ttownfire

It looks like two barrel knots... To try it out, tie a half hitch on the rope/lace with one end. Then tie another half hitch with the "running end" back onto itself. They should slide and sort of cinch down as you pull them away from each other and loosen as you pull them together. Hope that made sense...

Thank you.

Howdy! I am curious as to what kind of stitching this is? How I find more information about it and if it is suitable for items that are flat instead of round and/or hollow instead of being wrapped... Muchas Gracias!

Wow awesome stuff Forbeskm! What a serendipitous reply, as that is the front runner for shoe schools I've been looking at. Great to hear from someone who actually went there. The more I think about the way I need to manipulate the fabric to do patches on the turnouts, the more I think a post style machine may work better than a cylinder arm. I have 4 angles that need to be sewn per patch and the cylinder will only give me two for free. A post machine would give me 360 degrees. And a post machine seems like a good fit for shoe making as well.... Mind if I contact you via pm/email for more shoe/shoe school related talk?

Hi All, I am a full time firefighter with a sewing habit. I have an Artisan 618-SC that I use for lots of different operations. Examples, I repair firefighter turnout gear which is heavy Kevlar and Nomex fabric. I also make and repair cordura/nylon based products I.e. bags, tactical gear, etc. Lately, I have gotten into more leather after a brief flirtation a few years ago. I am having a hard time sewing patches into arm and legs of the new firefighter gear. It was doable on the Artisan 618-SC with some creative folding of the fabric, but the turnouts have gotten smaller in diameter and that trick isn't working on the flat-bed Artisan anymore. So I am thinking some kind of cylinder arm type machine. I have been hand stitching everything I make with leather as I don't want to damage the machine that funds my leather venture. I've hand stitched some sheaths, a holster and plan to make more. I am afraid to do more than one layer of 5oz vegtan with the machine. To complicate matters, I am currently investigating a few different boot and shoe schools I may possibly attend. I would like to have a machine that is capable of sewing the leathers involved with those industries as well. To sum up my messy mind: A cylinder arm machine. Capable of sewing heavy leather and heavy Kevalar and Nomex fabric. Capable of sewing the leathers involved with shoe/boot manufacture Is there one machine that will do what I want? Can you provide some machines for me to investigate? I've looked at the Cowboy 2500 among others, but would love to hear to some opinions on my particular situation. Muchas Gracias!

If its for your one-off art pieces; I would just represent myself and have a great story for each piece. For off the shelf type stuff: I think the structure of retail is changing. I really think "wholesale" will be a thing of the past in the near future. To me there is a ton of risk from a retail store operator point of view; Order 100 units of "xyz" and hope you can move them. There is a lot of risk from a manufacturing point of view as well; you are committed to the order AND the terms of the deal. If the retailer doesn't move the products; you could be getting them back or you may need to return a percentage of the sale, for example. Your committed either way and discounts don't always work as we've seen this year. Direct to Consumer, which seems like a plethora of people do here, is a GREAT way to make it work. The rise of informal business is going to dominate in the near future. To operate a formal business with a store front and all the associated fees and taxes is not always necessary. In fact, if you really think about it, most businesses could operate from a garage rather easily. Cutting out the government as a middle man is a great way to "vote." I'm not advocating cheating on your taxes, you still need to claim all the associated income and expenses. I'm merely pointing out that we can change a lot of governmental bad behaviour and create sustainable businesses by cutting out the middle men in a legal manner; from retail representatives/buyers to the fee and sales tax collectors.

What size needle would you run for 138 thread? I'm thinking 23 as I run a 22 for 92 thread... could it be 24?

Hello mate - http://www.seattlefabrics.com/webbing.html...Polypro_Webbing This is 2" and I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for, but you might give them a call to see where they get it... never hurts to ask.

Tandy has the Craft tool version of this snap setter on sale right now... at least my local one did. I bought mine yesterday for $90. I also got the L24 dies for $50... I think they are regularly $60. This thing is freakin sweet. My old hand held snap setter was mushrooming bad and has lost at least an inch since I started using it last year. I got sick of smashing my fingers and taking so much time to set a simple snap. Best early birthday present ever!!!!!

Yeah, its just neoprene with a laminate fabric. They do sell "naked" neoprene which is just the rubber compound without fabric, see here: http://www.seattlefabrics.com/neoprene.html#Neoprene There are some other options too; http://www.owfinc.com/Hardware/Shardware/neoprene.asp They sell "land use" or SBR neoprene for considerably less than "normal" neoprene. I will tell you that this stuff was beyond tricky for me to sew, especially at the thicknesses I required. You might have someone that knows how to sew stretchy fabrics come over and teach you. I also realized that an industrial serger would be ideal for the laptop cases I was trying to make. YMMV.

Another quick answer: YES!!! Saying NO here is like saying; you can't make shoes because so many other companies already make shoes. I say go for it! This is not a moral compass issue either. Those that try to make it a moral compass issue have something to gain either directly or indirectly... which is akin to protectionism and protectionism has never really worked; ask Thomas Edison.

I don't think you have much of a case if the item is "knocked off." Even if its damn near identical. Especially if you don't have some sort of protection on that design. Look at the all the Chinese Knock-offs of sewing machines for example. If the major manufacturers thought they had a case, they would sue the pants off these Chinese companies. The simple fact is, most anything is damn hard to protect design wise and even harder if its simply a construction method on the front end. Meaning, its hard and expensive to get a patent, copyright in the first place. Then once you tally up the time in court and fees associated with fighting an infringement case, you're better off just walking away to design something else. There is a reason why "first to market" is better than "protection." People reverse engineer things all the time for mass manufacture. In my opinion, you should just expect it and therefore constantly strive for better designs.

I believe in open-source software. Likewise, I believe in open-source knowledge. To me its funny to think that you have a proprietary secret in the world of sewing, stitching, general fabric or leather work. Patents are good for items that have been engineered and tested with NASA like precision and expense. Items like our Firefighter gear and such. But for consumer driven clothing and soft-goods manufacture I think patents are silly. There are tips and tricks that will help make the job a bit easier, no doubt. However, if someone really wants to copy something you've made, they will do it if capable with or without your help. The only thing you can really control is the creative aspect that went into the design and being first to market. Everything else is replicable for the most part, it will only take time on the part of the person trying to replicate. One should never rest thinking they have a lock on a certain style, method or market. One should always be expanding the creative aspect of the work as everything else beyond that is basically the same. At least that is how I see it... YMMV

I have an Artisan 618... what foot or "feets" would you recommend for this?

Hey Randy! Yeah, what you wrote makes perfect sense... in practice its probably a bit difficult to master. The 31-15 sure looks popular on the boot makers forum, I suspect for the reasons you mentioned. I sold my singer 22U-33 last year and I don't currently own a drop feed machine. I'm not doing rows and rows of stitching on boot tops. However, I want to stitch some fancier "windows" for inlays and overlays, akin to boot tops in some respects. So, do you think it would be possible to use a walking foot/compound machine for top-stitching that kind of work? Thank you for that information! It was very helpful. Someday, I may ask you about that class...

Howdy all! I was admiring the wallets of Kevin King and Justwakinup and I visited a local boot shop yesterday. I was thinking about the top-stitching seen in all of this work and how it was accomplished as I've been trying to learn this aspect. I saw a post on a cowboy boot forum that used a perforated card and a powder dauber of sorts to layout the stitch pattern. I sort of used this technique to lay out a basic pattern and stitch. The lay out went fine, but the top-stitching was difficult. I was using the regular foot with this and I'm thinking I should use a zipper foot or no foot at all. The hardest part was turning the leather under power accurately. I could turn it, but it was way wide of my target. Heck, It might be easier to just use a drop feed machine. Does anyone want to talk about top-stitching and their techniques?

I just saw that this message had replies!!!! Thank you for the help, I sure need it. I think I have enough information to get going... now I just need to start. Thanks for the info!!!! M.

Wow. Settle down man. The system is not broken because I know proper economic terminology and how it applies to everyday situations, sorry. If you take Accounting 101 you'll find a lot of things that don't make sense, namely debits and credits (at least they were hard for me to grasp). That doesn't make your professor an idiot. Likewise, I didn't invent the system, I just play in it. The economic level of understanding in the USA is abysmally low at all socio-economic levels. The "broken system" is largely due to the fact that the vast MAJORITY of American's have no clue about money, interest, credit and debt. Brilliant economists, to which there are very few, are trying to fix the problem as it were. Unfortunately, the "fix" will become painfully obvious to you and me in the near future. The function and definition of a fiat interest-based monetary system will still be the same. And the gold standard which was abolished last century, will still be a distant memory. You can choose to participate or not, the game and its rules are published.

You're wrong, again. I didn't just type some fancy words and call it my opinion. What I wrote is FACT whether you want to believe in it or not. You can't make something up and call it fact without a proper vetting, and your posts fail any semblance of economic understanding. First, we live under a fiat interest-based monetary system. Google it, as I don't have the room or will to explain it to you here. Second, One can attempt to "dumb down" certain aspects of any subject. I've tried to do that with the previous posts as the subject is enormously more complex. The simple fact remains, that one still needs a basic understanding of the subject before they truly grasp the "dumb down" version. Third, nothing in the fiat interest-based monetary system is as simple as; Go to work, earn money, deposit money, buy stuff and repeat. You can live and think along those lines, but you must understand that a complex machine lies beneath the surface. Our system is similar to a mechanical watch where behind the face lies a damn complicated machine that is absolutely vital to what you see on the face. I don't know how the Quartz movement works, and unless I'm prepared to spend time learning it, I don't make assumptions or proclamations to what piece does what. You should do the same here, or spend some time learning basic economics.

Sorry senor... You are free to call money/debt/credit anything you want. It will not change the fact that it is what it is. Credit (debt) and money are fungible - they spend identically in the economy. Can a store tell the difference between a $50 dollar bill and $50 dollars of credit? NO, other than physical properties and other agreements there is NO difference. The $50 bill or credit spends the exact same. That is because the $50 dollar bill IS in fact credit (debt); it is a bond of indefinite duration carrying zero interest written against the aggregate wealth and production of The United States. I'm not trying to over-complicate things, they are what they are. As a country we need to pull our collective heads out of the sand and learn. We have been duped into thinking financial markets are overly complicated, the powers that be want you kept in the dark.

We are cutting back this year... mostly because I think the next two years are going to be horrible. This is long, but its a good summation from a pal on a market board to which I'm a member and email I just sent out to some of my customers and family. A lot of people listen to media as their sole source of economic news. The problem is a lot of those in the media don't really understand the complex nature of the markets (stock, bond and credit markets). I studied Econ. at the Univ. of Arizona and I read/write on many things economic... I hope this doesn't come off negative as I like to call it; Reality based opinion. ------------- I'm writing now because there are a lot of forces at work in the US economy whose outcomes seem mysterious... but are actually quite certain (the effectiveness of the bailout), and some that seem certain whose outcomes will be determined by what actions we take (outcomes like whether there IS a recovery at all). I think a widespread understanding of the difference is the only chance we have at navigating through the near future successfully. But I will tell you my conclusion up front: There will be loss, The Government will eventually have a viable solution, but by competing with the market now it will make the problem worse. And it has only a limited supply of financing... using it too early will mean that nothing will be available when it's needed. The first key to understand is that this situation is different from those situations in the past. It's different from the Great Depression because the US was a creditor nation then and could have used that status to lighten the blow. It's different from the early 70s because, now with so much debt and so much default, we can't "cause inflation" to keep unemployment reasonable. It's different from the early 80s because we're not combating inflation in a frenzy of liquidation. It's different from Japan in the 90s because we can't export nor lend to the rest of the world to compensate for our popping bubbles. It's truly a unique time with unique problems. The first thing to understand is that all Money Is Debt. You create money by taking out a loan, and you destroy money by paying that loan back, and you destroy even more future lending capacity by defaulting. I'll leave it at that for now. I'll explain it as a footnote maybe, but please take it for fact in the meantime. The foremost problem we face is the total amount of debt owed by everyone (called Total Credit Market Debt by the Federal Reserve). It stands at around $52 Trillion. The real problem is that if all money is created from interest-bearing debt, the only way to pay the interest is by loaning out enough NEW money to pay that interest. I don't know of a figure that indicates aggregate interest rate on the $52 T, but at 5% it's about $2.5T per year. The PROBLEM is that our debt origination has plummeted to well under that. Just $1.1T annualized in Q2, and even less currently (probably negative). In that context it is easy to see why the government is so publicly insistent on banks to use their bailout money to create new loans. It's to encourage people (on the aggregate) to take out loans to pay their interest! Once you can't generate enough money to pay down interest, you reach a state of Guaranteed Default. Suddenly banks shy away and thus EVEN LESS loan money is generated, at higher interest rates, and the problem gets much worse (less money available to pay down more interest). And the *rate* at which the problem gets worse is proportional to how bad the problem is. Math calls this a "differential equation" and the solution is almost always exponential. With $700B, the banks actually have plenty of capital against which to loan enough money to keep the borrowing game sailing along for a few more years... so why don't they? So Why Don't They? The problem is the type of debt. There are two types-- "self-liquidating" which means that the money was borrowed and used to generate an income stream that will pay back the debt AND the interest. This is how business functions. In the context where incurring debt is borrowing from your own future productivity, self-liquidating debt is using the money for that duration to make enough *extra* money to pay the interest. For instance, if you stopped paying the loan at any time, in theory the bank could seize your enterprise and its income stream would be sufficient to pay back the debt + interest. And then there is "non self-liquidating debt" which is either consumed at a productivity deficit or tied up in an asset in which it doesn't generate sufficient additional income. Like taking out a car loan for a nicer car than you need. Happiness is not an income stream unless it can potentially be realized by renting out. Lately, we've all enjoyed a great deal of consumptive happiness! Well, what we've been doing as a nation is incurring debt to build up greater and greater asset-price gains (mostly in house prices), but then we've borrowed against those assets to generate "income" that we spent on imports! So not only did we incur non-self-liquidating debt (since rents on houses haven't risen much), but we used that as collateral on loans for imported consumption. It's no wonder a bank wouldn't want to lend until mortgage payments fall in line with tax-adjusted rents. But then there's the additional problem of the income stream. What income may be net-flow-positive while overall money is expanding can go underwater in a hurry while debt contracts. Banks, so recently burned aren't going to front-run speculation on income streams or asset prices.. that's what borrowers with down-payments are for! (So lending standards over-tighten) So What's Inevitable? Let me fast-forward past the near term to the inevitable... Banks won't lend again until debt collateral on the aggregate is self-liquidating, or near enough that there is sufficient down-payment to make up the difference. Unfortunately for houses, which made up a great deal of the debt expansion since 2000, that is a long way down. BUT it will be even longer if.... High Interest Rates It will be even longer if interest rates go up. Now, let me dispel a common misconception about interest rates. The Federal Reserve does NOT set them. Interest rates are correlated by many things-- inflation expectations, risk premiums like counterparty default and currency depreciation... but only one thing CAUSES rates-- supply and demand. Interest is the COST of money. The demand is the amount of people who want to borrow, supply is the amount of people who are willing to lend. End of Story. And the debt market dwarfs our government... the debt market is where our government goes to borrow its Trillions. There are two major points to make about interest rates: Debt markets lend to our Government for the same reason that banks lend to people: the expectation of that debt to be repaid by a revenue stream. For foreign participants like Japan and China and OPEC who have lent our government a great deal of money, part of that revenue is our consumption of their exports (revenue for them, though). Another is our ability to repay the debt with increasing tax receipts, where the government spending goes toward projects that benefit our economy. And ultimately, our military is a potential revenue stream of last resort (well.... sometimes not last, and usually not positive, but its threats *ultimately* can be persuasive). All three streams have become impaired recently, but interest rates remain pretty stable because another funding source has revealed itself... Fear. A flood into "safe" US Gov debt from fear, because the rest of the world is much less stable economically. But make no mistake-- the funding sources I spoke of, Japan China and OPEC, they are all in deep trouble and will start being forced to spend their reserves internally. Certainly, we can still fund most of the debt required for the $700B bailout, but we should treat that like it's our last water-stop going into the desert of higher interest rates. Point #2 about higher interest rates: Government intervention in debt markets. Many nations, Ireland, Australia, Spain, and many weaker ones have "guaranteed" the debts of their banks now to encourage an inflow of capital (or discourage a panic outflow). The US has bought up the $6T "balance" sheet of Fannie and Freddie. The Federal Reserve has bailed out Bear Stearns, AIG, and is providing guaranteed commercial paper funding (like private loans to some big businesses). Whereas in the past, only Government debt was "guaranteed" by the full faith and credit of America, we've now wildly distorted debt markets with guarantees and bailouts. The problem is that these guarantees have targeted the worst, most dysfunctional enterprises only because they were the "Worst, Most Biggest" immediate threats of collapse. And now it appears GM will be next. The problem is, the government backing attracts funds, unintentionally making debt funding for healthy companies (the self-liquidating kind that goes toward hiring people and building profitable business infrastructure) much more expensive. For instance, Verizon, American Express, Altria, GE, and Pepsi have all very recently been paying 8-10% on 5-10 year issued bonds! That's more expensive than some teenagers pay on their credit cards... on long term debt! It's absolutely unbelievable, and those high rates literally mean fewer jobs and lower wages, and it's specifically because of the sudden, giant "government guaranteed" sponge waiting to soak up all the available funding. So... the conclusion. That $700B *can* jump-start the economy out of recession/depression, but not yet. Non self-liquidating debt will be flushed, which means house prices will fall. Stock-prices that were built on unrealized revenue-streams will plummet, pension funds will fail, and every state and company will be pleading for a bailout. These things are inevitable. We have another $15 Trillion to go, I would figure. Throwing money away on the failed remnants of consumption-driven America only impairs our ability to create a healthy sustainable and profitable America. The conclusion is that EVERY SINGLE CENT of government money must be spent on generating an income stream from tax receipts. It's the only path. ANY deviation and interest rates will destroy the private sector. Say we want to spend our little money on public transportation infrastructure, that's fine, if it helps people get to jobs where they earn higher wages and pay for the tax that brought that wage. This is reality. It's not new. It was just deferred.

Howdy all! Well my dads b-day is coming up and I want to make him a holster for one of his newest purchases. He bought a Kahr MK9 recently and it lives in a lonely little box. He wants it molded and tight fitting OWB. I'm thinking regular veg tanned shoulder with a stingray inlay or a stingray/leather strap across the breech or both. How should I go about molding the leather? Should I wrap the thing in plastic wrap... I already looked for a blue gun and no luck for that model. Can I use the regular shoulder from Tandy? He wants it black so I need any advice y'all can give for dye. Style... Admittedly, I don't know much about the different styles other than what I've read here. So I'm thinking pancake with slots. We talked about a slight cant for the way the gun sits in the holster and I think he called it FBI. However, I can't find anything on it so far. I know I'm missing a bunch.. so please fill me in.

Beautiful work. I'm amazed at your sewing precision.

I like the idea of donating and I think its great that you want to pay it forward. All I'm saying is that you could pay it forward and cover a TON of your expenses by creating a download-able tutorial. I think you could easily quadruple the number, in a matter of days, of people willing give you money for something like this. I never win contests like this and I have never won the lottery Therefore, I tend to shy away from raffles and other "lottery-esqe" events. I will donate to Leather worker but I have a hard time doing raffles like this, I guess its just a personality flaw. My wife is going to handle that stuff for the boy and his sports stuff. Like I said, this is good stuff that people will pay for, right now. Think about the leather workers that make videos and sell patterns. From my vantage point, selling you techniques isn't any different. I have a lot more, but I don't want to hijack this thread with business mumbo-jumbo.

Here is a suggestion; Make a wallet tutorial and sell it for $20 a shot. I would pay for that in a heart beat. Hell, I'll buy it and then code it and/or make it a webpage or PDF for free if you want. The darn economy is in the porcelain and I reckon people are saving every Jackson they can find...