Red Cent

Super. Do you do seat covers for bikes?

Very good, Rookie. The tooling is very nice and the stitches look very neat. I'm gonna offer Red Cent's 2 cents. To keep the frame parallel to the holster, glue a welt inside to make the barrel go forward. Between the welt and trigger guard, she should line up. Personal preference . Any reason for not trim sewing the thumbbreak?

I own a few western style suspenders. I would guess some are single layer 4-5 ounce and a couple are about 8-9 ounce. The heavy ones are for dress and the lighter ones I use in competition. The dress heavy ones are wider in the front tapering to normal size at the top of the shoulder. The best IMO for daily wear is one that is 4-5 ounce, around one inch wide, buckles for adjustment in front with about 4-6 inches elastic in back. Gotta have the elastic or you will pull the buttons out when you bend over. I have yet to make suspenders but they are on my list.

Looks good to me. Great design.

From one who was deeply into 3D archery some years back and a relative newbie leathercrafter( like that word), it looks good. Kinda looks period. Leather contrast looks good.The large D buckle looks a little out of place. Good even placed stitches. I like the "rough" handmade look. The leg strap looks cool and may work against the "period" look. That would be difficult to walk with through the forest. The bracelet thingy looks very good. Bells?

At my age I should know better but I bought a Cobra 4 from all the kudos on machine and customer service. No one said anything about that steep a....learning curve. Test and sew. Test and sew. Test........... Don't give up. I was about to post your reverse is adjustable. And your machine is rather limited to "low to medium weight leather". What are your products?

The Cobra 4 videos say you need to come up and leave a 1/4" or more of the needle in the leather so the stitch will be finished.

Belts for the concealed carry crowd needs to be pretty strong. 8-9 outer and 4-5 liner. I do not double up on the billet end nor the chape and I skive generously on the buckle fold.

Yes. When the needle is on the way up, stop when a 1/4" of needle is in the leather, raise the presser foot, turn, lower foot, and sew.

Me too, Wiz. Thank you.

They are so neat and precise. Beautiful contrasts and the stitching is great. I wish I had enough knowledge to suggest a machine. I use a Cobra 4 for heavy stuff so my knowledge/experience is very limited. You may incur a learning curve for a while. It would be difficult to match your hand sewing with a machine. Might want to put a price range on this post. The members are kinda bashful and they don't post a whole lot like some other forums.

Thank you Cardinal Leather.

Ya know? I don't know if you have used it or not. Bashful? I live over an hour from Tandy. I can get 3M 10 minutes away. Is it any good?

Pictures? I was thinking if one had a repeatable problem with skipped stitches and thick stuff one could do the hole punch and then stitch. All handsewers do it .

Interesting and a relatively small world. Good looking holster. http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee189/redcent69/Handguns/DanWesson007.jpg Bet he got the barrel from EWK Arms.

I just read something interesting on an old post here. Who removes the thread, uses the machine to make holes through the really thick stuff and then uses thread? I understand that I am curing the symptoms but not the disease. The post also discusses the needle bar being forced up by hard leather. And lowering the needle just a touch. It has been suggested and I lowered the needle. Didn't work.

Anyone used 3M 30NF water based contact cement? Can it be used in a squeeze bottle?

"We have discovered that with some threads, the bonding agents affected the travel of the thread through the main tension assembly. Some threads had a tendency to slip out of the tension, but once we brought the thread back to the thread guide, no matter what thread we used, the thread would never slip out, allowing the customer to use whatever brand of thread they chose." I am not clear with this. Please be specific with the hi-lighted words. Just to make sure we communicate.

It would be simple to "scab" a bar with two holes to move the lube pot over in line. Actually, you could move it over and drop it to be more of a straight path. One of these days, I will get it dialed in. I just bragged about removing the pot and it sews well. Now it has started to skip stitches. I put the lube pot back in the "loop" and it is doing OK. Go figure. If the Juki, Ferdco, Cowboy, are copies, then are the differences so different that threading requirements would be so different? Having read a little on the clones, seems as if a couple of Japanese companies make most the machines. As I told Steve, frustrated as ......but I ain't giving up. I find it odd that you don't see anyone on here complaning about the Cowboy 4500. Or the Ferdco Pro.

If I put a post on it so that I would not have to wrap the top tension wheel, I am creating friction/resistance someplace else. You're right, nothing to lose. And I may try it. Looking at the different thread paths, it seems the tension is equal with different methods.

This is a video showing how to thread a Cobra 4. This a video showing how to thread a Cowboy 4500. Dirtclod, my Cobra does not have the post with holes on the top of the machine. And Cowboy Bob, you are correct about the side tension wheels. However, on the top tension wheel the Cowboy does not need to go around the top disc/wheel but simply heads straight down to the side tension wheel. On the Cobra, you are told to go almost all the way around the top wheel and come back out through the eyelet and then down.

"Once turn around the bottom post is okay, as long as you aren't using it to add much more top tension. One turn also makes it easier to extract the thread when you fully lift the presser feet with the floor pedal. Note, this means that the top tension disks do most of the work on the top thread." The turn around the bottom post is the side tension pulley/wheel with springs, right? Since that would reduce tension on the top thread I would probably need to increase tension with the top adjustment discs, right? I can easily fix the lube pot to create that straight line feed. If I try it, should I put the lube pot thread level with the eyelet?

I believe the problem has been solved. I rethreaded the machine and left out the lube pot. Every time a bad or skipped stitch occurred, we traced to the bottom tension wheel. Then it dawned on us that the wet thread wrapped around twice was probably sticking. Per Steve, I lowered the needle about 1/16th of an inch and changed to a 24. Per Wiz, the lube pot did not create a straight path for the thread to follow and a thorough cleaning of the machine. I believe the thread path change, the sticking of the wet thread, needle size, and needle height contributed to me finishing the other half of the belt without any problems. I did a number of practice runs and never had a problem. I want to thank Steve and Wiz for their advice and time taken. I hope that discussions like this one will provide some help to others if they incur the problem(s). BTW: I believe the Cowboy machine would work with the lube pot. One time around the wheel would not cause bind. I guess the post on the Cowboy is added tension and does away with the double wrap. Am I close in my observation Cowboy Bob?

CBob, went to the website and you show #25 needles but how do I know what to order to get the preferred point? Did I go to another website?

OOoooopppppssss!!! I should check my own posts. Cowboy Bob has them. Still would like a cheat sheet.