Jovial

Yeah that is a nice one. Im glad I still had that link on my computer. I knew it would pop up again at some point.

This is the information I used to make mine a year or two back for the renaissance fair: http://www.houseofanoria.com/CaptainJack/Captain%20Jack%20Sparrow%20Hat.pdf

Ok, Thanks entirely to everyone's advice and pointers I have been able to get things looking rather nice, I think. I adjusted the foot pressure and flattened my stitches out with a smoothing tool, and tweaked my tensions slightly. For posterity's sake when I had made all of these changes I went back to the trial piece I showed pictures of in my very first post of this thread and stitched in between the two rows. The scrap was flipped so that i could properly show contrast without it being affected by the previous problem stitches. I do have a set of smooth feet to change over to then, I just wanted to keep the equipment the same for the sake of comparison. Thanks again! I will be looking into a set of smaller needles just to try it out (and because I currently only have one size, lol).

I didn't full case it. Just sort of took a damp paper towel and did a quick wipe along the stitch line i was going to test on. It was more than enough to mash up the leather though. I knew that it was something you suggested to see if it was the pasting and was the reason I did it. I was following your logic even though, now that I read back, it looks like I was taking it in the wrong direction. And no I have not been running any smoothing tools over the stitches. Is that normal to do? It makes sense now that I think about it and I feel like a newbie for not having thought of it.

Hmm I can live with it I just thought it was something that didn't belong in a finished product? I guess you could chalk it up to inexperience making a bigger deal out of something than it is. My main concern was that I wasn't doing something right. I tend to go a little nuts when my technique or methods are out of whack until I figure out what is going on. Too much "Procedure must be followed exactly or lots n' lots of money gets wasted" kind of thinking seeped in from my last job at a vaccine production place. If this is really a change needles and go with the flow kind of situation as it is starting to seem then I'll force myself to chill out until something blows up Between that mentality and a drive to try creating something as amazing as what I see here daily, I probably got carried away. If you guys wouldn't sell something with that puckering then I'll give it a shot. Otherwise I'll probably call this case closed and file that bit of information away in ye' old sieve. Thanks for that!

Ok. The samples in this picture are all from the same piece of leather, brand new needles, and using T135 Bonded thread. Needles: 135x16NW as per recommendation by Wizcrafts 135x16TRI *Both types in Size 22. Items marked Wet were dampened not soaked. Almost as if I was casing the leather for tooling. Links have been provided for convenience to both the products used and original forum thread here that got me on my way For what it's worth a friend was looking at my attempts to figure this out yesterday and couldn't see what was bothering me about the stitches.

Haha will do. Sorry about the picture size anytime I see a picture under 1mb anymore I tend to stop paying attention. I suppose I got too used to my SLR's RAW files which average around 10-15mb per picture. Well I suppose my obscene monitor resolutions don't help either. Well at any rate I'm going to go sleep off the last of my "guys night out". LOL I tell my friends I'm getting too old for this but they just laugh at me and say I'm getting boring. Sunday is a good day for experimentation, right?

Yeah for the consews 135x16s are all leather points the TW were actually a little worse than the RTW. They both do have the awl shape to the point. I'll do some experiments tomorrow and pull out my Digital SLR and Macro lens to photograph the stitching instead of using my phone. Hopefully I'll get to the bottom of this. I'll order in a pack of #20s as well and see if that helps out. Thanks for the help so far!

Thanks for the input TwinOaks but I think the pictures must be deceiving or something. The thread (T135) is pulling tight and stitching as it should be and locking in the middle in those pictures. My concern or question deals rather with the cracking/puckering around the bottom puncture (exit hole?) from the needle in the leather itself.

Anyone know whats up with my bottom stitches? I had a topic before and was told that a reverse twist needle would take care of my puckering on the bottom stitches but.... it doesn't really look any better. Since I seem to still be missing something I will throw myself upon the mercy of my betters and ask for help. I know I need to change out the feet for something without teeth to clear up those marks but I need to find a place online that sells them first. My setup is a Consew 206RB-1 using the 135x16NW size 22 Needles. Photo order is Top, Bottom respectively.

Have you considered one of their strap cutters to make cutting the guitar straps out a little easier on yourself? You could probably pickup the strap cutter and possibly some of their hardware with the left over cash on the certificate.

Same here, Access please!

Eh, I wasn't really concerned just curious. I think i just have bad luck with rubber cement is all. Thanks!

Fantastic write up! I vote this gets put up there with Kevin King's tutorial or something! In other news, a question: Do you find the rubber cement and getting stitched in at the sides enough to hold the fold securely? I tend to not trust rubber cement much at all any more.

The puller you are referring to looks like a three fingered claw with a screw in the middle. You clamp down around the pulley wheel and tighten the screw which causes it to pull the wheel off the shaft. I have one out in the garage I'll edit this post in a few minutes with a picture of one if I can find it while I'm running out there for some beer. :D -------- All right, apparently I can find my beer but not my puller. The kind used is generally just slightly hooked on the end instead of with the holes but same general principal, and enough to give you an idea. I would suggest checking if you even need it to get the pulley wheel off though. I just changed my drive pulley a few days ago and after I loosened up the retaining screw it popped right off.

Allright I stopped by the my sewing machine mechanic's place and have the 135x16 NW needles on order. I took him my needle plate and feed dog to check out because they looked a little worn to me. He informed me they were shot and probably not worth using, so I also have those on order! Hopefully I'll get this thing running better really soon. Once I have the time and money to have him go over it I figure he can give it a good tune up and check the timings etc. for me. Just figured I'd give an update. Once I have everything I'll put up some new pictures to see if it looks better to you.

Thanks! Now when I stop by the store to get them I can be sure they give me the right thing

The ones I have are marked 135x16TRI. What would the twisted chisels be marked Wiz? Thanks for the feedback hunt. Ill check it out then and see if anything has been moving as I stitch.

Hey everyone, A few months ago I picked up a Consew 206RB-1 with a 3/4hp 550watt servo motor. I have been using it fairly constantly and while the stitches seemed to be ok quality wise they just were not up to what I wanted out of the machine. One of the reasons is that on higher speeds (where the torque was present) I couldn't control the thing. The other problem I had was on slow speeds (where torque was lacking) I just couldn't pierce the leather properly, or without a helping hand wheel turn. Tonight while doing routine maintenance I decided to check for other sized pulley wheels in my grandfather's garage. Luckily for me I found a 1" pulley wheel and slapped it on there. This was exciting to me because earlier I had read through Wizcraft's sticky and that change gave me the 3:1 reduction he mentioned. To my dismay though, I found that my belt was now too long no matter how I changed the motors mounted height. So I ran out and picked up a new belt and a metric tap & die set ( to try to fix the threads on the reverse/stitch length lever). Well after that the belt worked and the machine is stitching again more beautifully than ever! The tap & die set however was a total bust because it was lacking the M7 - 0.90 die that (thanks to the included gauge) I found to be needed. At any rate I finally have the control and stitch quality that I have been after and I decided to throw some pictures up to see if anyone else considers the stitching satisfactory. If anyone felt like throwing out an opinion on them I would greatly appreciate it. The pictures show stitches through double and quadruple layers of 4 oz veg tan. (All on the same piece of scrap)

Too thin for the leather? Or too thin for the machine?

Hey everyone, I am hoping to get some feedback about this problem. From what I have read in the manual and read online it seems the Consew 206rb-1 uses DPx17 needles (135x17) or 135x16 (leather point connotation?). When using the leather point needles that were given to me the needle seems to occasionally jam in the bottom hole where it picks up the bobbin thread. The head comes down, pierces the leather and when it raises the needle is still in the bottom. I need to use a needle nose pliers to get the needle back out. The machine is threaded correctly, needle is inserted correctly. The screw that holds the needle in place is also tightened up properly when this occurs. I have had it happen on two layers of 6oz and also on a single layer while practicing and testing. It does not happen all the time, and not at all with a 135x17 sharp point needle (was just testing to see if it was the needle or the machine). Anyone have any ideas on whats up?

Haha, actually he also gave me the original owners manual for it because he figured the digital copy I had may not have been good enough. Thanks for the chart and video Ronnie!

Hey everyone! I am so excited right now. I was cruising craigslist the yesterday morning over my coffee and ran into a Consew 206RB-1 for sale for $600. I called the guy up and it turned out to be one of my old buddies from years ago who runs some repair/resale shops. Suffice to say I scrounged up the money for the machine and went to check it out and buy it after talking to him for awhile. When I got to his shop today to give it a test drive and pay for it, I got another surprise. My buddy wound up changing out the clutch motor for a 3/4 HP Servo and got together 7 high capacity bobbins and 8 packs of different sized leather needles. Holy pay day, eh? Well I'm off to go play with my new baby. Edit: Any suggestions on fun things to do now that I have a machine? I'm looking at making some small cuffs for a friends commission at the moment.

Hrrrm, I suppose thats true. Been a long time since I managed to screw up my computer so I hadn't thought of it in that manner. Still good to use even for novices though as long as they don't go beyond the cache and temp folder cleaning.

You could do that. Another option is to get the free (and amazing) program CCleaner. There is a startup items manager in the program and if you look in there and remove the kodak items you should be golden. It works off the registry information for startup so you will be able to find things not listed in the startup folder.