Many times Canada Post just goes ahead and delivers with no fees; nice when that happens. I have had free or next to free items delivered by Canada Post and still charged transaction fee plus a few cents GST (Goods & Services Tax (Federal Government)). After being stung a few times recently by UPS, I try to remember to always ask for shipment to be by USPS and preferably Express. I much prefer the lower cost for brokerage and if I miss the postman, the local office is just a few blocks away.

I can convert most files to PDF if that makes it easier to post. Just let me know and hopefully the file size will fit in an email. If not, there are otherways to move it.

Easier to replace when it gets all scuffed up or yellow if you just slide it in. Glued in is a job to get out without damaging the leather.

Dye penetrates into the leather so you would have to grind a lot away. I think a better approach is to clean the surface of the letters with a suitable thinner, then dye with a brown dye to cover the original. Or get Cova color (or any craft acrylic paint) that is close to the color you want, then thin it and keep adding a thin wash to build the color depth you want. Paint does hide the subtle shades of tooling and fills in cuts. Won't ever get you back to natural. Good luck.

An additional piece of info: To see what wire you have (varnished or bright), scrape a 1/4" or so at the end to see if there is a coating. Some newer plastic coatings might be difficult to see a difference. In this case, use a match to heat the end of the wire up. If the finish bubbles and chars, it is coated and no worry about corrosion. Coatings/varnish come in different colors too. Probably related to the maximum temperature the coating is rated for, or different manufacturer. So getting a color match between different batches or sources could be difficult. Just make sure you have enough for the job at hand first.

All is forgiven

Try a piece of dowel sharpened like a pencil, or a sylus or modeler to gently rub back and forth along the kink to work it back out. If the kink is already in a stich, then use a stylus to pull back a little room to play with so you can work out the kink. Be careful pulling it back as you could make a new sharp bend or kink. I think a sharpened wood dowel is more likely to work to smooth out the kink than metal tools. You may have noticed too that if you pull the wire too tight, it does a nice job of cutting the leather between holes. Like you say, small lenghths are going to be much easier to handle.

Matt ... you can straighten the wire by taking a partial loop around a wood dowel and draw it back and forth under a little tension. It will have quite a curl, but the kinks will be gone. Then pull it tight to straighten it. For sharp kinks or snarls, time to start over. Wire is worse to work with than lace is. At least with lace, you can recover from most snarls without any real damage.

If the wire was not varnished (insulated) before winding a transformer or motor, the coil would be a dead short since all the individual turns are layed against each other. The finished coil/winding is also dipped after the winding is completed and then baked to ensure it has dried throughout. Then it is tested to ensure no shorted turns. As well, I have bought bulk wire (spools) and wound my own coils, rewound motors, and rewound automotive alternators. You will also find that if you attempt to solder this wire without scraping the varnish off, it won't solder. I don't happen to be an electrician. I just have a wide range of experience in many areas having grown up in an automotive garage (from 6 years to 16) and came from a life where there was little money. Therefore you learned how to do things yourself, fix, build, etc. so you could have many of the things others take for granted. I quoted the house wiring since I thought a few people could relate to having at least seen that size of wire.

If you buy coil, transformer or motor winding wire, it is coated with a varnish, so would stay the same color forever as long as it has not been scratched or worn through the varnish. You can buy from hair thin to large or very large sizes. You would probably want to stay with AWG 22 as the largest diameter. AWG numbers increase as diameter gets smaller. As a point of size reference, most of your house wiring is AWG 14 for standard 15 A circuits. See http://en.wikipedia....ican_wire_gauge for a table.

It's really hard to understand the lack of knowledge of a few conversions between metric (SI) and English units in both North America and Europe. I see it frequently here, plus in engineering offices! 1 inch = 2.54 cm or 25.4 mm from there on it is a little simple math to do the conversion. No special tools or software or websites required. 1/4 inch = 6.4 mm And for the metric folks, 12 inches = 1 foot. 3 feet = 1 yard. As a rough comparisons: 1 yard is a little short of a metre. 30 cm is a little short of a foot (12 inches). For volume, 1 litre is very close to 1 US quart. For weight, 1 pound is 454 grams, or 1 kg is 2.21 pounds. For temperature, I'll leave that for you to think about, but you should have learned the conversion formulae in grade school.

If your camera has a manual white balance setup, place a white card, poster board or similar "white" material in the tent under the lights you are using, then set the white balance. Photoshop type software often has a function to remove a color cast. As long as there is a grey, white or black object in the photo somewhere, sample it to remove the color cast due to the lighting you are using. Playing with the contrast and mid tones can improve the aparent color depth of your leather, making it appear warmer. Experiment and have fun.

You can also get lever operated 1 to 3 ton arbor presses. SOme of the die makers sell them, but you can get a better price where they sell machining tools.

I have seen people shorten sleeves on fabric coats, jackets and shirts. Typically, there is a cuff. Remove the cuff carefully so there are no nicks. Observe how the lining was attached. Shorten the sleeve and lining, then put the cuff back on. The problem I see with leather is the old stich marks on the cuff to sleeve joint. Maybe it would be best to hand stich the cuff back on rather than use a machine. Then you can use the same holes and it will look just like the original. If there is not a separate piece as a cuff that can be removed, then I would again carefully pick out the stitches. Shorten both sleeve and lining by the same amount and reassemble same as it was originally done. Becarefull to keep the same alignment. Don't want the buttons or snaps to be twisted around to different positions. Might look like someone has a broken arm! Try looking up sewing alterations on sewing websites. Should be some examples and pictures of how to.

Tandy SKU 3084-00 http://www.tandyleat...ts/3084-00.aspx