Corvus

Thanks for your reply Luke, do you mean you pound the thread after sewing, meaning pounding the stitches?

I've recently switched to using bonded nylon thread but am not sure how to fasten off. Up until now using waxed linen thread I have back stitched and then just cut the thread off but when I do that with the bonded nylon it will pull back out of the hole. I need a really secure and invisible way of fastening off ... any ideas?

This is amazing work! What paints/dyes did you use to colour this piece?

Thanks for the explanation Casey, I think I understand what you mean but the cheat option sounds good to me! :-) I'm a long way off making any of my own footwear but I would be interested to look through the links and who knows, one of these days ...

I've never heard of Hack Berry but those markings in the wood look like spalting which is discolouration caused by a fungal infection in the wood. It doesn't weaken the wood but gives these beautiful markings so is quite sort after. I have a beautiful small set of drawers made from spalted Beech. I shall be interested to see this pipe when it is finished.

They look excellent, especially for a first pair! What puzzles me about making shoes is how you get the bottom of the shoe inside; a) comfy on your foot, and even on both sides if that makes sense. I mean the moulding to accommodate the arches of the foot and such.

I think you've got it in one! :-) This one must be crossed with a Banshee too. Lurchers are quite unusual in the States aren't they?

Well I've been plagued by the devils but finally I caught one!!! It was just disappearing out of the workshop with a piece of leather in it's mouth! What do you reckon, fairy, pixie or gremlin?

My friend wants it just as a picture so I gave it a coat of Resolene to protect against dust and left it at that. I left the card on the back too, there didn't seem much point in peeling it off.

I've not done much for a long time but i did this carving recently for a friend It's the first time that I have tried carving with a piece of card glued to the back of the leather, it made a big difference to the depth of the impression.

Thanks very much for all the responses Got up today ready to do battle with the beast and it all seems to have gone surprisingly smoothly. I hadn't got the thread threaded through the eye on the spool holder, OH pointed this out and I do think it was not helping matters. Re-threaded it all carefully and loosened the tension nuts right off and then started tightening them until the stitch looked right and it seems to work! It's an impressive beast! All the waiting and hassle to get it here suddenly seems worth it!!

Thank you for replying Wizcrafts, I'm certainly threading it up right but I'm pretty sure the tension is too much. Even loosening both sets of tension plates off as much as they will go and then threading up as you describe I'm finding that once the thread is through the second tensioner it is so tight that I can barely pull any thread through by hand ... this surely can't be right?

Thank you very much for your reply, I'll try that out with the tensioners. I will phone Steve as soon as it's 'office hours' if I can't sort it out :-)

Well, after a good 6 months wait I've finally got my Cobra Class 4!! So here i am on a Sunday afternoon trying to get the thing going :-) The problem I'm having seems to be that the top thread more or less jams through the second tensioner. I adjusted the tensioners and got one good row of stitching out of it but then had the same problem again. I'm as sure as I can be that I'm threading the machine right. Obviously I'll contact Steve tomorrow if necessary but i just thought someone here might know the answer. I'm using the needle and thread it shipped with.

There aren't the words really are there ... just completely amazing!

Lovely work! LePrevo are a UK company who sell the antique finishes and lots of other stuff besides ... http://www.leprevo.co.uk

Thank you for your reply Wizcrafts, that helps too although in the end I've still got to try and make a decision on what I think I can use. Availability of this sort of machine seems not so good in the UK but maybe I haven't dropped on the right place to look as yet.

Thanks for these articles, they have really help to clear up some of my confusion about machines. I'm wondering where the Tippmann Boss machine fits into all this though.

Great work!

Beautiful and fascinating.

Lovely work, the decorative turks head is beautiful.

Beautiful portrait, most impressive! I would really love to see a photo that shows the carving in relief if that is at all possible.

Hi Shawn, There is useful infomation on the following pages that I found helped me a lot at first; http://www.leprevo.co.uk/techinfo.html http://www.leprevo.co.uk/hides.htm You will find other useful odds and ends on the Le Prevo site too, just bear in mind that it is an English company. I'm still very much a beginner too but have I think most of the basics roughly straight in my head, I found I gleaned information from everywhere and it was a steep learning curve at first as there seems so many details to know about everything but it's worth persevering :-)

Thanks for this tutorial Storm, these key rings are very professional looking. Can I ask why you sew them - do you find it is necessary or is it just for looks? Also what do you use for marking out the stitching? I have been making key rings lately but not round ones so far!

Looks good enough to eat!