TinkerTailor

Since most wallets do not need to be waterproof I use several coats of carnauba creme. Carnauba creme is a leather treatment that softens leather and deposits very hard wax that buffs up beautiful. Carnauba rubbed leather has the best hand feel in my opinion. I will slop it on and then massage it into the leather with my fingers until most has been absorbed, leaving just sheen behind. I like to dip my fingers in and work it into a small area at a time. I want enough product the surface to get really wet and slippery without any puddles of the stuff. After you massage it in, let it dry for a few hours Then buff. You need to apply alot of pressure and rub hard with a cotton buffing rag. It can be difficult to hold a small wallet and get enough buffing pressure, and pushing too hard on a finished peice can cause outlines of the interior details to show on the outside. My solution to this is I lay out and trace all the pieces onto the leather and then rough cut out the whole section of the hide for the project. I then finish the leather as one unit, flat. I can lay it on the table and buff hard with my body weight and both hands. Sometimes I will even tack the piece to my bench for this step. I cut out the pieces after after.

Its a similar idea, but I have had good results with 50/50 then carnauba creme. First I do a light coat of 50/50 to help lock in the finish and harden the surface of carving. I bet its actually 60% or more alcohol in reality. I put more alcohol in to make sure this first coat sinks in and distributes without leaving any on the surface so I can still go in with waxes and things. Granted they take longer to absorb, but they still will. Shiny reso coat on top, no way. Then I'll just slop carnauba on on with my fingers, rubbing it in with my hands, let it soak and buff it. Do this twice and buff really good. For more waterproof, snoseal on top. Carnauba rubbed and buffed leather feels soooooo nice.... I have also had success treating leather from the backside with carnauba to soften it without affecting the grain colour or finish. If you get the leather softer from the inside, you may not even need to change the finish technique on the outside. I do this on the backside of bendy bits like the fold of a wallet, selectively flexifying.... What if you just oiled the piss out of the leather before you assemble with your current technique?? Or oil dip a couple times after dye but before reso? Or just dye the oil for that matter. It may also be that the solution is to switch to a softer temper leather and keep your finishing style. I have no idea where you would get it (i'm in Canada and he is local to me) but the nicest veg leather i have used came from Italy. When I looked at it, there was some that was amazingly limp but still thick and somehow not squishy. I have a belt made from it that is 10 oz easily and it is soft enough I can wind it around a broom stick yet hasn't stretched a bit in a year, and I put heavy stuff on my belt. I know that the selection of consistent quality leather is super awesome these days but it may be worth a look.....

IMPORTANT ADDITION: Buy and wear thick leather gloves, wear a jean jacket and jeans(or other tough full coverage clothing), also a face shield when changing the blade. These things are very sharp and very springy and LOVE to bite your arms and legs. The blades come shipped coiled and are usually stored this way. When they uncoil they can shoot off in lots of ways, even at your face. Do not be scared, just be prepared. Once you have a feel for how the blade behaves, you can relax a bit. and maybe ditch the face shield. Never change the blade in a tank, shorts and flip flops..... If you really want to be safe, police and security personnel supply houses sell Kevlar lined leather gloves to prevent knife injuries to the hand during arrests. Kitchen supply houses sell chain mail gloves to make sure restaurants and delis start and finish the day with the same finger count. Not gonna have the best dexterity with mail..... Watch a couple videos about changing band saw blades before you do it.

A couple things about band saws if you are new to them, the width of the blade will dictate what curve you can cut. Narrower and thinner blades cut curves better, but are harder to keep on a long straight line, and are not as strong. For your use i would get the narrowest you can. Leather is nowhere near as tough on blades as steel or wood because it is somewhat flexible and cuts cooler. Forcing a blade around a curve, or getting it too hot ruins and breaks blades. If you are cutting a tighter outside curve, the best result will come from chopping the curve off close with a couple straight rough cuts, and then go back in to do the curve nice. This reduction of waste material allows the cut off piece to flex away from the blade, reducing binding and allowing you to follow the line exactly. For an inside curve, just cut straight in at 90 degrees to the line or so, and almost up to it a few times. The idea is to make a bunch of slots just up to the line so it looks like a thick comb. Then when you go in to follow the line, the saw is cutting out a bunch of little pieces, not one big one which tends to bind the blade. Here is the technique for inside curves, I know its wood but the technique applied perfect.. Here is one that helps for inside corners. Notice how he just veers off the cut and chops off the waste really quick and then goes back in.: The blades are made by several people. Here are blades by one of my favourite US based tool companies, they are available from amazon. :http://www.starrett.com/saws/saws-hand-tool-products/band-saw-blades/specialty-band-saw-blades/band-knives Here is a seller or two of others: http://www.mcmaster.com/#knife-edge-band-saw-blades/=14r0iq0 http://butchersupply.net/knife-edge-band-saw-blades/ http://www.lagunatools.com/accessories/S/Scallop-Bandsaw-Blade-5-8-X-2-TPI-X-123 I found several US based manufacturers and saw blade supply houses that list these blades as band knife blades. I would contact a Starrett or one of the others and see what type and width of blade would work for your application and saw. Most of the brick and mortar companies still left making and selling product in the USA are very good with the customer service because that is the only way they can survive and still compete with china.

Thanks Trox, that is some interesting info. I have never seen this style of skiver before, how does it feed? I don't really see how it would work. I tried to look at the manual but I am not that good with Italian and FAV could use a better english translator.....

Had to find the link : http://www.strapworks.com/category_s/944.htm They also custom powder coat Hope this helps.....

I have to apologize, I simplified a bit. A ligne is 1/12 of a french inch which is 1/16 of a US inch officially, and was a common measure in clockmaking. Button makers used the thickness of a candlewick pounted flat as a ligne, which was closer to 1/40 of an inch. The US chose this as the measure for a line. The ligne is also used to measure hatband width and is closer to 1/11". It's one of those units like horses being so many hands high that has stuck around in only one place just to confuse us.

Try searching for companies that service tactical gear manufacturers. The places that sell kydex and webbing.

Yes, the ligne/line designation is for diameter of head.

A ligne is an old french measure that equates to 1/40" so my guess would be 20/40= 1 inch. Line(ligne) 14 is 14/40" or 0.350" This may help.

Surgical staples could easily be used for many purposes in leather working now that i think of it .....I mean flesh is flesh.

The solution is a burner account. I got a gmail account with something like 8000 unread messages......I give that one to everyone i am even remotely suspicious of.. I can do a search if i am looking for something specific in that account. My real email is actually pretty clean.

Cool.

The tips look like the tips on sheet metal nipper shears, only smaller. That would be my guess, for cutting detailed sheet metal pieces, perhaps for jewellery. These type of nippers are used with thin sheet metals because they don't distort the material like tin snips.

How overloaded is the circuit the machine is on? An overloaded circuit will brown out and drop voltage. Have you tried the motor on a dedicated plug to be sure you don't actually have low voltage coming from the wall? It could also be that the motor is not powerful enough for how it is geared. If it has pulleys designed for fast speeds and you are running it slow into thick stuff, it may be running out of jam. A speed reducer will fix this, as will a more powerful servo motor. How many watts is the current one?

If you do some searching they make bandsaw blades with no teeth just a knife edge as well as these really neat looking wavy edge ones like a serrated bread knife. They make them for cutting foam and that type of materials. Never tried them myself but i have heard they work good for leather and leave a nicer edge because there are no teeth to chew it up.

Drum sander and/or belt sander. Nothing beats a drum sander for inside curve stuff and a belt sander for straight /outside stuff. You can get big drums and rolls for a drill press and little ones for a dremel. All range of grits. Look at the sanding machines they make/have made for boot factories. One kiss on a belt sander will straighten an edge. Outside curves are also easy on a belt sander. You can just clamp a portable one to the bench. If you can expose the end of the belt sander, the roller will work like a drum sander but will limit the radius of inside curves you can do. You will want to rig up a shop vac for dust collection, especially with dyed and finished leather. Not the best dust to breath. As to edge finishing, if it is evenly and well sanded, use the edge burnishing and finishing technique that you prefer. The key is not the product it is the surface you put it on. Can't just put lipstick on a pig, you gotta exfoliate first......

I was just thinking, I think i accidentally made my 441 do this by having the feed dog too high while working on something else.. Its like the material squirmed as it was pushed up and due to the feet not being perfectly centered, one just hangs off the edge of the dog a little more than the other, it caused it to steer. These little harness feet we all us need way higher tolerances than the blanket feet for instance. I also was thinking that if one toe is lower than the other, it would walk in a circle like a guy who has worn an inch off his peg leg. Do you have other feet to try?

Copper or brass mallets will also work without marring the tools and give the kinda wack a big slot punch deserves. Thor hammers makes some cool ones. The idea is to make everything as solid and stationary as possible so the ONLY movement is the punch. With a big enough hammer and a solid surface you can drive even a dull punch with one hit....The bounce on that bench is sucking up at least 1/2 the cutting power. Also heavy hammers with harder faces don't bounce off the punch as much and take away force from the cut. You want the hammer to be at least double if not 4 times the weight of what it is hitting to ensure the work moves not the hammer. I break the rules and use a 2-3lb steel rock drilling hammer on big punches. I would get yerself a thumpin-stump like nigel has and a bigger hammer. That poly board will roll the edges of a punch faster than end grain wood will. You can get an 8' 4"x4" and cut it into 4 pieces 2' long. Screw these into a square and you have a 24" high 8"x8" thumpin stump for the price of a fence post and some screws. Homeless despot will even cut it for you.

I used to "Step over dollars to pick up pennies" as they say when it comes to glueing. I have learned over time that there are times where going faster now slows you down later. Glue ups is one of them. The contact cement I use has a minimum open set time of 15 mins and a working time of 60 mins if I recall. That is a 45 minute window to stick the stuff together. If you cant get it together in 45 minutes, the problem is your head, not the glue..the glue up plan needs to change...Outside this window, if you assemble the parts the glue either doesn't dry or is too dry to bond. Every contact cement lists this on the label. Follow it. The 15-20 min wait time for my contact cement is about double the time it takes for the glue to stop being tacky. I used to just stick it together as soon as it isn't tacky, and I ran into glue drying troubles, and needed to leave it overnight. Now I set a timer for 20 minutes to give the glue lots of time to chooch, then I stick it. Press/hammer/roll the glue joint hard right away and keep on moving. It is stuck. Not coming apart. When I wait 5 mins for the glue I can still pull it apart an hour later. Try it yourself with your glue. Do one glue joint your usual way and then again but this time, set a timer for the minimum plus 5 mins and see how strong it is in an hour compared to your usual. I do wait an hour or so before machine sewing, but not overnight. I sew by hand right away. By waiting the full time before assembly, I also saw a reduction in the amount of stringy, never ending glue boogers and edge finishing problems. On the edge issue, cutting close and then trimming after glueing and sewing makes for a nicer edge and also gives you the opportunity to move the cut line parallel to crooked stitch lines and make it look right...... Use small pinholes in the stitch lines to align pieces if the edges are not cut even and you can't use those.

Send tandy corporate a link to the video and see what they say...

No prob, all in a days play.

This should work for your machine, it is a clone of this machine:http://danreetz.com/juki/JUKI_DNU-1541-S-7EM01_SERVICE_MANUAL.pdf Page 21 of the pdf which is page 47 of the manual.

There are dyes and paints. Dyes tend to be pretty thin and most people on here end up thinning them more. Dyes soak in and paints stay on the surface. Paint will have less bleed issues but may not be as durable, beccause it is on the surface as opposed to inside the leather. Angelus makes very highly regarded leather paints and dyes. Their paints work very well and come in a bunch of colors. Pretty thick for stamping, you would have to play around with the thinner to get it more ink like consistency. The other option is find a thicker medium to carry dye. For example, you can add spirit dye to neetsfoot oil. Also Fiebings has sold acrylic resolene finish in colors, and i believe you can mix dye with it. This may be a solution. I would stay away from anything tandy because the water based stuff may run and may bleed in the leather too much to get a crisp image with a stamp. Try not to mix brands of products. Actually, if you can avoid mixing at all it is better, both for ease of use but also compatibility issues. All sorts of weirdness come from mixing dyes/paint/thinners/finishes willie nillie. Frequently you can save a bit buying thinners, methylated spirits/isopropol/rubbing alcohol from the drug store thin fiebings dyes perfectly. I bet fiebings doesn't sell a whole lot of their dye reducer because of this. Most of this thinner compatibility info is on here somewhere, probably in a dozen places for any given product. First thing I would try is straight up fiebings spirit dyes specifically the pro oil dye. I have seen stamps done this way that turned out well. If you want black, do not get the usmc black as it is known to rub off forever and ever and probably will result in smudged images over time. Rub off and smudging is probably going to be the hardest part to get under control. Any dye over applied will rub off, and rubbing may ruin the detail of the stamp not to mention the customers white silk blouse the dye rubs/runs of on....