Biblethumper

After sewing by hand for the last 10 years my arthritis finally forced me to consider the purchase of a machine. I needed something that would handle a large thread and did not need a motorized machine. The Tippmann Boss was what I landed on and after 4 months I thought I would offer my opinion. First let me say that Ben, at the factory is awesome, he has helped me work through 2-3 issues and is so very helpful. At first I wanted to use the largest thread available which is the 415 but quickly found that only black and white were readily available. The next size down is 346 and is available in most colors in bonded nylon and polyester. While the polyester will work, the bonded nylon runs so much smoother and is all I use. Not having ever used a sewing machine before I had much to learn, ie. bobbins. One huge tip I picked up here on LW is that the bobbin tension must be set at 1 lb. and the best way to do that is to weigh a bottle of water to use as a weight. This way you can get it set exactly. The other thing is to rotate the kerf of the needle exactly left by putting a small pin or needle through the eye which gives a perfect guide and allows you to hold the needle in the most upward position while tightening the set screw. The 230 needle is the perfect size for the 346 thread but I could not find a source for this needle with a chisel point so I made a chisel point with the Dremel that sliced straight and then polished that area. This gave me a nice straight back stitch without blowing out the back side. This machine has never skipped a stitch and has, overall, been extremely reliable. What used to take an hour to sew now only takes about 10-15 minutes..more to come later.

Unlike most, I use a kip/calf hide, veg tanned, 2 oz. leather. I spray a 50/50 solution of lexol and water on the flesh side until it starts to soak through. Then I put it in one of those HUGE zip lock bags and zip all the way over to the corner and "blow it up" like a baloon to keep the inside surface from touching the smooth side of the leather. Otherwise you get drop marks from the condensation inside. This technique allows the moisture to evenly penetrate the leather and it is consistent in moisture. I can then take it out and let it dry to the point of tooling and put it back for later if I don't finish, or just keep it in a consistent moisture state until I have time to complete my tooling. Hope this helps.

Thank you very much. I will try it.

Thanks. I was kind of wondering if anyone had a technique to making somekind of grain so I can continue to use the same 2 oz kip hide since I dye my pieces. But thanks again; I will check into the mission grain. You can see what I've done at www.biblerestorations.com It's a free site I made just to post pics.

My first post so not even sure I'm doing it right. I recover old worn out, soft cover bibles, so it's a little bookbinding and a little leather working. My question is..Does anyone know how one would accomplish the textured look that "leather" bibles have. I know that most all cow and calf that I get at Tandy is veg tanned and smoothe. I am using the kip hide which is about 2oz. in weight. I assume that the leather that bible binders use is embossed with some type of a large embossing machine.

I am rather new to this craft but I do a lot of skiving using Tandy's black handle safety skiver. Make sure you don't over use a blade, make sure your leather is wet and always skive over granite.