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That's a nice machine. Has it been sold yet?

That's very nice.

I never, ever sand leather. Sanding raises fibers which then have to be dealt with. I find that if I use a sharp knife to do the final edge cut and a sharp edger to finish off the edges no sanding is necessary. In fact sanding ruins the nice cut edges. For final steps I finish off with Tokonole, a dremel burnish and a final hand rub with canvas and liquid wax.

I have a full set of Watts edgers in both bisonnete and straight but all I ever use is Ron's Montana edgers. The only reason I haven't gotten rid of the Watt edgers is that they have absolutely gorgeous cocobolo handles which are hard to find anymore.

The stitching seems rather irregular. Maybe the holes you punched are too big for the size thread you are using or there isn't uniform tension on the stitches? I find that if I trim the edges after I have put everything together is is easier to get the edges to line up for finishing.

Looks very nice. Wondering why yo didn't finish the edges on the green piece?

Nuked it for to long. Takes about 10 seconds.

Thanks

I microwave the leather I'm going to press in a mold all of the time. As a caveat though I use wax and tallow stuffed leathers and just heat them long enough to soften the wax and tallow. A typical iPhone case takes about 10 seconds. One thing I haven't tried is heating the leather I want to paste before working on it. Thanks for the thought!

That was my thought as well: both heat and pressure. I think though I would try it with gum trag or tokonone before wax though. Thanks That's an interesting thought. It is cheap.

I'm interested in techniques for pasting the backside of leather. I have tried rubbing with gum trag and it is okay but not nearly as good as factory pasted.

Where did you find the snap for the retainer?

Do you want some feedback on things that could be improved?

Thank you.

Try using Tiger thread, it is pre waxed and the wax adds some friction making the brakes more effective. I know this is counterintuitive as wax should make it "slicker" but in my experience it doesn't. I have been running it on my Campbell Randall for the last year or so and it drags enough that I had to completely remove the tension apparatus from my shuttles.

The really high end straps are made with shell cordovan leather.

What is the definition of "jump foot"?

I think the tooling in your second piece is a significant improvement over the hat bill both artistically and craft wise and looks great. The hat bill could perhaps use a more seamless transition between the bill and the crown and the edges finished everywhere. The hat bill also looks out of proportion as compared to a traditional hat bill. Perhaps you were intending to make a hat with a longer bill though. If I were doing something similar, intending to market it, I might try just making a hat bill without tooling until I had gotten everything else tweaked.

I have used Barry King, Ron's and Jeremiah Watt edgers. These days I seem to reach for Ron's Montana and Round edgers first. The Montana's for thinner stuff and Round for thicker. I mainly use sizes 1-5.

Seems to me that there should be just enough tension on the springs to feed the leather past the knife blade. I think that the thicker the piece you are trying to split off the more tension you need. I set mine fairly light and if I need to split a thicker piece down thin I do it in a number of passes. You would think there would be some information out there on what a factory setting might be but I have never found any. You might ask Cobra what the spring tension on their machine is.

I have an old Champion that I bought on eBay a few years back. I had to completely re-surface it's blade but that was all that was really the matter with it. When I first got it it wouldn't split well at all. I would rather have a Landis as I like it's thickness setting mechanism better. Most of the small (6") hand crank splitters are based on the same design so if you find a manual for the Landis you can use it to adjust most all of them. A couple of weeks ago there was an really nice Landis for sale on Craigslist for $100 but I was too late. I think Cowboy makes a new version of the Landis but it is kind of expensive. You have to just be looking but they are out there.

I gave up on the hand-pull splitters for anything other than skiving a belt end or something; too hard to pull and too inconsistent. I do all my splitting, even belt end skiving, with a hand crank feed splitter now and I haven't found anything I can't split just fine.

That seems like a nice combination.

What kind of splitter older or new? The reason I ask is because if it was an older splitter there is a chance the blade wasn't as sharp as it needs to be. I take my splitter blades out and strop them on a regular basis same as my knives; they need to be just as sharp.