TinkerTailor

If you are seeing fraying there, there may be a ridge or burr inside the hole. There was in mine. I fixed it by using emery string, threaded in the hole and i then flossed it smooth. You can buy emery string/cord at sewing machine places and mcmastercarr. You can make emery string out of any sturdy string embedded with coarser rouge. I have even scraped the grit off sandpaper and sprinkled it on a glue soaked string.

Are these made in europe or the ones made in asia? If they are european made, that is a pretty good price. If they are asian, as I suspect, you may want to adjust your pricing as it may be a little high to sell them fast.

Look up "press stud" or "Press button" or "stud with cap" at ohio travel bag, they have a few types. https://ohiotravelbag.com/products/item/afce2278-63ba-4488-8dc7-63d97c025e08/P-2659

Are you using the needles that came with the machine? If they are the same as mine, go look at the new ones in the package and see if they even had sharp tips from the factory. The needles were from xin peng needles. The machine had been sewn off on an Groz Beckart needle and worked great until i broke that one pulling the leather out the wrong way. When i went to the selection of needles the machine was packaged with I had the worst issues with consistency until i looked at the tips of the other "new" needles, saw they were junk went and got some schmetz needles. Smooth sailing ever since. If you have not already, throw out those junk chinese needles included with these clones. Or at least get out a magnifying glass and inspect them. There is NO advantage to cheaping out on needles.

I believe they are in Cowboy Bob's "collection"

That is why sewing machines have feet. You need to diy some kinda foot. Btw a home sewing machine unthreaded is also a hole punch...goes through quite a bit if you hand wheel and don't care if it stitches.

Because of the curve and material thickness the liner needs to be just smaller than the outside. The wrinkles are the extra material in the fold and it needs to go somewhere. If you can glue it with the curves in the base sides already there it will help. Not as easy as flat but it is a better way. Same as making wallet interiors smaller and gluing them already folded.

I fold it over and sew it flat with no padding, just a string through it. After i stitch i use the string to pull in my filler cord. If the filler cord is doubled over, but soft enough, you can put a stick through the loop at one end and hold the tails at the other, twisting the filler cords up inside the handle to tighten them up and fill out the handle. They can also be done pre padded by wedging the rolled portion between the foot and an edge guide. Never had as much success with this method. There are also special foot setups for this.

The question would be, "Is it worthwhile to have one of each if you are frequently switching a machine from small to big thread and back?" Obviously a 441 is set up out of the box with parts that can handle the biggest thread, with the tradeoff being not as good performance on smaller threads. Good luck getting a nice backside stitch and no blowout on the back when the needle hole in the feed dog is 3 stitches wide at a normal stitch length for 69 or 92...... Perhaps the closed/open frame question and which one is more common today also relates to machines being designed with huge thread in mind.

While you are in there, pull out the hook and clean and lube it. I have not had a thread hang up or any stitch problems for weeks, but mine had also started clicking a bit. Yesterday, I pulled a piece out of the machine after stitching it and caught up in the bottom stitching was a 3/4 inch long piece of old dirty oily thread that had been kicking around down there for a while, until the machine eventually spit it out. The stitching was perfect before and after clicking disappeared as well, but the oil mark sucked.......... My guess is the loop was barely hanging up on that thread piece, and then snapped free, jarring the mechanisms and making something click. I was probably heading for stitch problems in the near future had it not spit out. Right after i cleaned and inspected to ensure there was not anything else.

It has not been mentioned yet, is there a chance that the twist of the thread is wrong for the machine?

Question1: Any of the machine dealers that advertise on this site will be able to get you a quality motor for your machine at a decent price. Location would help because frequently the same motor is sold under different brands in different countries. question 2: Absolutely not unless you have very good electronics skills and can diy modify the domestic pedal. Its kinda like the pedal speaks english and the motor speaks chinese, and you need to build a translator from scratch without knowing one of the languages. There are threads on this site where users have built remote, movable pedals by adapting bicycle cabling etc, but again, this will be a diy thing. Alot simpler than making an ole domestic pedal work however.

Its called a clicker die or a rule die. Just like cookie cutters but for leather and you use a press to squish it and cut out the pieces. You can get a single die made and use a cheap hardware store arbor press, or you can get enough dies made up and buy a propper clicker press to cut a whole side at a time if you want. There are TONS of threads on clicker stuff and several members on here make the dies.

On a side note, If you are stuck with round leather belting due to the machine being set up this way, a bit of pitch or batters rosin applied to it will make a huge difference and won't harm the leather. They used to make belt dressings that were available all over the place that were formulated to condition the leather and increase traction. Pitch and rosin may not work for higher speed or continuously run machines because belt heat will cause it to melt. I have also used beeswax, but it melts and gets slippery at a lower temperature, and sometimes i needed to get tea while the belt cooled if it started to slip.

Its not about how high the foot lifts, as long as it clears the material you are ok. What can happen if it is too high is it won't come down far enough to put pressure on the leather when sewing thinner stuff. In actual fact, the drag marks on the leather may indicate it is too low. Hard to tell without seeing machine in action The real issue is pressure on the foot which is a different adjustment. Most machines have some kind of adjuster right above the needel to add or take tension away from the spring holding it down. This adjustment should be in the manual, can't remember if you have one or not... You basically want to back the pressure off until the material is lifting up with the needle, and the foot can't hold it down, or it starts to skip stitches, then add just enough pressure to keep this from happening. It also looks like the face of the feed dog may not be sitting level with the world, as evidenced by the fact that only one edge is marking the leather (if that is indeed the bottom of the stitch in the pic). It could also be that one edge of the dog is sharp, and needs a little filing and buffing. These issues are commonplace with asian made parts, which is basically all that is available new these days. A set of cheap diamond needle files and some emery cloth and/or emery cord are great tools to have around if you are getting into doing work on these old machines. Emery cord is basically string with abrasive embedded in it and is great for smoothing burrs in thread guides and needle plates, available from good sewing shops.

Trademarks and patents.....I can prove that trademark and patent law as it has evolved in the United States and Canada has taken away the rights of the common man to do as he wills on his land and with his property, whether that property is physical or intellectual. It took 6 months of research which I managed to trim down into a pretty concise 11 page paper.....I'm thinking of editing out the old real name and posting the pdf here. It is a pretty technical paper, and assumes the reader has a basic knowledge of political science theory. In summary, it examines the history and origins of patent law in the United States (Canada followed the US model until the 80's) and the changes that were made over time in the effort to balance the interests of the individual/company that originated the design to profit from their ideas, with the interests of science wanting to use the ideas unrestricted as a stepping stone to further discovery. It then goes into the landmark cases in the 1980s in which large companies fought and won the right to patent living things such as canola strains. This lead to corporations suing farmers for their farms and winning because trademarked genetic material was found on their land. Genetic material that likely flew in on the wind as seeds or pollen from neighboring fields where the material was being grown. Canola can blow for miles. I'm going to make it really simple here: "We sold our souls for rock and roll." Intellectual property rights as they sit need to be changed. Period.The whole deck is stacked in the interest of big business. If they want your Intellectual Property, they will get it.

Dental mirror and a flashlight, might have a hunk of thread in a waybackthere spot leftover from the jam.

Lining the flap without an edge stitch can be a problem because the bending will strain the glue and the fabric/leather will eventually pull away and sag or come apart at the edges. For simplicity, make the liner fitted for the main bag body but not the flap, and then sew a band of leather to the top of the liner. This then gets sewn to inside of the edge of the bag all the way around and across the back. The liner is hanging from the leather and the bag has one seam around it horizontally right at the top edge. It will end up with a stitch line across the back.

It also has a bit to do with the fact that the plastic tactical stuff is so damn innovative. Super-customization. This holster can be mounted hip/thigh/chest/forehead whatever, as long as you have all of your gear from acme defense systems......Those sliding cam lock buckles that don't work good with leather are great as well. Not enough uniformity in the leather world plays into this. In webbing, 1" is 1"....In leather, straps will vary more both due to cutter error as well as stretch Plus, your daily duty belt can transform into full judge dredd mode just by clipping on the corset and garters kit......179.95

While it does have a small bearing on this issue, I ask you "Who bought the drugs and stuffed them up their noses?" American Citizens. People gonna get their blow, one way or another. Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Cali are FULL of white american citizens growing weed...and not paying tax on the income... It has long been proven that prohibition does not work. Regulation, rehabilitation and a better mental health system do help. The war on drugs and its success/failure is a whole other topic, only loosely related to this issue, and totally not related to leather so I think we should leave it for another thread/forum. I'll gladly discuss, just not here.

An American has his own 4 bedroom house, 2 cars and owns the rental house the immigrants are living in. He bought the house just to rent it to them. He bought it with a mortgage and won't actually own it for 25 more years. He used his other already financed house as collateral to buy it, along with his boat, and dirtbike. Miss a payment and the cookie crumbles. You cant pay for these toys on a construction salary. The only way to get this stuff and actually own it is to sink your money into starting your own business, work hard for 20 years, put away the money in the bank, refrain from toys and extra bedrooms you don't need. When you have that 25 grand in the bank, get a new car. Or just sign up for another credit card. The immigrant is living within his means. He has what he can afford, not what he can finance. More americans need to learn how to do this. In any case, how someone lives at home has no bearing on the work they do. Now the fact that the project managers are willing to accept sub par work is the reason the immigrants do it cheap. The reason the project manager is willing to accept it is the end consumer just wants it done cheaper. If the standards of the consumer went up, the expectation of quality will go back up the chain and the immigrants will do better work. They are maximizing their output. If sub-standard is the standard, why do better?

Pardon????? Not sure i want a radioactive knife.....

Ok, to get it back on track: The hard facts of the above are: -A great deal of money is needed to rebuild American manufacturing and self sufficiency. If china turns off the tap for a while, USA is screwed...They have more than enough cash reserves to stop trade for a few years..... -Labor aside, who will pay for it? There are only two places it can come from, the people or the corporations. The only logical way to spread out the cost on the people is evenly, hence a tax. Thus you need a governmental body representing the people to take their money and spend it on water plants. Personal taxes, lots of them. The other way is to force the company to do it which takes money out of the bottom line. Prices go up and wages stay the same due to these corporate taxes (the only way to force them), or they leave the USA and manufacture elsewhere. This has been the case for a while since the 80's. Pick one. - It is not just a matter of getting the machines back, whole systems need to be changed ie: factory farming using fossil fuel fertilizer to grow food. - 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food wasted in the USA in 2010.......this is a HUGE issue. - A great deal of the rights for the natural resources in the USA are owned by other countries, largely china. Do you take them back? See the first point..