bruce johnson

Splitters are used to thin down leather. Skivers are used to taper leather to make joins or to blend back into itself like the fold at the end of a strap. Some bench and power machines are pure splitter, some are pure skivers, and some will do both. In a nutshell splitters have a fixed adjustment and leather is pulled into the blade or pushed in by feed rollers to thin down heavier leather or lace to a consistant thickness. Examples are the Osborne #86 and Chase pattern splitters. Bench and powered skivers will cut a taper from the edge of the leather. Some of these are the Landis and American crank skivers, or powered bell knife skivers. The combination splitter/skivers have an easier adjustment for the thickness of leather and the adjustment is gradually made from thicker to thinner as the leather is being pulled into the blade. It is a finesse of changing the thickness adjustment at a rate that is right for the speed your pulling to get a nice even transition. It is combination of pull on the leather with one hand and push on the depth adjustment with the other. The more common ones are the handled splitters like an Osborne #84, Keystone, and the similar patterns to those or the Osborne #83 or Spittler pattern splitters with the plier type handles. Most people use a splitter when they buy a heavier weight of leather and then split it down for the particular needs at hand. People cutting their own lace use them to even up thickness. I have a few different styles and makers of splitters and prefer one or the other for different things or a particular width I am working with.

I take a regular screw from my stock of Chicago screws and grind the diameter of the head down. I sacrifice a 3/8" post and mash it into a vice grip for a holder. I put the screw in and roll it around a grinding wheel to take down the diameter of the head. I run it over a wire wheel to smooth the edge and unscrew it from the holder. Takes maybe 20-30 seconds each once you are set up. The screw heads don't sit up proud and interfere with the snaps closing on some snap sets either. Caveat and safety warning -- WEAR EYE PROTECTION!!! If you present the screw head to the wheel in the direction that would unscrew it, it will do so in a very short period of time (nanoseconds) and become a projectile. You have a 50% chance of doing this. I am never smart enought to figure out that rotation deal without flinging the first one every now and again. Then I turn the holder around and it works. Since I do about 50 at a time, they last a while and I forget which way to stand when I run another batch. I shared this tip with a guy on another forum and I am sure he would like for me to share his warning as well. It is possible to shoot out three flourescent shop light bulbs with a single errant flying screw. YMMV.

Tom, I use the LeatherSheen from Feibings quite a bit. It sounds like it might be too heavy. I apply with a sponge in two light layers and haven't had a cracking or peeling problem. One thing that also can cause peeling is using a conditioner on the leather and then applying the finish while some is still on the surface. It is usually not so much a problem with the liquids like Lexol, olive oil, of neatsfoot oil applied in moderation, but can be an issue with paste conditioners.

Here's a few past threads that deal with this. As you can tell from some of these posts, I have gone through a progression of techniques from things I learned on here. Splitter blade 1 splitter blades 2 splitter blades 3

Here's a link to a thread about Cletus Hulling - Cletus Hulling . If Billy Cook made some saddles for him, then there are at least three saddle makers who did.

Jose, If you are in that area, another source that doesn't get much press is Melanie Machine in Vernon. Pretty much a candy store of machines, and I sure have had good experiences getting advice and a machine from him.

Brent, Your comment about making comfy house shoes reminds me when we had the thread goiung about skirting scraps. I think your comment was "One man's scrap is another man's keyfob". Still laughing about that. I can manage my skirting scrap alright, but I run out of ideas for woolskins pretty fast. I might need some comfy house shoes now.

Saddle looks good there. I am with JW and like a little more skirt in front. The border looks good on the rough out too.

Steve, I have had a few emails overnight from people wanting to know a little more. Here's a little more background. My great-grandfather fed cattle, grandfather fed cattle. One great-grandfather was a buyer for John Morell. These were back in the days of the big terminal markets. My dad and two uncles were packer buyers, my dad bought hogs, two uncles bought fat cattle. One is still doing it and has since about 1965. I'll be talking to him this weekend and get his take, but I have some of my own thoughts too. I worked in the packing house and got about every crap job a guy could get. My brother didn't, and went on to get a PhD in meat science. My son works at cattle auctions 5 days a week. He sees cull cattle and feeders sell everyday. We are in a dairy area and the beef cattle are cow-calf or wintertime grass cattle/summers on irrigated clover. We aren't in a huge cattle feeding area other than Harris at Coalinga. They are kind of vertically integrated with their own feedlot and slaughter plant, so they are not the usual pattern of most. My thoughts on the fall off in hide weights I think may be due to a couple of factors. Age of the cattle at slaughter (PC term now is "harvest") is younger. One is the genetic base of the cattle. I can't say that the angus cattle have thinner hides necessarily, but they have created a pretty good promotional program for their beef so black hided English influenced cattle are popular. Cattle feeding areas have shifted south. There are still some feedyards in the northern plains, but the big guys are in the southern plains - KS,TX,OK. It can be argued that those cattle might be a little thinner hided due to that area not going through the same sustained winters of the northern cattle. Also there is more brahma influenced cattle in the south for heat resistance, and those hides are supposed to be thinner too. It used to be that a lot of upper midwest farmers had a feedlot behind the barn. They farm all summer, put up some silage and grain, sell the excess on the grain market. In the winter they fed 50-300 cattle. They may be home raised calves or bought feeders. Those guys are not as common as they used to be. The town I grew up in the midwest still has a weekly cattle sale. There are not as many salebarns running back there because there just aren't the cattle numbers to support them there used to be. Dairies have gotten bigger and have had some buy-out programs to help subsidize reduction of cattle numbers when milk prices go too low to be profitable. If you follow the 50% rule, for every heifer born that may go into the milking string, there is a dairy bull born that will end up a dairy feedlot steer. The old saw is that dairy breed hides are thinner. So in a nutshell, I think the runoff in domestic hides could be due to a few factors. Younger cattle, beef breeds represented in US cattle, climate, and the dairy influence.

JC, I sure respect other opinions, but have a few observations here. As you will read, I have some biases. First off, McDonalds may be a big beef buyer, but percentage wise very few cattle are specifically geared entirely to McDonalds. The biggest value in a carcass are the prime cuts - McDonalds are not grinding $10/pound filets and T-bones for $1 double cheeseburgers. They are grinding meat from cull cows and less valuable meat cuts for hamburger. I just have to ask about the statement that corn kills cows. What's the basis of that? I have decent enough family background in cattle feeding, meat packing and processing, and just enough nutrtional courses to be dangerous, I just don't see the correlation. Moldy corn can do it, cattle not acclimated to a "hot ration" can have problems, but corn as a rule does not kill cattle offhand. To answer one of your questions - yes, the hides from the cattle fed for slaughter are used in the leather industry. Some are fed cattle and some are older cull dairy and beef cattle. That is pretty much the source of most all the hides except for the identified slaughter free hides sold by Steve Siegel. Even the slaughter free hides may have come from a pasture or a feedlot. As far as the quality difference between the forage fed cattle vs. feedlot cattle - hard to say because anymore very few cattle are finished on forage and their hides specifically separated and tanned to be sold as grass cattle hides. It would be interesting, some rawhiders have definite opinions, but the tanned hides are just for the most part fed cattle. Probably the biggest difference in decreasing hide quality and size has to do with "progress" in the cattle business. Hides are smaller, and the quality is not what the older guys tell us it used to be. These cattle have been bred up to gain faster, more efficiently, and result in a more consistant product at a younger age than cattle in the past. The hides are still a by-product, not the primary goal. My great-grandfather used to buy a trainload of long yearling and two year old feeder cattle to put into the feedlot. He fed them and they went on the train to Chicago. He used to feed a pen of "steamers" for the fun of it - big overdone cattle whose steak would have an inch or more of fat left on it and spill over the plate. They were called steamers because they were served to the wealthy on steamships. You aren't going to find many cattle like that anymore. Think how big those hides were. We've all seen the videos on slaughterhouse abuses. They happen, but aren't widespread in the industry. There has been a lot of improvements in livestock handling, and slaughter procedures in the last century and some would argue that improvements have doubled in the last 10 years. I just have to take exception that there are no ethics in the slaughter industry. Respectfully,

It will have some to do with the leather. Firm hard leather even after oiled will still be firmer than soft leather. Some tanneries put out a firmer leather, some put out a softer leather.Some people prefer one over the other for whatever the intended purpose is. Not knowing the source or original intended purpose, it is hard to day what you have. Twelve oz could be skirting or it could be sole leather. They should behave differently. It may come from a tannery that puts out a firmer leather. To start with a new tannery or batch of leather I haven't dealt with before, I start with light coats and until I get a feel for how much oil that leather needs. After that, I am a little more comfortable slathering it on.

As long as it is flat and smooth, it will be fine. They do not have to be highly polished. I used the bottom side of a broken monument for years with no problem. The top was polished but had some lettering.

Add one to that list Bobby. I have Lexol conditioner in the casing mix.

Some of the braiding bar tools have a splitter that works pretty well for strings. I have sold a couple Chase pattern splitters to braiders too. With the top and bottom rollers, the strings stay pretty consistant. For the price of a good Chase splitter though, you can buy a string cutter/beveler/splitter.

I've got a few I have had done. I've got friend who has a laser and uses it on all kinds of things. This one I tooled the cover first and then she lasered in the graphics for the logo and lettering. I oiled it and assembled it afterwards. The lasering has held up better than I expected. Used daily and carried on a lot of travel. I have talked to a few people who have used lasers to transfer tooling pattern outlines onto leather and skip the tracing film/stylus deal.

Looks good Luke. Good job with the rawhide too.

I had one of their Pro models on a similar deal. If you leave the depth pointer on the one I had, it would split down to about 4 oz before it bottomed out, so it wouldn't do much on roo. I took the pointer off for lighter leathers. Mine was off and split a little more off to the right than the left side of the roller. I sold mine to guy who was a pretty handy machinist and he got it right. I got my money out of it. The manager sounds right, there are other choices that are better for what you are wanting to do.

JW, Another good tool to trim the excess single welt is a large round bottom edger.

I have an unmarked gouge that I suspect is a McMillen by the handle anyway. It is a scoop type gouge and the end looks somewhat like a small woodworkers's gouge. It makes a nice elongated half-rounded gouge. In cross section it tapers up without leaving sharp edges or shoulders like a French edger or the saddle makers gouges.

Ken, What you want is a pull-through leather splitter with a depth adjustment that moves while splitting to make the transitions to the skived/split area smoothly. An example of that would be handled splitter like an Osborne #84 splitter. That is not the machine to do what you are wanting to do. It will split the whole belt down if you use the wide foot, set it level, and set it up with the correct feedwheel for vegtan leather. It will not selectively do one area without a lot of practice and hassle. They feed pretty fast and would be hard to control for a short area. As a side note, I am not sure I would buy one from a seller that had no idea of the capabilities of what they are selling unless the price was so fabulous that I could afford to lose it if it didn't work out. Some of these are good and some are wore out from production work. There are other resellers around who know these machines and can give you a good idea of what they have and condition.

Thomas, I used to think mine were sharp until I spent some time with an old guy who could handsew a little. He took mine and made them so the acute angle sides of the awl will easily slice the edge of test piece of skirting. He worked the grits on some stones alternating with the edge and against the edge when he switched grits until the last grit on some wet dry (600). That he went into the edge until he had a foil edge the first 1" or so of blade and then stropped to remove the edge. He had that muscle memory to hold the angle constant and was quick about it. I have done that and can get the job done without as much effort now. I recently tried the 1x30 belt sander I have with superfine grit belts. With the platen as a backup and eyeing the angle from the top, I am getting pretty fair with that.

Roger, I use it some for inlays and also for a few purses. It actually works up about like a medium weight chap leather for me, maybe just a bit more body. The very surface seems to be harder than most leathers other than shark or stingray. I don't know who sells it in small pieces. Sometimes Springfield Leather sells exotic scrap. I got a couple scrap bags of ostrich with some decent sized pieces from them last spring. They might have a handle on some elephant the same way.

I added a few more tools today - Two rein trimmers - a Gomph and a CS Osborne. Also the handiest saddler hammer I have used - 10" long, well balanced, and clean. Iam keeping the other one just like it.