bladegrinder

Nice! nothing like a nice new big shop.

Those look great Hags, I'll bet that was a great wedding too.

Thanks Hags, double stitch on the next one! Thanks Gezzer!, where at in North Florida are you?

Still new to designing and drawing gun holsters, this one the I should have brought the leather up higher around the trigger guard. this one is for me so lessen learned, it fits tight and I like it. it has Elephant hide overlay on the front. thanks for looking!

X2...I've had my CB4500 I got from Bob in Toledo for 6 months or so and I'm super happy with it. like you PastorBob I never used a sewing machine in my life so initially there was a somewhat nervous learning curve as to how do I get his thing to do what I want it too. mine came from Bob set up the way I intended to use it, #25 needle-277 thread so it was just a matter of gluing up some samples and start practicing...a lot of samples and a lot of practicing ha ha. Today I feel pretty confident getting on it and stitching up holsters and sheaths. I think my blunders are in the past. I'm a knifemaker by trade so I don't use it everyday but last week I stitched up six sheaths one after the other, set them out, and looking at them I thought about if I had to hand stitch those, my eyes and hands would hurt and I'd probably still be on the first one. I hand stitched for over 30 years and it was past due I got a machine. I would say glue up a bunch of scrap different thicknesses and practice a lot getting to know your new machine, you'll never look back. Congratulations and good luck!

I bought a used 3 phase surface grinder a couple years ago and while looking at the controls and wiring I discovered the oil pump was 110 single phase then found a transformer inside wired with a few other things. I connected a VFD to the motor but ran a dedicated 110 single phase line to the oil pump. VFDs don't put out a clean 3 phase like you would get from your utility, as mentioned by 480volt the motors connected should be inverter rated. mines not, so researching what that meant I learned a non inverter rated motor on a VFD can actually get bearing damage over a very long time of operation, something about the way the VFD feeds it. throw in a computer board and your asking that machine to throw an error code. you may be able to isolate the motor to the VFD but from what I found is you can't have any controls or switches between the VFD and the motor, which would eliminate any use of other electronics on your machine. they simply cannot have any sort of function on the motor after the VFD. I could me mistaken about this but I knew what I was getting into with this surface grinder, just stumped a while about the oil pump. I wish you luck with your machine, if nothing else, you'll still have a great machine but without all the bells and whistles.

Thanks LittleF! Thanks Gezzer! Thanks Hags, I guess I need to just try a practice piece and see if it's ok, if so great! if not...well, just find a work around.

That looks beautiful!

Thanks PastorBob, here's a picture of the bottom, it's partially closed from the vacuum pulling the bag down around it. I've been wearing it the last two days so it's showing some wear.

Thanks Hags, I'll get there, I've got a few personal guns to make holsters for and every time I look at this holster I see where I could have improved it so the next one should be better. one question I do have is, if I do tooling on the front and then vacuum form it, will the vacuum bag crush or flatten out any carving or stamping?

That's awesome!

This is my first pancake holster for a handgun. it's not perfect, I need to bring the stitching closer to the gun but it still has good retention and it's for me, I wore it today and it felt good. it's for a Ruger SR40. Thanks for looking!

I just stitched six knife sheaths. before starting I glued up the same thickness of leather as the sheaths and ran it thru to check for the stitch spacing I wanted. I also measure for back stitching so I know where things are going to start and I can bring the back stitch real close to the throat of the sheath in reverse then switch to forward and stitch up the whole sheath. I'm still new this also so I run my machine pretty slow right now, almost a crawl but it's working good for me till I get more experience down the road. I admittedly ruined a couple sheaths early on but I've made quite a few since then and a couple holsters and I'm getting better. Practice...practice...practice, and don't get too frustrated when you screw up!

I use Weldwood but I thin it down some with Xylene. so far it works great as a thinner, needs to be stirred in really good for a while and makes it much less stringy when getting it out of the can. of course it's thinned so in some applications I put a thin second coat on a few things just to be sure.

Congrats Hammerhead. I picked up a Cowboy 4500 from Toledo Industrial last year, my first sewing machine also. it sounds like your off to a good start viewing all the videos you can find and reading up on it. start by gluing up and stitching lots of test pieces, and always, always, look to see if your in forward or reverse before starting ha ha. once you get to know your new machine and it decides to play nice with you you'll love it!

Thanks Northmount, I didn't think about that. I'm going to run some practice pieces thru before I do anymore stitch turning on real work.

Thanks BigBore, that was a lesson learned! fortunately it was only about 1.5 inches before it happened and I was able to stop, pull the stitches and start over without leaving any bad trace of what happened... practice makes perfect. I'm dang sure better than when I first got this machine!

So there's probably an easy answer for this question but I'm not real experienced in running a sewing machine. I mostly make knife sheaths and a few holsters here and there. The problem I had today on two different sheaths is when I changed direction of the stitch line, I was going along then before changing direction brought the needle to dead bottom of the stitch, lifted the foot, turned the sheath 45 degrees, dropped the foot and started again. at that point I dropped a stitch. after doing this two different times, the next time I started bringing the needle up a little before lifting the foot and moving the piece 45 degrees and it didn't miss any more. so my question is, what is the proper location for the needle when lifting the foot to turn the work piece and change direction of the stitch line. Thanks for any help here!

Nice...I really like those!

Oops, sorry about that PastorBob, that was meant for you donohueleather, that's a nice looking holster!

That's a nice holster for a great gun PastorBob! I love my Sig 365X, I just made a holster for it too.

Those are some nice holsters!

The problem I had with the shield is it's a .40 and after turning pipe wrenches most of my life my wrist's are shot and that thing hurt during practice. I've got a full size Ruger SR40 that doesn't bother me but that shield was too snappy for me. this Sig's a 9 and it's a lot more pleasant practicing with.

Thanks Dwight, ironically this Sig is replacing my .40 Shield. the shield will stay in the shop with in reach though

That's a really nice looking rig.