TinkerTailor

Yeah, but to be a man and vote you had to have a deed for land, so they were covered there........You will note it does not say all people are created equal,

Not sure it went too far off topic, Rural areas are consistently slow adopters of change and as such still hold some of the values that made america great before. They may have something to teach. A big part of the solution is to stop finding ways to make money off each other so we can have bigger jetskis than each other and go back to helping each other succeed. This still exists in rural areas but is gone in cities. This is a huge part of what made America great....Community and Values.. I am not even an American, I am Canadian and live in Vancouver BC, one of the most multicultural cities in the world. I am exposed to the kind of immigration now that many American cities saw from Europe in the 40s and 50s. Thousands of people wanting something better than what they have now. People who can see that even half of what the average North American has is still double what they could get at home. The hardest working people I know are the first gen immigrants. They get here and work their ass off to get a house, car, become citizens and raise a family from nothing. Many have big familys due to tradition or religion. These people have insane work ethics and frequently build successful businesses from the ground up. Their kids then inherit the business, and run it well, still remembering the hard work and values their parents put in. The second generation tends to be more affluent due to the value left behind by the parents. Then come the kids in the third generation. They never saw the hardships, always had money, got a car as a gift at 16, and end up with no work ethic at all and huge entitlement issues. They often are prejudicial towards people from the same country but have not been here as long.....Figure that one out....And remember that by the third gen they are not immigrants, they are third generation citizens. The affluence and entitlement problem is ours. It is passed down citizen to citizen.

I know that with most acrylic products, once they chooch, they are done. It may thin out but it won't stick. And frozen resolene sucks. I have a small leather kit i bring traveling because my family ALWAYS wants me to fix stuff for them when I visit. I throw a hand warmer pack in there before i check my bag to prevent the small bottle of resolene from freezing. In days past, I would just take it in my carry on along with the knives and hammers. I then would sit down on the plane with my complementary whisky. and light a smoke. Those were the days.. Btw, The guidelines in Canada for what you can pack in a carryon bag specifically prohibit catapults........scuz me??

I totally forgot a detail on linen thread, you can taper the tip. If you lay the thread on the table and scrape it towards the end you will pull off fibers, thinning it to a point. Can't really do this with synthetics. There are many ways this can be an advantage, One is if you run out of thread in the middle, you can just align the tapers on the ends of the old and new threads, twist them up and keep sewing. When you are done, the join is invisible. At the end of the stitch you can taper the thread to keep the backstitch from looking too heavy, or in the case if stitching around circle, hide the overlap. Also, whenever I backstitch, if at all possible I bury the ends of the threads between the layers by putting the needle into the hole, then only through one layer and pulling it out from the inside of the seam. The seam pressure and any glue in there will hold the tails better than just cutting them off flush. If you plan well you can do this with most of the seams on a project.

Bad cheques in a small town.....I totally forgot about that part, back in the day businesses used to just tape the bad cheques to the counter so every customer would see it and would know your name. Then every day in the coffee shop or at the feed store, someone would say "Hey Jim-bob, did you ever pay that bounced cheque from Petes hardware store?" Shame is a very effective tool to keep people honest and good. We need more shame and less fear ruling the world I think. When people make decisions to prevent personal shame, these generally end up being honourable decisions. When we decide based on fear, the outcome is much more unpredictable. Fear triggers animistic survival instincts, and morals go out the window. Fear is how the world turns these days.

I think this can be a huge factor how a person develops values. My Dad taught animal science and crop science at a small agricultural college and farmed on the side for decades.... We had no TV. The antenna reception sucked. I read lots in the winter and did stuff outside on the farm anytime there was light. My attitudes and values came from day one as a child, I knew this is the way people are supposed to act. If your kids act out in the grocery store over candy, the whole town knows about it and they all whisper about how nasty your kids are. Then the preacher brings up controlling children and parenting in the sunday sermon and everyone looks right at you........Problem of bad parenting solved by shame.......Its funny how city people think that they one day they will move to the country for privacy. In reality there is less privacy in rural areas because anonymity disappears and everyone knows what everyone else is doing. The upside is there are people right there to willing help when you need it. They don't wait for the call, If they see yer old Massey stuck in the field they go right home and start up the Steiger. (provided you are not the guy who's name is on the big sign outside the farm store for writing bad cheques)

Started with occupy wall street, the mortgage crisis and the fallout after. People got a small taste of hardship and a glimpse of just how bad the corporations have them by the short ones. The backlash against this corporate greed and profiteering was building way before Obama. Bush and Poppa had quite a bit to do with this situation as well. ....People took out those mortgages and credit cards during the bush period, then went bankrupt. While I can not deny that the rift has been building for at least the last 8 years i can't agree with the inference that it was created by democrats, specifically Obama. Both parties follow the orders of the ones who give them the money. You and I don't have enough money to play in that game. Every user on this site combined does not have enough money. The rift is NOT along partisan lines. The rift is between corporate entities and the people they take advantage of in the name of profit. These corporate entities just happen to also control the government.

Or just be real with what you are selling. Hair and makup colleges do cheap student haircuts. You go in knowing and accepting that the risk you take for the low price is it may not be perfect. You have to start somewhere. Tell people, "when i am better i want to charge 40 bucks but these ones are 20 cause i am learning". That honesty in itself my cause them to buy it even though it is flawed. Nothing wrong with selling apprenticeship quality goods as long as everyone is on the same page.

Every large increase in the USA's ability to manufacture and every jump in infrastructure followed a civil/world war or the great depression. Hardship breeds ingenuity and resourcefulness, and shows the value in fixing what you have, cause its the last one you will get for a while. It is going to take a great hardship for the people to stop being so selfish and recognize that working together to build stuff makes all of us better. Also, I think we need to keep the last 100 years of US foreign policy and the problems and solutions created out of this conversation. The US is not going to get great by messing with other countries. They need to clean up their own house before looking at the neighbours.This is a whole additional topic. Already has happened. The election results directly prove the country is fractured.

You can solder standard hardware to brass and copper stuff. I use this technique to make 'penny rivets' like a concho

I have one. It's the same machine as the cobra 4 and the cowboy 4500. I have no complaints.

The cost is going to depend on where the stitching is failing and how bad. The seam on the top and bottom are sewn on a special machine and can be fiddly to re-stitch. Same thing goes for the lens "pocket". That stitch around it is very tiny and would be difficult and time consuming to redo.Problem with the stitching is if some is breaking, it all may be bad and the whole thing needs to be restitched. No use doing some if the rest is soon to fail. If it is just some unravelled ends, this may be fixable economically. If you get to the point of total restitch and redye and new strap, why not get a custom case made? Wouldn't cost a whole bunch more, saves the initial purchase of a case and is all new leather and stitching. A new strap and a redye is pretty straightforward. Where you located? Can you post any photos of the damaged stitching?

What I meant by my previous statement is you can not learn how to use your hands from a computer. You can however learn a great deal in front of a computer if you spend the time accessing media in a directed manner. Time spent on youtube watching cat videos and on facebook farming is time wasted. Time spent going through old textbooks and manuals from the smithsonian and watching videos by users like gmace on leather work from an english saddlery examiner can be VERY educational. Its all in how you use it. Watching one of Uwe's videos on machine adjustment or something is good for 2+ hours of examining the manual. NEVER has it been easier to learn so much with so little effort. Conversely never has it been as easy to be a complete waste of skin. People consuming food and resources that give no returns back to society while they clickity clicking on farmville and watch russian dashcam videos for hours. Resources that could be consumed by someone who contributes to the betterment of man AND the planet by making/fixing/growing/nurturing stuff. The internet is a resource just like our food and needs to be used effectively to be useful. As far as the prices for crappily done handmade items, perhaps the price they are charging is the right price. Perhaps those who do nicer work should actually be getting double. Slide the scale some. Obviously doubling the price of the stuff we make is impossible because the price ends up so far from the cheap chinese crap it is staggering. However, don't forget the social/environmental/political costs of these low import prices. Poor quality materials and assembly line factory production are one way to save money but the real reason we import is they don't pay workers anything and they destroy their surroundings. Part of the marketing has been to blind people to these aspects. Once this cost is factored in, crappy handmade stuff would not be far off of the price of the low quality import, and doubling the current price of our products becomes justified. If these factors mattered in china, companies would save the shipping and locate the machines here. It could be that the marketing engine has got to you as well. As to the quality comment, I was refering to the quality of the craftsman not the product. Chromium water pumped into rivers at discount tanneries is waste from the craftsman. Poor quality hides have larger areas of waste. A good craftsman will take in quality raw materials and produce exceptional products with very little waste. As you go down in quality of craftsmanship, waste goes up.

This is just a result of the loss of actual quality craftsmen. Consumers just have not seen quality hand made products before. The number of people I have had to show pictures of me actually stitching an item before they would believe I stitch that consistent, neat and tidy by hand is astounding. They all are convinced that only a machine can sew like that. Not to knock the craftsmen on this site, but look around at the gallery for straight lines some time. Even with a ruler a surprising number can not cut a straight line. Beautiful stitching but the pocket is crooked.... In many well regarded youtube videos outside curves are cut by chopping away a bunch of straight sections and this is seen as the neatest way. Cutting a straight line is one of the most basic apprentice skills, and is necessary to call yourself a craftsman of any type.... I have spent a lifetime learning how to move my hand in a straight line, whether drawing, cutting or whatever. I can cut exactly on a line, and up to 12 oz in one cut freehand with no ruler. I have used my hands for my whole life and have great dexterity and hand strength. I lay out pieces with 1/8" between max, frequently cutting the straight edges of two pieces with one cut and no straightedge, following a line. Cutting this way, with clean one stroke cuts saves alot of time and leather waste in the long run. A one cut edge is a breeze to burnish. A 12 cut hack job takes 1/2 of sanding to make passable. This is risky but i am confident in my ability to be accurate. I don't mean to brag here, just bring up that being good with your hands takes more than deciding to do some leather stuff for an hour here and there. I could cut a straight line when i started this leather hobby. My other skills just transferred over. This takes using your hands for many things for a long time. You can't learn this on a computer. You learn this by using your hands. A straight line is a straight line. If you can draw one on paper, you can cut one in leather or in wood. If you don't know what straight "feels like" you will have great difficulty. If you want to see the skill of a craftsman, you can't look at the product, look at the scraps and waste, they don't lie. Apparently, in 20 years the average grip strength of a person in north America has dropped 20%. We don't use our hands anymore. If your hand is not strong enough it can't make a straight cut, period. If you want to see the skill of a craftsman, you can't look at the product, look at the scraps and waste, they don't lie.

It is kinda hard to explain. when you are putting the second needle through, you wrap the thread from the first thread around the needle point a wrap or two. This basically causes the two threads to twist around each other insider the hole instead of just passing by each other creating an overhand knot inside the hole. Casting can also be incorporated into normal stitching to either add some lock to the stitch or to make changes to the slant of the stitches and how the stitch lies. Here is a couple of videos that should answer yer questions: Nigel has covered stitching astounding detail and is a master. I should note, Nigel Armitage is left handed and has done videos in both. You may have to reverse some of the techniques in some of the videos. Around 8 mins he talks about casting for appearance sake: This one is also a great video on saddle stitch tips. Ian does nice work and explains stuff well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zTOqJCWbfY

Trillions of dollars have been spent over decades to convince the people that the only good thing is the latest and greatest thing. Buy the new widget because your friends will think its cooler than the old one.............. We, as well as our parents have been inundated with this marketing and can't be blamed for following blindly. That is what the marketers have been working for. It surrounds us 24 hours a day. There is basically no demand for anything that lasts and repairable because people are conditioned to put no value in "old stuff".....Funny thing is, the new widget is the same price as the old one but way lower quality. Who cares that it broke, There is a new one now.......Once you start attempting to fix stuff you quickly see how crappy it was made. It then informs your future purchasing decisions, "am i going to be able to replace that cord/hose if/when it breaks?" I believe in the philosophy of buy right once, and maintain it forever. This means 2 years down the road, I am buying something different instead of the same thing again. Yes the product may cost double or triple, but it is once. In the long run I end up with more and better stuff for the same money cause it didn't break and if it did, i could get the parts to fix it. Frequently these days the only choice to buy right is to buy old. Buying items that others bought right, lovingly used and cared for for their whole life and left them behind still perfectly usable. My shop stereo is a 1972 technics amp with sansui sp95 speakers. I think I bought it for 75 bucks. It has real wood speakers with real wood lattice grills and a wood amp case. Sounds good quiet, and really good loud. Really really good. And it looks beautiful. It has been used hard for decades but treated well. For 5 years it was used as the stereo for a bicycle shop, bumping away for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. I know it will outlast me. I added a small 6 channel mixer I found for 40 bucks used so it had more inputs and now it has radio, computer, cd, phono, iphone, cable box and dvd inputs. The number of brand new home stereo components my friends have gone through in the decade I have owned it, trying to get what i have, is astonishing. Quit buying crap. Buy right once. Grow some food. Make stuff. At least attempt to fix stuff. Live simply so others can simply live.

I do not think anyone, Trump included, has any idea the financial and material costs of rebuilding Americas Infrastructure. They only got the railway across the United states by giving millions of acres to the Rail companies to sell off in order to recoup the costs. This land is gone. The interstates highways as well as a bunch of water related infrastructure was built in the 40''s and 50's after the war. It was the pre-war armament and l rebuilding of the entire continent of Europe that paid for them. It took a great depression and a world war to wake americans up and make themselves great, with HUGE personal and national sacrifice. People had to starve before they would change their ways. Now after 60 years of selling off the hard earned industries their grandparents sacrificed hugely for, they are in the same boat as before the depression. Unless the average American learns to sacrifice for the betterment of all, and the greater good, Trump will not succeed. The necessary decisions are too hard to take and too unpopular for Trump to succeed. Currently as soon as anyone says "greater good", they are a socialist or a commie.......

If you have to use pliers to get the backstitch needles through this is not a bad thing. In addition,overwax the thread in the last few stitches and also for the backstitch. As you get to the end of your stitch line, grab your wax, warm it up and get that section of thread good and coated. It will help lock the stitches in the holes, and keep stray linen fibers at bay. You can just rub the excess off the surface when done. Be careful if finishing after stitching because excess wax on the surface will effect penetration of dyes and finishes. Casting your stitches to create a knot inside the hole is also done to help lock the backstitch.

You would think gold star would make a die set that does this to any rivet, being a star and all....Not that I would ever buy a goldstar press..

Agreed, however the first start is to reduce the transportation element of the cycle, which forces you to buy local. Farms that raise animals and crops at the same time do not need fertilizer input. The animals fertilize the plants and the plants provide food for the animals. We as humans just glean the fat off the system. When you go to feedlots and huge mechanized farms, you now need to truck the feed to the animals, which frequently requires intermediary processing and you also have to buy and transport fertilizer to replenish the fields. People won't tolerate rail cars of stinky manure crossing the land, so again processing or just using fossil fuel based ferts. If an area does not have enough water, like vegas, people are just going to have to leave. Period. North America CAN support industry and all the people in it if they stop with the obsession on having a Cadillac for each kid and grow some vegetables. The People, as represented by the government, need to suck it up and get their hands dirty and build the infrastructure that CLEAN industry needs. This will not be cheap and will require huge sacrifice from all. This solution is very detrimental to the profits of big business, and will contested greatly.

You can do it with piss too.

So someone has to do it: America was once the world leader in manufacturing across the board. They made the products as well as the machines to make them. They harvested the raw materials and refined them into end products. Every part of every item was made in the USA. Thousands of farms grew healthy cattle, and they were tanned to the highest standard by multiple tanneries right here at home. Millions of acres of hardwood trees in the north east of the USA were allocated to leather tanning and it was exported to the world. Foundries mixed base metals and cast or forged them into hardware of quality. Linen thread was lovingly spun here from locally grown flax. Things were good. Then the factories and machines were sold and scrapped. Manufacturing in general was moved offshore. Now there are very few suppliers of products left in the USA. USA made tools are prized. There are only 3 tanneries of note, and neither is even close to what they used to be. Us hides are tanned in mexico. USA made buckles, few and far between. All the leather machines are made in asia now. Thread-china, Tools-china, Tools to make the tools-china. Here is a quote from a wall street journal article about Howard Shaffer and his attempt to start a shoe factory in Florida around 2008. He was the man who set up the original shoe factories in china for the big names in the seventies. He failed due to lack of supply chains. If anyone had the connections and cash to do it, it was him and he failed: I question, How can America make itself great again without starting from the ground up? In Tuscany there are water treatment plants built just to treat the effluent from tanneries. This is smart planning. Planning from the ground up. There are dozens of tanneries within a few hundred miles making some of the best leather in the world with basically zero pollution. None of this infrastructure exists in USA unless it is owned by the tannery. This keeps out the small guys. If all the machines to make stuff have been sold for scrap or shipped overseas long ago, and the skills and techniques to utilize the machines have been lost to time, Where do you start? The vast track of trees to tan leather are gone....The foundries dismantled....The rail lines to them sold for condos....The agricultural land has been sold for residential. The water is used up for lawns......Going to be a long hard road.

Classic case of adding oil to fix everything, and apparently this time it worked for a while...... How you could smash that cover and not notice or care is crazy

This is a bit of a loaded question because it depends greatly on the formulation of the plastic. If it is fairly new, there should be material type and recycling info molded or stamped right into it somewhere. Like a number in a triangle with some letters beside it. This will tell you the family of plastics it is from and from that you can find out and which glues are applicable. With ANY glue up, cleaning scuffing the surface is crucial for a strong bond. Due to plastics inherent difficulty gluing, you want as much texture and mechanical bond as you can get. Also test your particular plastic beforehand. Some types of plastic absolutely do not stick to contact cement. How do I know? I found these plastic pallet knives at a dollar store, and nothing sticks to them but crazy glue or epoxy. I use them as glue spreaders, and after i finish glue ups I just leave them all goopy on the bench. 2 hours/2 days or 2 weeks later I can just peel the old glue off with my fingers and start with a clean tool. That being said, There ARE glues and adhesion promoters for this type of difficult glue-up involving plastics. Renia makes specialty contact cements and adhesion promoters for shoe makers that will adhere difficult to glue plastics. http://www.renia.com/englisch/start.html Now while not a standard leather glue because it is too stiff, epoxy will stick the plastic. It can be a pain in the butt to use due to mixing as well. While not flexible, and can be messy, Perhaps for glueing leather to a rigid plastic box, it may be ideal. Keep it thick so it does not bleed through the face side. Best thing to do is test. And wait a few days for glue to dry. I have had glue ups that seemed stuck that day but released 2 days later due to some chemical thing happening while it attempts to cure. One thing to add: wash the plastic thoroughly. It may have a mold release agent applied to it during manufacture that keeps it from sticking to the machines and molds. This will also keep your glue from sticking even if the plastic is glue compatible. Frequently mold releases are are wax based.

I was looking for motors for a bench buffer/sander project and I found a westinghouse, is that good? Here it is: http://vancouver.craigslist.ca/rch/hvo/5842965788.html The advertisement said it was 3 phase and I was wondering if it will work? It may be a little overpowered (600hp) but hey, better safe than sorry. Now I have to find some kind of converter to get a motor rated for 4000 volts and 76 amps down to 120volt. And some helper springs so my volvo can carry it home. Its only 6900 lbs. Ill just keep it to second gear. Do you think i will need a speed reducer to get more punch?