bruce johnson

I have not had a problem with using wet-dry over something round. I use everything from small nails on a size 1 or 2 up to larger nails. I rarely have to get much bigger except on the very large sizes. If you are widening the area, I would suspect the rod is too large. I personally use 4 styles of edgers but all of them are round on the bottom. I use the old CSO with the forked points, bisonettes, the round bottoms, and the french type edgers with a half rounded bottom and some sweep to the profile from the side. To bring the edge back to shape I use a coarser wet-dry like 400 on a round base, then go to 600. They are pretty easy to do, a few strokes on whatever wrapped in wet dry and then buff on a wheel with a lighter rouge. I usually go from brown to green. I can pretty well maintain them with the spiral sewn wheel and green rouge and touch them to the corner. I don't like the Osbornes and the Tandys with the slot. They might be alright for a while but still drag and chatter more than any others. They may be the cheapest to buy but for me they were the hardest to sharpen and maintain. For grins I took a few and ground one side off to see what kind of angle the edges were ground at. I should have taken pictures. The angle was pretty steep on some of the ones I dissected. There's a reason for the drag and chatter. To try to get something down in there and maintain an angle is pretty tough. There is some debate, but I think they sharpen up better working on the bottom and then strop out the slot with a hard cardboard or leather disc on a dremel. Still even at their best, not very good compared to a cutting edge with a thinner profile.

I use a 6 foot ruler and a 45 mm roller blade cutter. The roller blade will got through about everything up to 14 oz. With that it wll score it enogh that a quick pass with a roundknife in the cutline will do the job.

Bristles can be actual boar bristles or synthetics like the flexible wire or plastic. I watched a video of a guy using guitar strings and some boot makers use heavy monofilament fishing line. They are flexible and will bend to get into a confined are or follow a curved awl hole. The thread is attrached to the bristle with a wax and whipped on. They can be used in a traditional saddle stitch with the threads crossing in the awl hole. "Pop Stitching" to me basically means a running stitch - in and out with a single thread going in one direction just like using a thread to do a buckstitch pattern. This is used on some overlaid seats with the thread coming up and going down through each scallop. Some makers do it on cantle bindings too. Diifernet people use thread, lacing tape, or artificial sinew. Randy described using a jerk needle well. What it makes is a mechanical lock stitch like a machine. You can reach down into corners and hook a thread underneath and pull a loop back up through the hole. You pass the top thread through and then tension the bottom thread to bring the lock down into the leather. I sew my Cheyenne rolls with a saddle stitch. I start down in the corners nearly horizontal or even angled up slightly so I can get my backside needles in. I may use the same bottom hole twice before moving to the next one. The lets me catch up and keep the same stitch spacing on the bottom as the top. Once I get to where I am in the clear, then I go to the normal saddle stitch sequence. Hard to explain but it is shown in one of the Stohlman books. I usually sew to past center from one side or the other and then start in the other corner and overlap a few stitches. I do the overlap slightly off center of the binding so it is not quite as noticable. Again maybe from Stohlman, maybe someone here gave that tip. Some days I have done this technique with one thread and go all the way across for grins. You need to have the floor clean and things out of the way. It uses a mega-pull of thread and takes a lot of time pulling slack.

Cowdog, Thanks for the compliment and letting me know my impressions were correct. I have to say that in the last year I have dealt with a bunch of good young cowboys and cowgirls. The future looks brighter to me than it probably did to the generation before us. God bless you brother for all you do to keep them safer.

Myriam, I like the graphics a lot. Everytime I think I have something that will make a good graphic I do something I think I'd like better. These all get trumped by running out and making a panic order just like last time. My suggestions are kind of based on who you are giving these out to. I would put your name on them. I think that gives them a more personal feel to have name to go along with the business. Also I had some made up that they put the phone number with the periods to separate things out. Is that a new convention for phone numbers? Several customers didn't figure out that was the phone number. It even took a very close relative who bakes pies and lives with me a minute to figure out that was our phone number. I had them reprint the cards with the area code in parentheses and the seven digit separated with a dash - no more confusion for the traditionalists. Mailing addresses are good, I get a few orders every year that way, and most of my payments. It saves them calling again for the address. My thoughts.

WAIT! WAIT, HERE'S ONE MORE!! I really had good intentions of making a set up for this - doing a cool tooled pattern and all that. Due to a rash of repairs and being sick, I didn't get it done, but had a hot trade going last week on a set of coasters in exchange for a Pendleton cap. (Thanks again Canada for your exports of fine whiskey to be consumed in moderation!). These are some hair-ons with the guy's ranch brand run on them. My thanks go out to the cattleman who raised him, and the roany red steer who came up with the pattern.

Jed, Thanks for asking, but the Champion is sold. Also I got a few emails on the American crank splitter I mentioned in the topic of the American vs. Landis 30. It was sold before I started on it.

I have added more tools for sale on my website. I have a Champion crank splitter, three plough gauges, knives, and a couple overstitchers. Here's a link - Leather Tools for Sale . Edit - I added a couple draw gauges tonight also. Thanks,

Russ, I have had both at different times. The Landis I had fed from the front and the Americans I have had feed from the back. I asked my old tool buddy about the difference one time. His line was "Weeeell, it all depends on whether you want to see the strap go in or come out". I just rebuilt an American and Champion. The Champion came set up with the handle on the opposite side to feed from the front if you crank with the right hand, but it was reversible so I did. The Landis might be also? My thoughts with using both is that in my hands there isn't much difference. The adjustment action on the Landis might be a little smoother, but the rest isn't much different to me. The Landis will usually bring a little more money because of name recognition.

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.