Thanks a lot for the complements, and yes, I was scraping a ton of wax off. I have heard of Tiger thread and do plan to order some, but again, there are so many choices...
Does anyone have a "cheat sheet" for ratios of industry standards for the following relationships - leather thickness: thread thickness: hole patern: awl size: needle size? I'd love to not learn the hard way (again) on variables that are seemingly straight forward.
Brent