TinkerTailor

Before synthetics, canvas sails were reinforced with leather at the corners and such. With 3-4 layers of sailcloth and 2 layers of leather, it would be close to 1/2 inch thick I cant think of a non sail leather operation that needs an arm that long on a machine. It must have been made that long for a reason. Most every equestrian operation can and has been done on machines with almost no throat, like the campbell lockstitch. Do you know of any operations that require the larger arm clearance from that time period?

By the size of the flywheels, the front one looks to have some pretty good punching power, and with that short arm would have been stiff. Could have been used for harness straps.....If i were to guess, the bottom one is for leather straps, the middle one if for textiles and the top is for sails. That was the age of sails after all. They were huge and plentiful. Hand sewing new sails for a schooner would suck....That longer arm would be ideal.

You got that backwards, the firearm was mass produced after the sewing machine. Look it up.

So officially, only Myanmar, Liberia and the United States still use imperial. The rest of the world is metric. Just saying.

Make a few different kinds of bags on a home machine out of heavier canvas/ denim. I used cheap fabric i got at the thrift store, and cut up a few old canvas duffels and made things. Who cares what they look like, you will use them to keep stuff organized in your garage, the idea is to learn what a machine can and can't do cheaply. While sewing, Note when you have to work inside out to fit it in the machine, and also note which side of the stitches are up. Also note where thick seams are difficult to deal with. This is worse with leather. Ideally for appearance, you want all the outside stitches to be topside stitches. Imagine that the canvas is leather and much harder if not impossible depending on design and thickness to flip inside out. You will end up sewing yourself into corners for sure. Doing this, you will learn alot about where the limits of a flatbed machine are. I design my stuff to eliminate these hiccups and limitations. A pattern must take into account the skills, materials and equipment available to me at the time. Its a big reason why I do my own patterns. Whatever it is, It needs to be make-able with the equipment I have. Last minute design changes lead to mistakes. Sometimes they are inevitable, however i have had to scrap a few projects over the years due to last minute construction changes that have had unintended side effects.

I tend to switch back and forth. I was brought up imperial on a farm but used metric in school. I use imperial most of the time but when math comes in, i sometimes switch. Say you are trying to make a fringe with 4 strips out of a 4 inch piece of leather, It is going to be 3 cuts. That works out to 1.33 of an inch. Find a ruler with that number on it. Yes, you can work out the nearest fraction but this is another step. In metric, 100mm(4") divided by 3 is 33.3mm. This is easy to find on a metric ruler. When dealing with feet and inches, division and multiplication gets even harder. This is why machinists work in thousandths of an inch and not fractions. For rough estimates 1"=25mm and 1 foot = 300mm Also, chevy fans out there, a pound is 454 grams. A kilo is 2.2 pounds. A quart of milk is about a kilo.

I actually use my cylinder arm all the time. Not that most of the operations couldn't be done on a flatbed, they are just easier. Unlike when i have to do it inside out or upside down on a flatbed. One of the best examples is stitching a turned seam around the top of a lined bag after the lining is in with one continuous stitch. The advantage is I can keep the nice topside of the stitch showing on the outside, and the bag right side out. I sometimes think it would be more useful as an off the arm machine so i can sew up the side of a bag.

Knot is inside the keeper.

Gonna have to get one and take it apart now, aren't we..

There is usually a knot hidden between the layers of leather. Nigel Armitage has a video of doing a similar thing. Watch at 10:30, it will give you ideas.

or perhaps dixon style are the leftover factory seconds...

Odd, I looked at ebay.co.uk and found all these tools that are listed as made in England, "Dixon style".....and look the same as old dixons. Is there a new company making new dixon tools now in Walsall? I will also admit that when I read "Dixon style" I thought of gangnam style, and pictured all the old boys in England making tools, doin the dance.......

I bet there is an answer to this on a reenactment forum. They are CRAZY for details. I'd be willing to guess that at the beginning of the war on both sides, most of the gear would have been factory made in the 50's, or in a local saddle shop, and likely hand stitched. They did have factories full of guys sitting at stitching benches for horse gear back in the day. Even well into the 1900s, they still had these. There are still operations that can't be done by machine faster than by hand without some serious machine specialization. By the end of the war the replacement gear may have been machine made because the demands of supplying the war quickly would have required machines. Rivets may have been used in some places to keep the hand stitching hours down, and were replaced with stitching in the machine age. Again, I am not an expert here by any means, though I may be soon if I don't find a different rabbit hole to go down....... For info, I attached a scan of a 1928 revision of a stirrup strap that clearly stated which stitches are to be done by machine and which by hand: 1-1-44.tif

That is a good question. I have scans of the us cavalrys patterns for their equestrian gear from that period and there is no mention of machine sewing i have seen. The modern sewing machine as we know it was conceived in the 1840s, and took a few years to get going. Likely most of the leather gear in the civil war would have been hand stitched, Both because the sewing machine was not common at all yet, as well as the fact that they were not really built heavy duty enough for heavy leather until around the 1870s or so. Singer made the Standard model 2 and 3 starting in the mid 1850s, and these were made for buggy and harness uses, They could not have been common outside of bigger factories, and were much less refined machines as later ones that were pretty limited to what they could do. They were using sewing machines extensively by then for cloth and most of the cloth items would have been machine done.

Using too small of a hammer with too much force reduces accuracy, increases the tenancy to strike crooked and increasing the likelihood of mushrooming. In addition, the additional blows due to the lower weight will increase this effect. One square hit with a big hammer will do much less damage than several hits with a hammer that's too light. I use a 2.5lb rock drilling hammer with my setters and punches. One big whaap...Have for years, leather, wood, steel. Never had one break and very little mushrooming on any of them, especially if there is a chamfer on the top of the tool.

Just so you know, I have never told my age on here, and I could be older than you think, or much younger....Number of times around the sun does not reflect wisdom or experience. Wisdom and experience come from doing things, not watching them done on a screen.

If the rivets are too long and bottom out in the setter, the shaft will bend and it will get stuck. Two fixes, cut the rivets, or drill the hole deeper. Drilling could be really difficult depending on how hard the tool is. If you are trimming them before you set the burr, actually any time you trim them, don't just cut them off, cut part way through and then turn the cutters 90 degrees and cut the rest of the way through. Doing it in one cut can deform the shaft enough to get stuck. Plus it is easier to peen nicely if the top of the rivet is a pyramid shape not a wedge. Btw, you dont actually need a setter. I have some random of 1/4 inch drive deep sockets, several of the small ones work great to set burrs. I got the right size for any rivet. After I drive on the burr with a socket and mallet, I cut the rivet off and hammer them with the ball of a ball peen hammer. That is why it is named that way. This is how they turn out:

Take up fly tying....Really.....He is trying to reduce the amount of stuff he has to organize. The problem with fly tying is you never have just the right combo of thread and hackles and all that other stuff.......Are ya helpin or settin him up??

Agree with you there, JLS, I was brought up with a very good work ethic, I am seriously worried about the future with this "Ill take what I want, eff you" attitude that is becoming commonplace. Even on my last day on the job I feel like a mooch if I don't put in the whole 8 hours. It is a point of pride that everything I have, I earned. Including my reputation. Offer me a free ride and I will offer to wash your car...... I have an old copy of autocad from one of the businesses I worked for that upgraded. They gave me one of the old copies. I have worked both as tech support for an autocad school as well as 3d modeling timberframe house designs. Im pretty good at it, however it does not excite me. I also have a copy of illustrator. I do use illustrator a lot, just not for patterning. I vectorize a lot of graphics with it. I have used it to digitize fonts from 100 year old books. I think what it is is that i do not like the way you draw curves on the computer. It does not have the same flow as by hand. When you sketch you can work up to the right curve and erase the extra lines. Doing this on the screen can get messy. As to the belt size question,assuming the circumference of the object is represented as "A", The thickness of material as "B" ((A/π)+2B)π=final outside circumfrence. What that says is "Take waist measurement, divide by Pi to get diameter. Add 2 times the thickness of material because we are working in diameter. Times by Pi to find new circumference. Works 100% of the time every time because the math says so, provided the material didn't stretch or the gut shrink.... Here is a video on how to multiply numbers without a calculator by drawing lines:

I know quite a few people rely on digital means to make their patterns, I am not one of them. Lets have a discussion about tips and trick for good old fashioned pencil and ruler layout and design: Having worked with AutoCAD for years at work, I am fully capable and set up to do digital patterning. Thing is, I don't like it. It does not work with my creative flow. I use old school CAD, "Cardboard Aided Design". Need it narrower? cut it. Need it wider? Tape a hunk on. No power? No problem. What I have found is that it is actually faster in alot of ways to do it this way. In order to be faster you need to know how to use the tools properly like the old guys did. Here is a picture of my drafting table with the design of a bag I am working on sitting on it. Notice that there are no fancy tools, just rulers, a small square and a couple compasses (The big ones are Starrett 92-9's from around 1890. They are beauties, still have both the legs, fit a pencil and fit the osborne scratch compass grooving tips). The tilting table is nice on the back but not necessary. The blue flexible curve I usually use to keep pencils from rolling off the table..... Notice there are pattern pieces sitting in the top right corner, Those only took 5 minutes to redraw from the original full size front view with a compass and a ruler. If you look close you can see my compass points and layout lines: I have many tricks, some of which are kinda difficult to explain. This video on blacksmithing does a great job of explaining some great tips for old school layout: What tips, tricks and pointers do you have?

I have been making a point of being pleasant and kind on this board, which is quite contrary to the online persona I have on other forums and my personality in real life. I could change to a more natural tone for a while to fill in your shoes......I am loud obnoxious and very opinionated in real life, AND i'm always right. Usually funny and i don't cost much........Class A ashhole and proud.... Just let me know.

First make sure the machine is lubed then check the standard tension adjustments, and make sure thread path is correct, thread is seated in the tension discs, and both top and bottom thread paths are clean. Usually it is a threading or cleaning issue when the tension suddenly changes. If the thread path is perfect, Switch bobbins for one you are sure has been wound evenly. I wound a couple bobbins a while back and didn't notice that the thread was hanging up on my thread stand. The bobbins ended up with sections wound tight and sections wound loosely and sewed exactly as you described. The other thing to check is that the bobbin tension adjuster screw didn't back itself out. My machine did this because the set screw that locks the tension screw was missing from the factory. After i reset the tension, and installed the setscrew, all was good. If this is the machine Gottaknow fixed, I would bet all of the pesos that it is not due to a missing screw.....He may have a screw loose, but he would never give one to someone else.......

I agree with this, however sometimes and in some areas of the world, ordering the right leather can be cost prohibitive. In addition sometimes a project requires thinner matching leather for just a specific use. On the bags i make, I am frequently making the body out of 4-5oz. Things like interior pocket flaps, rolled handles, and piping/binding i like thinner. For these tasks a pull type skiver would be nice to have, however i am saving my dollars for a fortuna type skiver. I currently roll edges full weight in 4-5oz. Requires wet forming and hammering and swearing. I would use the crap out of a bell skiver. Here is where i would use it: I should mention, that is the backside of the stitch too. I had to do it that way so the stitching on the turnover matched the topstitching on the outside of the bag.

I have a couple suggestions, One is to post a topic once and then keep using that same thread. You asked this question a while ago here and got an answer from me and a good one from Bob. Look at his work, he knows what he is saying. Asking which knife is best is like asking what is best for punching holes in leather? How big are the holes? What shape are they? What thickness of leather? Do you have a tool-style preference? You are going to use a different style and shape of knife for long straight cuts than you are going to use for tight scroll work. You are also going to go through 3-4 knives if not more before you find the perfect one for you. Doing inside corners cleanly with a knife can be difficult, so many use a punch or chisel to square off inside corners. That is why i posted the pic of the chinese shape punches. This knife is well regarded for detail work, however for me the handle is too small and i get hand cramps. http://www.fineleatherworking.com/indispensable-knife Personally I find it easier to reshape the blade of a knife with a handle that fits my hand than the other way around.

This site. Search this site, several users have uploaded patterns over the years. There is a whole section of the forum dedicated to it. http://leatherworker.net/forum/forum/9-patterns-and-templates/ User tboyce has uploaded a bunch of patterns and has been known to just make a pattern if a good one does not exist and people are looking for it. I also know many users have made pdf files that are templates of common things. Like a giant page of strap ends, or a bunch of different bag corners. If you have something in particular, alot of common projects, like say a long trucker wallet, do a search for the pattern. Frequently, an existing pattern is posted, and other users will modify it and post their patterns as well. Things like alternate pocket layouts and size adjustments for international paper money as well as problem fixes will get posted, as well as tips for construction. That is the best thing about the patterns on this site, if you have a question, there are actually people available to lend a hand who have already used that pattern. Try that with a pattern "borrowed" off some place in the corner of the internet.