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Hi Don. I only use the machine intermittently and with different threads. I mistakenly thought that if the hook is meeting the needle scarf properly it should be good to go. It was only after closely investigating "the check spring" and it's limited adjustment that I realised it must be the bottom end that's out of time. I hope it will be back to it's old self once I re - time it.

Thanks Uwe. Which is what I said I will do later. You can teach me about sewing machines all day long Uwe and I'm very grateful but I promise you, you can't teach me anything about philosophy..

Thanks Brewster but I won't do it again. Got too much going on and I never have had a tank with lots of fish swimming around. My thing was always a single pair. People with community tanks don't know what they're missing. I've bred Dwarf Gouramis in 8 inches of water and watched them build a bubble nest and care for the babies that are so small you get eye strain just looking for em they're that small. Watch a pair of Tilapia Mozambique (mouthbrooders). He'll scoop up great mouthfuls of gravel when nest building and spray it all over the glass. You won't see them do the deed but you know when her lower jaw droops she's got eggs in there. When the time is right and there's no danger around she spits out a black cloud of babies and if she suspects any danger she sucks em all back up like a hoover. Wonderful. The pinnacle is breeding Discus. What a beautiful fish and to watch em going through all the motions has to be seen and more devoted parents you'll not find. Of course none of this can happen in a community tank and if it did the other fish would eat the eggs. I'll try to do a better vid, don't know what happened with that one but it isn't right.

I've been having having niggly problems for a while and this would account for most of em. With the needle scarf meeting the hook, the take up spring is nowhere near letting go of the thread. I'm convinced I'm right but won't get on it till later cos my £213 quids worth of letters have arrived (been waiting awhile) along with the JB weld and I have an appointment later. I had to have a brief play and the imprint on veg tan is nice and crisp even with no heat so chalk that up as a positive. I know the 335 and the 69 are virtually the same (binders) but does the 335 have the same back and forth feed dogs or do the oscillate? You can see some of my machine in a thread recently about speed reducers. I found it.

Now the weather is improving this will be the last update before they go in the pond. They have done well. the biggest are around 61/2 to 7 inches long. There are a couple that should have been culled way back but I reckon theyve come this far so leave em be. I hope you've enjoyed this little experiment.

I've been down in the mouth lately because my Adler 69 has not been playing ball. I even had to refund a sale because I just couldn't get it to work. I must've used up half a side of leather trying. Now I don't wanna count my chickens but between you and me (I'm whispering now because I don't want the Adler to hear me.) I think i've found the answer. It's the take up spring. I've got the hook meeting the scarf at just the right time and was still getting inconsistencies with the occassional missed stitch. I tried every thread size with every needle size, every top tension and every bobbin tension. I could only take a couple hours of getting beat up and I would have to come downstairs for a sit down and a cup of tea. So after playing with the take up spring it gradually dawned on me that there's very limited adjustment on it and I couldn't get it to let go when I needed a loop. Then bing! the light bulb went off in my head and I realised that it doesn't matter how good the hook to scarf thing is it's never gonna work if you ain't got no loop right??? So tomorrow, when my brain isn't so fried I alter the bottom timing to coincide with a BIG loop. Please someone tell me I'm right.

Here in the UK the unemployment figures are growing alarmingly due to covid, especially amongst the young. I have a grandson who can't get a job for love nor money and the thought occurred to me that, although I'm retired I have a wealth of knowledge that I could pass on, not just leather but all kinds of things, a fabricator welder by trade and used to buiding all sorts from blueprints and I know I'm not the only one in that position My question is, if I were willing to take on such a commitment, would it be worth looking for some kind of government grant to fascillitate such an endeavor?

Use some rough sandpaper on a piece of the same leather, collect the dust and plug the hole using some dry clear glue.

Thanks guys. I've ordered some JB, will be here tomorrow. Temp should be ok for foiling, Not sure about the higher temps for heat embossing but once I've strapped it down I don't think it'll be an issue, (famous last words right?) Watch this space or rather watch the updates on my DIY hot stamp buid.

I was just looking at the JB heat stuff. Promising. Hadn't thought of soldering. If the JB can hold it together it wouldn't be too hard to make a couple of half inch straps with cut outs to go around the cable one on top of the other and drill & tap or solder either side. Thanks guys.

Can anyone recommend some stuff that is thin enough to go into some small gaps, Goes off hard and will withstand a decent amount of heat? The walls on this thermocouple probe are so thin that it ripped apart when haf way into the hole. I have a replacement but I'd like to save that for a second project if I can. It's just a probe and the business end is already in the hole so I'm thinking if I fill the hole in and build up around it with some sort of putty, when it goes off I can drill & tap through the putty to hold it in place. Any ideas folks?

That is a really nice piece of kit. Makes my effort of making an add-on for my arbor press look quite shabby.

Who was it that wanted an 18 inch blade?

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Make sure you show us when you're done. Another thing you can do with your letters is hot foil. If you check out my post on DIY hot foil press you'll see on the last couple of pics I had to have a play. Even though it's not wired up yet I wanted to see the effect so I heated the stamp up with a blowtorch. You do need some pressure but very briefly once you sort out the right temperature. Can't wait for it all to come together. I ordered an alphabet and holder on 6th Feb and just got an email saying it'll be shipped on the 20th Fed Gold foil around that black Kate would be amazing. And you could even do it retrospectively. Good luck.

I meant the bigger button thing above.

Stunning look. Well done. Unless you got the exact matching thread, did you colour after stitching? And how did you get that button effect?

Nice work. I'll have to make one soon for my grandson's dog Gypsy. My first thought when I saw this was to wonder if you'd thought about heat embossing powder where you paint on colour or glitter in the impression and fix with heat? Please feel free to tell me to mind my own business.

That's easy for you to say. I can only just do basic stuff on the little laser engraver. Fortunately my buddy is well up on that stuff and he's just upgraded to a fancy CAD thing that will do brass. Mind you he wasn't expecting it to come in so many pieces. He's had it months now and I'm not sure if he's finished building it yet. He is a busy boy though so Ill wait calmly for my makers stamp.

Update. The stamps I have were for whacking so spent some time turning em down on my little wobbly lathe and putting a thread on em to go through the hole. Letters are gonna take a while to get here so can't sort that out yet. Shooting buddy hasn't been to wire it up yet But had to have a play to see about pressures and temperatures. Heaters are not installed yet so heated it up with a blowtorch. It's offset because the middle heat is on the centerline. Pressure and temperature are farly critical.

That's fantastic stuff but I can only look sideways at it cos I've got enough on my plate building my hot foil machine. Seems like you're only limited by your imagination. Well done.

Looking good. That's the kind of work that is not only harder to do on a machine but wouldn't look anywhere near as good. Well done.

I have another question Mike. I swear the way my mind works sometimes is a curse. So - My "shop" is upstairs in the front of the house. My big boy compressor is in the shed in the garden. I have a very long air hose on the compressor. I know the hose expands quite a lot. Now I'm thinking noise here at night, Would there be enough air in the hose for small airbrush projects without the big boy going off in the night? I appreciate I'm asking how long is a piece of string but do you have any idea?

Love it! That pirate can board my ship anytime. Well done.

To be fair there's not a lot in em to go wrong. Of course if you want production runs you have to pay for uprated components but for occasional use almost all of em will do the job. Most of em come with temperature control that yhat you can set but In practice, because different leather/foil will be slightly different you'll work out the best temp for that project and jot it down for the next time. You have to factor in the cost of the stamps/ alphabets which can be surprising. A lot of people have one letter twice in their name which means two set of letters and sometimes that's not gonna be enough and do you get upper and lower case letters in which case that's four sets. I've just bought a set that meets half way and comes with multiples of the letters that are usually used twice. That cost me £218 GB and I've no doubt it won't stop there and we haven't talked about different fonts or stamps yet. I'm in the middle of building a press (see other post) and I'm excited to see what I can do with it. Let us know how you get on and welcome to the forum.