ElfLeather

I'm shopping for system 34 needles and kinda scratching my head. The thread exchange has a lot of options, or maybe not? Does AKA mean all of these needle systems are identical? Non-identical but interchangeable sytems? or the specific needles fit each of these distinct systems?

Does anyone here offer splitting service? I'd like to split ~30 sqft of 2 or 3 kinds, chrome tan and combination tan. Bonus points for being in the SF bay area. How much does a job like this run?

Good post, a good demonstration of "made in China" in that you get exactly what you pay for. American, Euro, Japanese manufacturers can make a great product in China if they source quality components from reputable manufacturers, go with a (less cheap) CM that will do rigorous incoming/line/outgoing QC, and pay to produce good documentation and maintain good support. There are Chinese CMs that do all of this for a price, and there are Chinese drop-ship manufacturers that do none of these and sell on Alibaba for 1/2 - 1/3 the price, and many in between, all of which are priced accordingly. Glad to see you were able to troubleshoot the machine and get it working to your satisfaction. I'll flip back to this post every time I get tempted by those Aliexpress listings. I like working on machines, especially iron, but I'm nowhere near good enough with sewing machines that I could pull this off.

yeah it was the feed wheel height. Now to work out the tensions and the check spring position

I have a Pfaff 34 (thank you all for helping me set it up!) from the 60s with wheel feed. I've mostly got the tension figured out, but another issue I'm finding is it will just fail to feed properly. With thin vinyl it feeds fine, but I'm having issues with 2 oz nappa lambskin and 4-5 oz latigo (waxy chromexcel). Testing with 1 layer of the 4 oz or 2 layers of the 2 oz, it doesn't seem to feed consistently, it'll just stop at a certain point, whether I'm actually sewing or not. My (uneducated) inclination is to say that the feed wheel is too low and the presser foot can't consistently keep it in contact. But I've never used a wheel feed machine before, so I don't know if it's supposed to be like this. It's a good mm or so beneath the level of the needle plate, which doesn't look right to me. Edit: Or is the needle plate too thick? it's a good 1+ mm thicker than the cover plate next to it.

Late to the party, and someone's prob already mentioned but when people say "No, SILVER solder! Not silver SOLDER!" they mean high-silver brazing wire, and they mean brazing, not soldering. Traditionally this meant 40% or 45% with cadmium, but since cadmium is no buena to breathe in, you want 56% silver. As thin as you can buy it. I used to use this stuff all the time at work. If your workpiece is small, you can probably get away with a ordinary plumbing torch with mapp gas. Clean the surface down to bare metal, wash the hell out of it with degreaser and water, rough up the exact zone you want to braze with sandpaper, and brush your zone of interest with a thin layer of white or black brazing flux. The alloy will ONLY wet where there's flux. Mount your work so gravity works for you, the stuff flows like water when it melts. Bring the work zone to a dull red glow. When the flux melts clear, start feathering the flame and dab some brazing alloy onto your zone of interest. It should melt mostly from the hot flux on the workpiece, and it should leave a clean melt, not a half-melted thing sticking out. Pull the heat away, let it cool a little, and quench it in water to loosen the flux residue. If the plate is made from heat-treatable steel, this will likely ruin the heat treat. If that happens it'll be glass-hard extremely brittle, and you'll have to ask someone else about tempering it. Don't try to use "silver" plumbing solder (silver jeweler's solder is a wildcard, i don't know which alloy it is). Don't try this without the right kind of flux. The alloy won't wet the surface. Harris stay-silv white or black brazing flux is good and Harris safety-silv 56 is the alloy I use. The technical grade for the 56% silver brazing wire is AWS BAg-7, (or BAg-1, which is the grade with cadmium), and the flux is AWS FB3-A for the white or FB3-C for the black.

What about link belts? Good? Avoid?

2nd edit: Is there any reason I shouldn't remove the stock pulley and handwheel and replace both with an 8" pulley, now that I've figure out how to remove it? Disregard the following post, unless you made the same mistake I made and mistook the goofy 17.5 mm "shaft" behind the handwheel for the actual driveshaft. Unrelated question I'll put here, so as not to clutter up the front page - I can't figure out how to remove the handwheel from this machine. Looking at the parts catalog and the machine itself, all I can see that holds the handwheel to the shaft are 2 set screws. I removed both of them and dropped some oil into the holes, but even with a pulley puller, all I'm doing is damaging the screw head at the end of the shaft. Any recommendations? Anything obvious I'm missing? edit: If you're wondering why I'm trying to remove the handwheel, I need the shaft length it's occupying for a larger pulley. I want to replace the 3" pulley with an 8" pulley, but the length through the bore is much much longer, more than an inch. I figure if I have an 8 inch pulley, it can do double duty as the handwheel.

It's a 34-5AL, and it's not one of the variants listed as an exception, so it's system 34 neeldes. I went back and forth but ended up getting system 34 needles, and it seems to be right. oof dropping another hundred-something dollars on a speed reducer. but that does seem the most straightforward way of resolving the speed issue. I'll try it for a bit without and keep this option in my back pocket Thanks for all these suggestions. Before making any changes, I tried sewing some slightly stiffer pleather-y material and of course it sewed beautifully immediately. The "work is lifting during sewing" hypothesis is probably the right one. The lambskin is very soft, and I did see bunching and difficulty keeping the stitches even when I tried it. There's nothing holding down the right side of the stitch so maybe this is something to look into. if preventing the work from lifting doesn't resolve my issue, I'll look into the check spring and needle position/timing. Thanks again everyone for helping me troubleshoot this machine, this is all really helpful.

Thank you for this manual, it's helpful in getting a sense of what to adjust on this machine. The needle scarf is facing the center of the machine, the hook hooks through it, maybe 3/32" above the eye. It looks like the needle's eye is a pinch low, if anything, and it's set as high as the needle bar permits (I took off the needle lock and cleaned any possible debris from the needle bar). I'm pretty sure the hook is at or close to the right clearance from the needle (a paper's width) The other thing - I'm having trouble buying a larger pulley. I've seen pulleys for sale with shaft bores of 3/4", 1/2", 5/8", or 15mm, but I measured the pulley on this machine and it's 11/16", or 17.5 mm, which I've found precisely zero of, for sewing machines or anything else really. Am I just going to have to get a 5/8" bore pulley and have it machined to open up the bore? Or does anyone sell a bushing to bring a 3/4" bore down to 11/16"

tl;dr - what's the order of troubleshooting for skipped stitches? I posted a little while ago about that Pfaff 34-5AL I bought the other week, thank you to everyone that gave me info. I replaced the 3-phase clutch motor with a servo, gave the machine a cursory cleaning, oiled it, and crash-coursed my way through birdsnesting issues. Eventually figured out that the tension assembly wasn't seated right, it wasn't releasing right, and my threading was a little off. After fabbing a replacement tension release pin and reseating the tension assembly, a few minutes messing with the upper and lower tension and no more birdsnesting. Now that the birdsnesting is resolved, I'm getting issues with skipped stitches and failure to feed properly. I don't know if these are related issues. I'm testing with pigmented goatskin and nappa lambskin with 70 tex polyester thread The feed issues look like - I'll sew maybe 10 or 20 stitches, everything looks fine, then the leather just stops feeding. This system comes with a wheel feed mechanism, which I'm unfamiliar with. The skipped stitches are a consistent problem, maybe every 5th stitch. Sometimes 2 or 3 in a row. What are my options for troubleshooting look like for feed issues and skipped stitches?

What do you investigate or service when you buy a vintage machine? This machine is from 1962 and hasn't been used in 12 years. My plan is to degrease all the internals, deal with any hidden rust, re-grease the gearbox, and oil everything else. Parts I know I'm going to replace: The pressure spring on the feed wheel race. PO replaced with an off-the-shelf spring that isn't quite right 3-phase clutch motor for a brushless servomotor.

Thanks for the info and the brochure, exploded diagrams are always helpful. I've got the needle plate, I just took it off to get a look at the feed wheel. I've never used a wheel feed machine, is there anything I should keep in mind? Any limits or caveats to watch out for?

Correct, it's wheel feed, not walking foot.

I recently acquired a Pfaff 34-5AL and I'm having a hard time finding any documentation about this machine. From the scattered info I've been able to find about reading the model number, I believe this machine is for work in lightweight leather. I can't find what the A refers to in 5AL, though. The serial is 7553320, which would put its date of manufacture at 1962. The previous owner had very little information on this machine, mostly that it didn't have a reverse feature, and that he hadn't used it for ~12ish years. It seems to be in good mechanical condition, moves smoothly, though I'm going to go in and give it a cleaning before running it. It also came with a 3--phase motor which I'm going to replace with a brushless DC. Does anyone have info on this machine? Any specific advice for using or caring for it? I plan to use it for garment leather, though I'm curious if it's capable of working with anything heavier.

Hi folks! Long-time listener, first-time caller. I have access to a Bantam Tools Desktop PCB Milling Machine and I want to use it to make an embossing stamp in brass. The way I'm planning on doing it is taking an SVG file, importing it into fusion, extruding it above a surface to give it depth, and making a CAM toolpath to mill it as a relief in 360 brass plate (probably 1/4" stock, but I could do 3/8" or 1/2" if 1/4" doesn't give me enough depth to work with). My main questions are: 1. What's the usual height of the relief pattern on a stamp for embossing? The graphic is about 1.25" in each dimension, and I intend to stamp it into either stiff, 8-12 oz latigo or 8+ oz veg tan. The endmills I have access to can cut to a depth of like 3 mm with sharp definition, or a lot deeper if I don't care how crisp the inside corners are. 2. Are the edges of the relief on a stamp square and sharp, or are they chamfered or filleted? Will a sharp corner cause the stamp to cut or otherwise damage the grain, or do I want as sharp an edge as I can get? 2. What's a good way to ensure that I can easily manipulate and stamp with even, centered pressure? My first thought is milling a groove on the back to put a steel rod (I have a scrap 1/2" tool steel rod I can cut to length) that I can hammer. Is it feasible to just hammer directly onto the back of the flat brass stamp body, or is there an easy solution?