bladegrinder

I’m North of Tyndall Air Force base now and see lot of cool stuff fly over, Chinooks, Ospreys, fighter jets, last year I was out and heard a loud rumbling coming my way, it was an A10 Warthog. flew right over my place just over the tree tops going really slow, man that was awesome!

I lived in Clearwater, moved there in 1979. I was 3 miles from the beach and two blocks off the main drag going there, when I bought my house there it was mostly older folks in the neighborhood. That changed, folks either died off or moved away and a lot of those houses turned to rentals and more recently Air B&Bs. the last few years living there I hated it, crime and unbelievable traffic, I couldn't wait to move. two years before my retirement I put a house and shop on 30 acres I bought twenty years ago for hunting on and moved right after I retired three years ago. I go down there once a year for a fundraiser show for the Safari Club and set up a table with my knives and some leather. I get there two hours before the show and I head straight North at sunrise the next morning, I don't miss anything down there.

Nice work and living the dream! I make knives too, worked in the Tampa Bay area till I retired then moved 300 miles away to 30 acres in the deep woods. I'm loving it and making knives in the peaceful quiet woods.

I've been taking credit cards for years and never had any sales disputed. I take checks too but I don't do Paypal I just don't like their business practices.

Thanks everyone, my next purchase will probably be over the phone with Wickett and Craig, they appear to have good prices and I'm in North Florida so the shipping shouldn't be too bad. Goliger leather will be next in line.

I use Square, you can type a credit card into your phone or, I have a gismo that plugs into the phone, it's only a few inches long and you can swipe credit cards. you can also email a receipt to the customer right there. my last knife show was 50-50 cash and credit cards.

A bottle of oil came with mine, yours should too I would think. I did buy some extra off Amazon, I use it around my shop on all kinds of stuff.

I wouldn't spend money to run a dedicated circuit. I run mine on the same circuit as a deep freezer, a mini fridge, a couple of led shop lights and also a Portable air conditioner running sometimes. I haven't had any problems. your machine isn't going to pull that much.

They may be good for purchasing in store but they've been taken off my list for mail order, as far as leather goes. I believe that's where my future leather will be coming from. thanks.

Yikes! I don't think your going to have any luck fixing that.

That rig looks great!

That picture kind of looks like the posts might be to long so besides mushrooming, the post has to go somewhere and it’s moving to the side.

It’s ok to add these straps without the spring steel isn’t it? I’m not doing liners on my holsters yet.

Yea, I had quite the pile of sewed up scrap. the one thing I kept doing was I'd end on one piece of scrap in reverse then when I started another one I forgot to switch to forward, but now stitching knife sheaths or holsters I always start in reverse and end in reverse. I also find myself hand turning the flywheel by hand at tight spots or turns, taking the brake pad out of the motor helps with that a lot, with the brake pad in, you have to push the pedal a small amount to free the flywheel, so there's lag in the machine starting. the way I have my pedal set up now there's no play before the machine starts running, you touch it and it goes.

Nice! thanks JLS.

I bought Cowboy 4500 from Bob at Toledo Industrial last year and it was up and running out of the box. I never ran a sewing machine so it took a while to get comfortable using it but now I love this thing.

Thanks Diesel but with the past experiences I've had with imported leather, I'll never use it again.

I just started antiquing my holsters. I vacuum form them so when they go in to the vacuum bag their soaked. I wait until the holster is completely finished then apply a coat of tan coat, when that's dry I apply the antique. this way you have to be careful of where it goes. I usually use white stitching so I put blue tape over the stitching and carefully apply the antique where I want it and wipe it off carefully too. later when it's FULLY dry I apply another coat of tan coat. I use Resolene on all my holsters and knife sheaths and I put a final coat of that on with an air brush.

A lot of great information here JLS, thanks. I recently had a request for a pancake holster with a snap strap over the hammer like in one of your pictures here. do you use "pull the dot" snaps on those? and do you use those round plastic protectors on the inside of the snap?

So in February I got an order for two holsters, I've been using 6-7 oz and wanted to go heavier with any new ones so I ordered 12 sq ft. of 8-9 oz. I ordered on Feb 19th. between the time getting it out the door and getting lost by USPS I finally got it and it was awful, totally unacceptable. OK, it was B grade but out of 12 sq ft, maybe 4 sq ft. was usable, so a call to the company and it was on it's way back. after the replacement rides around with USPS for a while it arrived yesterday, March 12th and it is 100% better then the first one so now I'm happy. Better late then never, but this is the second time this has happened to me with this company over the years with leather that should have never left their doors. I don't want to trash this company here because they made it right for me but I'm done ordering leather from them. So my question here is to everyone and especially folks who go thru side after side a year making a living at leather work, I've now decided to just order full sides of grade A leather. Could I get recommendation's of dealers that can be relied on for consistently delivering high quality Herman Oak leather with out having to cross my fingers every time i make an order?

That looks great! I really like the dual shell holder too!

Very nice, that looks great!

I’ve had it happen here once and a couple times on other forums. I’m not real good at typing and giving a long description on how to do something or asking someone how something was done and not getting a reply is pretty rude, in my opinion, but is is the internet so you never really know what to expect. I just kind of ignore the folks that do this and don’t ask anymore questions of them or answer any of theirs.

That looks great, very nice tutorial.

A couple times when people have tried to low ball me on prices I’ve asked them if they have any jewelry, when they give that kind of dumbfounded stunned look I tell them I take guns,gold, silver, everything but bitcoin, that usually has them moving along.