bruce johnson

Pete, One of my interests in life is reading and collecting old poetry. You have quoted part of one of my favorites. The only place I have seen that particular poem in print is a 1920 book called "Songs of Horses". He lists the author as anonymous. Any idea who might have written it? Randy Rieman does a good job reciting it, but he got it from the same book I did. A couple years ago he still didn't know who wrote it either.

We all have our favorites, but there are at least a couple other makers not mentioned yet to consider too - Henley and Chuck Smith (Ol Smoothie).

Just another affirmation of Art's statement about a flat grind. That is one of the biggest problems I see with people and new round knives. They get a knife and think thinner is better. There is a difference between taking a shoulder down on an edge and doing a flat grind. Terry Knipscheild and I talked about this a couple weeks ago. These are not straight razors. I have seen the video of the guy who can shave with a good edge on an axe, but that you don't chop wood with a razor.The Moran edge or Convex edge is not a new concept. Some people do it with slack belts and others with a stones and straighter secondary bevels. Stropping on softer leather will help make a slightly convex edge too. In any case there needs to be some steel backing up that edge to stabilize it. A flat edge all the way out will chip or roll. If it rolls many new people to round knives don't understand what is going on and will think it is dull. Also not stropping a stoned knife enough to take the foil/wire edge off will seem dull when it is about 10 strokes from being great.

When Shoptalk was running the hide price deal routinely the hides were bringing $50-60 and brands were discounted some, but it wasn't a huge amount. It sure wasn't enough to discourage branding. Southwest Hide was part of the place I did some vet work for 20 some years ago although I never dealt with the owners. They had a hide warehouse in Ripon CA and the palletized salted hides were loaded into containers. We are pretty close to the ports here and I am sure they went to Asian tanneries. The warehouse is something else now and I am not sure if they are still in the hide business somewhere else or not.

Right now I have 8 ready to go. There is a Dixon, some Blanchards, and a couple Mayer-Flamerys. Here's a link to the page with them - Plough Gauges

Dixon and Vergez- Blanchard both still make them. I haven't heard if anyone in North America is selling the Vergez-Blanchard line anymore. Vergez-Blanchard has a website in French. For Dixons, Booth and Co in Massachusetts looks to be the lone NA source and Abbey Saddlery in England is another source. It looks like you might be able to buy directly from Dixon too.

I am with Evan and you will solve most all of your problem with sharpening it first. They do not come close to sharp enough and that means new Tandy, Osborne, and at least the Weaver concho punches I have gotten in. I used to think my strap end punches were sharp enough until I got some wood handled ones. They are meant to push through by hand. Now all my using punches are sharpened that fine. I sharpen them to an edge and then take the burr off the inside edge and back bevel a bit with a round ceramic stick I got someplace. After that, it has already been stated - use something with a little heft behind, but you will find you don't need to bash a sharp punch. My punching surface is LDPE cutting board. It is soft enough to not dull an edge. End grain wood works too. You will find if you are not hitting very hard, that the punch won't bury in your backer much if at all. It cuts through not pops through. Thinner leather should punch easier. Most of the punches have some degree of coning down to the edge. That makes a bit of a bind on the thicker leather, especally hard thick leather/

Billy, If you weren't so far away, I'd be at your table too. Man that sounds some kind of good. Here we'll probably go out on the eve for an early dinner if the House of Beef has rack of lamb with whiskey-peppercorn sauce. If not maybe a drive down to Los Banos for Basque food. New Years Day will be a navy bean soup. It isn't a family tradition handed down, but I've been doing it for several years.

The $1000 limit on non-swiped transactions within a 7 day period and holding anything over for 30 days raises a question for me. There is a place on their site where you can email them about raising the limit. Has anyone done that and what were the results?

Where at in central CA? I am in Oakdale.

CW, What I do for those short stirrup riders is to just make a strap - no fender or minimal fender (like bronc leather flaps). I am out now, but found some 2" Blevins-like buckles a few years ago. They turn easier and don't twist up and lift the seat jockeys as much as even small fenders do. Once they outgrow them, then go to the fenders. I still smile looking at those pictures of your son sitting in his new saddle. Just too cool.

That pattern was patented by Ben Veach and they were called "Fast Buckles". He sold the rights a few years ago. Since then a couple places have come up with them. One place for sure is Walsall Hardware in Scottsdale, AZ.

The pictures say it all. Way too COOL!!! He'll be able to ride that one a long time.

I have only had to deal with an Ebay problem once and they got right on it. There should be some protection through Paypal also. Dealing with postal insurance is not pleasant and the shipper's responsibility anyway. They are the ones who paid for the insurance. For the claim they will want you to save everything - box, packing materials, and all the pieces. The catch is that the the post office can claim the item was not properly packed and deny the claim. From another experience, packing peanuts around cast iron is not proper packing so it wouldn't surprise me to see it denied.

Add one more for the wider throat. You may end up doing some repairs where that will come in handy. I went from an Adler with I want to say 12 or 13 inches to a Ferdco. Even that little width difference made sewing easier. You may find that the other feet and plates are pretty handy also. I got a full set of plates and feet and routinely use three plates and four feet.

Here an example of what I am talking about with using an overstitcher to clena up the bottom stitch. This is a billet strap for a brief case. One scan shows the top stitches. The other scan shows the bottom stitchlines with one side overstitched and the other as it came out of the machine.

Colin, I split a few ways. Most of the time I split my leather dry. I sometimes will crank stirrup leathers through backwards when they are wet to compress some stretch out of them and then the other way to level them. A guy showed me that several years ago. Most of the time I soak and stretch them, then level when they are dry and oiled. Wet or cased leather distorts more when wet for me, but can pull easier. I also will oil patches of skirting scraps and have them sitting. When I need a strap or handle, I cut them to width and split them to whatever thickness I need and they are ready to go. Some leather splits easier than others. I have had some middle weights that are really dense. The tannery people can probably explain the whole tooling side/strap side/holster side jacking they do better than I can. I have some that I can shave a 1/2 at a time off and other leather that defies me to split it very fine. I haven't used a ton of WC, but it seems to have that issue with some that I have used.On the double dipped skirting that Siegels developed with WC I had to split and skive that with some moisture in it most of the time.

Andrew, A couple things to do. First is really sharpen that blade. Off the splitter it should easily slice a piece for skirting i for the whole length if you hold it like a knife. One trick for splitting down to really thin leather ti to spilt upside. It akes a bigger peice than you need to end up with, but if you are having troubles like that, I'd set it up to flip and split grain side up. The piece you are then pulling is waste and there is less stretching on the part you want. Some guys do this on some pull throughs that the roller and blade don't go all the way together. Done right you can split off tissue paper to test a blade. Kind of cool. Repeatable levels - The Landis crank and Krebs have click adjuster (detents) and a scale. The Osborne 84s and the American and Champion crank splitters have a pointer and scale. The Chases and Osborne #86 are trial and error. Still different parts from the same side might split a little different. Skirting might start out at 12 oz. Firm parts of the side might compress to 11 oz between the rollers of a crank splitter so 11 oz is getting fed into the blade. Softer parts might compress to 9oz and that will affect what comes out.

Andrew, According a few of the old guys, pricking wheels were the tool designed for marking out stitch spacing. They make a more distinctive mark to be felt than an overstitcher does. The oversticher came along after the stitching to even out any slightly off stitches and to help "set" the stitches. That meant a person needed to have a set of both. Some enterprising soul decided that you could mark out the spacing withan overstitcher and not need a pricking wheel. Most of my pricking wheels go to other countries where a lot of handstitching is still done. Some say they use both, but seems like most use pricking wheels for layout. Back in the day CS OSborne made overstitchers with narrow wheels and wide wheels. The wider wheel ones do a nice job on backside stitches because they will lay the puckering down a little more and set bigger thread. The narrower ones will open that thread line on the back a little more if the thread pulls in, which sounds like what Nick is dealing with.

Good point Andrew. Some of the old patterns used different width stock for the different sizes. Some makers now use the same width bit stock regardless of size. With the smaller sizes there is too much excess width to get the angle I like and the cutting edge on the leather. You either have to use a flatter angle with the leather on the bench or set the leather on an edge of the bench and let the tool run over the side. Seems to be a common complaint with western and bisonette edgers.

Andrew, There are several designs for pull through splitters. The Chase and Krebs pattern ones have top and bottom rollers to feed the leather square into the blade and prevent chopping off. The Osborne #84 has a brass rod in front of the blade that has the same function. The Osborne #86 doesn't have anyhting in front of the blade. Each one has their own benefits and drawbacks. Chopping straps can come from a flew things. If you are not pulling from below the level of the roller the strap can ride up the bevel of the blade and chop. A hard spot in the leather can do the same. If the strap is not laid out and flips up it will chop. Stretching the grain can be a problem with the leather being soft or the blade being dull. I wouold suspect you are dealing with a dull blade. As far as how wide, with a really sharp blade I can do up to about 4" on any of them without a lot of effort. After that I go to the Chases, They have a thinner blade and less drag. I can split within about 3-4" of the blade width pretty easy. It is easier for me to take off about 2 oz at time on the wider stuff, just the way I have the gap set on my blade/bottom roller. I have a 12" Chase I can level an 11" piece with. I don't think I could split much, but can level skirting with it. Crank splitters are nice for vegtan leather. They are limited in width and not very good for soft leather. Soft leather can wad up against the blade and not feed evenly. They will feed little pieces that you could never get a hold on for a pull through splitter. The blades still need to be sharp. Yoiu might be able to crank against a dull blade, but the split is not as nice. The Landis feeds from the front, the Americans and Champions feed from the back. I just got a Landis and so now I can say I have used most of them. The ratchet adjustment on the Landis is nice for repeatable levels, but I have cranked a lot through the others with the pointer on a scale that got the job done too. I will have a couple crank splitters to sell in a month or so, but right now am backed up on leather orders.

You can run an overstitcher in the appropriate size over those back stitches and improve the look also.

There is no standardization of sizes between makers or between different types of edge bevelers within the same maker some times. For instance a #1 round bottom edger from Jeremiah Watt is about three times as big as a #1 Tandy edger. Normally a #1 bisonette edger from CS Osborne is larger than their #1 edger in the 126 style. The old line makers like Gomph, CS OSborne, and HF Osborne are all bigger than the equivalent Tandy edger sizes too. On 5/6 I'd use a #1 for what I have, so probably a #2 Tandy if that is what you have. I sand a lot of edges but do it before I go over with an edge beveler. I use a benchtop 4x36 belt sander. I lightly go over to true up edges and remove glue that went over an edge. Keep everything moving, but the belt sander is slower than a drum sander or Dremel. You can scorch pretty easy with those.

I ship a fair amount of things internationally. Lobo hit most of the points to consider. Here's a couple more; I have dealt using Paypal-only in every other country but Canada. I have two guys who don't use Paypal. They use Canadian Postal Money Orders denominated in US dollars. It has not been a problem for me. My post office cashes them immediately after verifying them (3-4 minute deal). My bank will honor them but puts a hold on the funds up to 21 days. It won't apply in your case, but small Priority Mail flat rate boxes and flat rate envelopes will not be tracked once they leave the US. The same items in your own box will be tracked, but for a higher price than International Flat Rate. I have not had a problem with tracking the mail internationally, although Express Mail gives you more tracks along the way than Priority Mail. When you pursue it with the post office they get down to definitions - Express Mail is "tracked". Scans are done along the way as a usual routine. Priority Mail is sent "delivery confirmation". Scans may be done along the way, but they only are really saying that the final scan at delivery is all they are obligating themselves to. The humor of that is I have several packages in the US that have been tracked along the way and not scanned as delivered. They were delivered, just not scanned as delivered. I haven't seen that with internationals yet - they have all been scanned as delivered with either shippping option. Take a really good look at International Express Mail rates vs. International Priority Mail rates. It is usually not much more in cost and about twice as fast in my experience. The tracking is better and some insurance is included. Additional insurance seems less expensive but I haven't put a pencil to that. The estimate delivery times are not 100% accurate on the USPS website. You can add about 2-3 days for Express and 7 days for Priority Mail and be closer. Canada seems pretty slow on average to get things through their customs. The only country who has taken longer is England. Customers seem used to it.

Terry, I worked labor in a hog slaughter plant for several years going through college, but never worked a cow kill. Two of my uncles were/are cattle buyers and my dad was a hog buyer. Yep, it is a pretty fast process. One uncle buys for IBP and he said they do some hide processing themselves. I don't know how far they carry it or where their hides go from there. Out here one of our clients had a hide business. They sourced hides from small to medium packing plants and rendering plants. They had a warehouse of salted hides that were palleted. I think most were packed into containers and went to Asian tanneries. I never really dealt with anyone on that side of their business to find out how it all worked. My brother graded/sorted carcasses in a beef plant. At that time, some went to the high end restaurant trade, some to other markets, and then the normal boxed beef channels. At least in the hog plant when I was working by-products were a big deal and the make or break deal. They used to say the glands out of the hogs paid for the kill floor labor and the by-products paid the operating labor costs. They harvested the replacement heart valves there sometimes too. What I mostly know about the hide sales comes from the hide report in ShopTalk. There are categories and classifications of hide grades but I don't know who does it and where in the process. If weight is part of the criteria you'd think it is done at the plants. WC has ties to the Canadian plant. HO used to say they get eastern hides because they have less brands and insect problems. I don't know which plants they get them from or whether they go through brokers to get what they want.