Mark842

I'm getting ready to go shopping for someone to make me a cutting die wheel as shown in the attached photo. I'm wanting to use it on my strap cutting machine. I have about 10 machine shops within 5 miles of me that say they do stuff like "turning, Milling, EDM, CNC, etc. I know nothing about machining and don't want to look like a total fool while shopping around. Anyone give me just enough knowledge to got to a shop that does what I need?

Unlike the press you are using the little wonder has height adjustment, mounted guides, fits about every attachment imaginable for snaps, spots, rivets, gems, crystals, grommets, jiffy's. bulk rivet feeders , keeper staples and probably a few things I'm forgetting. The handle is leveraged so that you can set a steel rivet in 3/4" latigo with literally 1 finger pressure. If you are a business you can buy it for $235. Comes with Rivet setters for that price. Will fit any attachment made for the Tandy press, Campbell press, heritage foot press.

I have many presses from the heritage kick press, old antique desk mounts, the old Tandy press. Hands down the best most versatile press I have is the Weaver little wonder.

Here you go. http://www.derose.net/steve/resources/engtables/englishmetric.html

Have you pulled the entire assembly out, race and all. You might have some thread or an accumulation of leather dust caught up behind it. Also, the shuttle moves with the piece yo have the arrow pointing at. The shuttle should have some play to jiggle around a little but it should not be enough to touch. When you grab the shuttle with your hand can you move to touch where the arrow is? How old is your machine?

Yup, I sold a 29k31 earlier this year here in Utah for $1250. It was a good machine with original treadle stand but not as nice looking as that one. I see that going for $1500 easily. I had mine listed for about 2 weeks and it sold.

That sound is completely normal. I have two Cobra 4's. One about 6 years old and one 2 years old. That is how they sound. It is the nature of an oscillating shuttle.

My 2 cents for what its worth. I never show or say what my product is in this forum because I had my product knocked off years ago and it pretty much bankrupted me. It took 7 years to get back to where I was with a new product line and it was with a lot of lessons learned. I now have a trademark, have several patents pending and will go after anyone trying to rip me off. The last time if happened the seller was using my professionally shot photos because one of the venues I sell on does not allow you to watermark your photos. I know someone will say they would never sell there...well to each there own. I make a lot of money with them. As for, I would never in a million years, even with permission to use someones design, use that design to profit. I have over the years asked friends if I could use their design to make one for my own personal use. I understand some peoples reasoning that someones knock off makes the original looks better. The problem is that the customer might not know it is a knockoff. Then someone see's said product in real life and says, "yeah, I saw that guys website selling that. Boy the picture sure looked better". For me, I will actively enforce.

That would be this. This is the $300 gizmo I bought years ago at Sheridan although I didn't buy it to bevel lace it does. Would I spend what they want for it just to bevel lace? I feel foolish spending what I spent for it to cut lace since I can go faster with the $5 Tandy tool. If I was looking to bevel lace I would just make a beveler. 2 Pieces of 2x4 , sharp razor blade mounted at the desired angle between the pieces and a adjustable piece of metal on top to hold the lace where I want it in relation to the blade. I made one before in the past but have no idea what became of it as it was made just to see if I could...never had a need for it. https://www.gfeller.us/lacemaster.html

With veg tan being stiffer I can see a strander working OK on it but I still wouldn't want to cut any kind of high volume with it. That and you are restricted in length of the lace to the length of the hide. With the Tandy lace cutter I can get about a 30 foot length of lace out a 1 foot square. I curious about this antique lace cutter you're talking about that makes round lace. never heard of such a beast.

I guess it depends on the type of leather. I have the Tandy handheld cutter, the Australian Strander and some gizmo lace cutter I bought at the Sheridan trade show for about $300. Unfortunately that was wasted money. For me the tandy cutter is the best tool. I cut chrome oil tanned hides to lace, 1 whole hide per week. The only problem I ever had with the Tandy lace cutter is the leather would eventually cut through the plastic making your lace wider and wider till eventually it would cut through all the way cutting the tool in half. I have since remedied that issue but lining the inside of the lace cutter with aluminum from a pop can. problem solved. I buy high carbon steel blades as they last about 20 times longer than the crap blades Tandy sells for them. I cut my leather hide into 1 foot squares. Cut a hole in the center and start cutting lace. I can cut a full 45 sqft 6-7oz hide to lace in about 3 hours using the Tandy cutter. The Aussie Strander is a waste of time with oil tanned leather and the 300 dollar gizmo cuts at about a 1/4 the speed of the tandy cutter. I guess I'm just a cheap date.

I actually apply mine using the first method they tell you not to do. I put on a set of latex gloves and apply the paste or gel by hand. If gel make sure you get it spread out over the entire area you want quickly to avoid it leaving border lines. The paste is much more forgiving. I rub it in with my gloved hand to desired effect. Then depending on how dark I want it I either start removing it right away or leave it to darken a bit. I remove excess using 100% cotton T shirt rags. I've found that anything fluffy used for removal removes too much from the cuts that I want to be darker. This probably comes down to your personal style and preference. I also seal using Liquitex varnish. It is flexible, seals great and can be airbrushed on so it will not remove any finish like the sealers you wipe on.

Truth. I have had this conversation so many times with people trying to sell their wares. You can make the most beautiful whatever in the world. If you want to sell it you need two things at least. Demand and for the customer to know your product exists. The second can be done several ways. the first is what it is so to speak. I sell only online except for the occasional weekend show or rally. Any ideas that I ever have for products, no matter how good I think they are, I research the market and see if they sell. How many sell? What price do they sell for and what will it cost me to make them. I've learned the hard way, what I like usually doesn't sell good. What my customers like I usually find boring to make but it pays the bills and the salaries of a few employees.

I run both types, brushed and brushless. Brushed are inexpensive for the pro and IMO in low torque applications actually have smoother control (could just be a brand thing). The con is if you do a ton of sewing you have to change the brushes. I run a brushless on a Cobra 4 that sees a lot of high torque low sewing and is being run on average 4 hours a day, 6 days a week. All my other machines are smaller for sewing garment thickness leather and I run brushed on them all. Those are all low use, maybe 2-3 hours a week. I 've never really timed the stitch speed on my cobra but I can sew incredibly slow with tons of torque. Most of that machines life is spent sewing 3 and 4 layers of 9-10 latigo.

Very very nice!

oh my.....

I would love to see some videos from you on these skivers. I had actually never watched Cechaflo's videos on the skiver. I knew Al Bane had video's out there before I purchased mine and I knew it was the exact same model skiver. That being said, I watched all the Cechaflo videos on this post now and I did enjoy them. I do see what you are referring to with him putting the second bevel edge and I can think of no reason why you would want to do that. So while there may be some stuff in there that isn't optimal I can at least say that now I know how to disassemble my skiver when the time comes to change my feed wheel or sharpening stone. I kind of feel that all the videos have some good stuff in them but like I said I had nothing to start with. There are things that drive me nuts. Biggest being the leather clumping up in the bell and jamming stuff up. Mine had the little rubber gizmo the other guys has that he said as soon as he cleaned it out the next piece of leather promptly got stuck there. That was my experience also and that little piece of rubber is long gone on mine. It works better without it in there and with the silly little drawer that is supposed to be a scrap catcher. I guess if you skive 2 inches of leather a month that might be a viable option. I just took some plastic sheeting and some hanger wire and built me a 45 degree angle ramp for the leather to slide down into a box I can sit on the floor next to the stand. Seems like If I'm skiving something longer than about 7-8 inches the knife will safe clean, its only the short runs that stay in the knife. I've just gotten used to it and stop every few cuts, reach under with my wood poker and knock the leather out. Luckily most of what I skive is for piping so I'm doing long pieces. And as for confidence in your speaking voice...maybe right a script and have someone else narrate while you operate. I'm sure I still have a lot to learn using this skiver....like everything else in life I'm still learning how to use things I've been using for 40+ years...

Here you go. The list of parts does not label any of the vague scribbles as a spring. For what it's worth, the owners manual calls it a presser bar. One the other end of the presser bar adjustment screw. What I'm calling the presser foot is the foot you pass the leather under when skiving. I have no idea what the proper name of it is.

The entire manual that came with my NP-4 is 6 pages. 4 of the 6 are illustrated parts breakdowns. The other two pages are basically what you would have if someone speaking Chinese used Google translate. An example....here is the entire section on how to sharpen the blade. 4) When Knife is blunt, set the clutch leveler at work position, and then slowly turn the screw to grind the knife. That's it. I'm pretty good at figuring out machines but when I purchased mine, having never seen one in person and with the overwhelming amount of information in the instruction manual I have to say it was Youtube that taught me the basics. Am I doing everything right? Don't know. I am however getting very good skives daily with it. And no, I never pull the leather. I've never had to. Once I figured out which foot was for what by trial and error and how to properly set the presser foot tension the leather just glides through nice and easy on its own. And yes, I get nervous watching how close the operators fingers are coming to the bell knife on some of them videos. The only thing I have an issue with that may be because I'm doing something wrong or maybe it's the nature of the beast. Every couple of long skives I have to grab my handy dandy wooden pencil I keep right there and reach underneath to clear leather from inside and around the bell or it will start to jam up the works.

I'm curious, did you sharpen it using the supplied instruction manual as a guide (hieroglyphs and braille) or by Al Bane's video? I had similar issues sharpening by the manual. Then I found Al bane's video on YouTube and everything works great. I skive mostly 5 oz oil tanned and have found that I need to sharpen the blade every two days or so depending on work load.

Had a sound similar to that On one of my machines a few years back. Turned out it was the feed dog rubbing on the side of the slotted plate. Have you tried checking that yet? I remember I checked everything up top swearing that was where the sound was coming from and as a last ditch effort loosened the screws on the plate and poof..plate moved, sound gone.

Yep, I've done it the way your saying also. The only reason I didn't mention it is because I've never been able to figure out how to get a neat corner or tight radius for a corner as you have found. On a good note, like anything else the more you do this the easier it gets. If it were me, thread is relatively inexpensive. I would run a stitch line that will be under the binding to hold the foam to the matt leather. Then a good double sided sticky tape will work for holding the binding. Don't bother with Tandy's, it ain't strong enough. I get mine from Makers Supply.

There really aren't any binding attachments that will allow 5-6 oz leather slide through them. I gave up years ago trying to use a binding attachment with 2-3oz. I've since learned how to do it with a binder. Just lay the leather strip face down on the matt edge (face to face). Stitch them together however far from the edge you want the binding to go. After stitching this line fold the strip your using for binding back and around the edge. I use a quality double sided sticky tape to hold it in place and stitch right through the hole thing all the way around the edge.

Down payment to cover your costs up front. Can't tell you how many times I've been approached for bulk orders that never happened when they found out they actually had to make a down payment.

Tandy has one now also. My disclaimer is I have not looked into it yet. I just know it is $500 retail. https://www.tandyleather.com/en/product/craftool-pro-heat-imprinting-machine/craftool-pro-heat-imprinting-machine?utm_campaign=Shopping&utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_term=&utm_content=2098698xCjwKCAjw0ZfoBRB4EiwASUMdYb_pk8pE3mm4ZruVT_kRkSdquzskZQF14NxAas9oVtxegt1g1xnsxBoCITEQAvD_BwE&gclid=CjwKCAjw0ZfoBRB4EiwASUMdYb_pk8pE3mm4ZruVT_kRkSdquzskZQF14NxAas9oVtxegt1g1xnsxBoCITEQAvD_BwE