DrmCa

FWIW, I recently bought a plasma cutter directly from China. It works fine and cuts well without wasting too much consumables, but the power switch stopped working after 2 or 3 uses. It simply does not want to stay off. Guess that is how they are expected to work under the communist regime. Ended up pulling the plug from the wall to turn it off. But the ebay seller was nice and shipped me 2 or 3 spare power buttons free of charge when I contacted them. Having said that, buying directly from China is a hit and miss game. Once a few years back I bought some overstock notions from a company in Ningbo and it was good quality. But similarly looking stuff at the local fabric and notion suppliers may be utter crap. Also had to throw away some computer hardware that simply did not work as expected or was outright DOA.

The old skin was ways better. Now the home page and forums pages waste tons of space with large fonts, but the messages are in tiny font. Oh, those changes for the sake of changes!

This is a paper cap, not electrolytic.

This is not a dead cap case - if the cap had a short, the motor would be overheating. If the cap lost capacity due to a cold joint, the motor would not start. This is the case of a DOA motor. Send the motor to the scrap yard and get 30 cents/lb for it, and buy a Family 550Wt servo motor instead. It obviously has an intermittent short somewhere in one of the coils, therefore a toast.

Can you post the pictures of your motor showing the wires and capacitor? I am intrigued! The 3 phase motor powered from 1 phase needs a capacitor to run, and direction is determined by connecting the 3d terminal via the capacitor to the phase or ground. Yours running in different directions with or w/o a cap makes no sense, let's see what it looks like.

A word of caution about using a HH machine's motor with an industrial machine: you will burn the conventional pedal regulator with anything heavier than light textiles. I tried doing that and burned it as soon as we tried to stitch jeans. The motor was fine, just the pedal has burnt its resistors. The electronic pedals may be fine though.

Maybe post the pictures of the press with the die set installed? Without seeing it's really hard to tell. It may be the case of just using too much force. The snaps do not need too much of it to be set.

Not sure if it helps, but I had loops previously when trying to stitch too heavy leather. Is the OP pushing the machine's limits?

This is another proof that leather is one of the greatest artistic materials.

Lisa Sorell uses a white pen to mark leather for a welt in this video: Does anybody know what pen is that and where I can buy one? Thank you!

Interesting enough I was looking at Coca Cola labels recently to see if it still contained ortho-phosphoric acid, but found no mention of that. Ended up buying a bottle of the supermarket brand that stated on the label that it had the acid there, and it worked fine for the parkerizing project I was interested in. It gave stainless steel a nice grey with a hint of olive drab. Kerosene in WD40 (or pure, by itself) should not remove paint, only old oil. The rust spots coming through the paint would not be removed by any chemical known to me without complete stripping and repainting.

Bought a supposedly zipper foot set from them, they shipped a regular foot. They offer exchange, I wait a month as on backorder, then they ship another regular foot. Sounds like they either do not know what is the purpose of a zipper foot set, or do not give.

If you happen to come across a set of cross country wooden skis, you'd probably know what to do. Hint: cut the curved ends square, cut in front of the bindings, and you got a stitching pony.

This is obviously a light weight textile machine for attaching sleeves to shirts and jackets. That may explain what you are seeing for the stitch length

There is 220 in every house in North America, and an outlet is only about $10-15 at the hardware store. All you need is to put black wire into one breaker, and white wire into the next one, and you get 220V.

On the good side, when you run a self-oiling machine at leathercraft speeds, it is sufficient to run it at full speed once a week to distribute oil. These machines last for decades at full speed in an industrial setting, so at a home shop they can last years even w/o oil. I am not advocating running them w/o oil, but at $100 a pop I really do not care if I starve it of oil for a week or two.

If Juki 227 is any similar to 553 that I own, than I do not recommend it other than for very simple and straight stitching on textiles. The problem I was always having was that it just refused to climb and stitch over the folded seams and skipped. It was perfect on the straight flat lines. I made some karate belts, both from multi-layer folded cotton and cotton wrapped towel and they came out perfect. But try to sew a wool jacket or trench coat and it will skip where it has to climb onto the seams. In this day and age I just do not see any value in having that class of machine around, especially that you are getting a flat bed walking foot machine as well. If I were you, I'd just bought the walking foot and passed on 227.

It's a damn fine job for the first pair. And a great inspiration for me. What kind of last did you use?

There is a circa 1880 antique revolver in my collection that came looking way worse than this machine. It was completely seized and covered in a thick soft rust that snowballed around most of the parts. Soaked in acetone for a couple weeks, it cleaned nicely and now it seems to have never lost the original raven feather kind of bluing. Even the original walnut grips cleaned nicely by tightly wrapping in acetone soaked soft cloth several times - it pulls sweat, fat and oil out of wood. This machine looks very restorable to me, but of course practicality of that undertaking totally depends on the owner's priorities.

I can only suggest posting in the sewing machines section where there's more traffic for these sorts of questions

Apparently you have access to serious CNC equipment. I am drooling!

Nobody wants them around where I live. I am keeping an old clutch motor hoping one day to build a flour mill and use it to power.

Could waxed thread be the reason? I guess this is a textile upholstery machine that was not intended to stitch leather.

Hair on does not stitch easily, the more hair the harder. Right now I am making a winter hat from sheep skin and had to sheer along the seams to prevent excessive movement of the parts. Generally, a walking foot cylinder bed machine would allow you to hold the parts very close to the needle to prevent movement of one against another. Depending on your leather weight you may or may not get away with a shoe patcher.

Simply stunning!