Bree

Yep Troy... That's what I use as well. I used to use China White pencils but the Sharpie is great. It has a nice medium fine point too.

You rock Ed!! That is exactly the kind of thing I have been looking for!! I just ordered one. I bought a 6" buffer at Harbor Freight for $50. I really bought it for the motor. I am going to attach this to the buffer arbor and this should make my life MUCH easier!! I need speed. I can't futz around burnishing each belt for half hour. I think this thing will get me a fast clean burnish. And if it doesn't work I will use the mandrel to hold a nice block of turned African Blackwood that will. So I can't lose on this deal! Edit... $85 ($50 + $35) is a heck of a lot better price than $475!!

Real nice work. I love them.

Put 4 Cree Q5's under the arm like that Artisan LED light and you are in business. Nobody has gone that way yet. But it will come. Right now the 100 watt incandescent pumps out light big time and at my age I need all the light that I can get!!

LOL!! I use welder's positioning magnets. I have two of them on my Juki with Paiva snips, angled surgical scissors, regular surgical scissors, seam rippers, long angled tweezers, regular scissors of various kinds, and an awl. The LA-25 scares me because there is so much room on top of the arm for magnets and all the junk I can hook onto them!They told me about those LED lights but I didn't get any with the machine. They were pretty frugal with freebies. But that's OK because I didn't buy the machine to get free stuff. I bought it to make money with and that's what I intend to do. I finished setting up my spot setter and got the skiver working. Did a nice graduated skive today so I am getting the feel of it. Tomorrow, I will start working on getting a variety of needles and threads as well as a few customizations. I have some ideas for cool stuff. Now that's something that I didn't think about! Does that reduce the play in the servo motor foot pedal?? Right now the way that I have it, there is way too much freeplay before the pedal motion actually starts actuating the servo.I will take a good look at that tomorrow.Thanks!

It doesn't chatter at all. The arm is so large and heavy that it kind of rocks the machine on the casters. It isn't very pronounced because it is so heavy but there is a little movement. I like being able to move the machine so I don't see it as much of a problem. But I think I will try your suggestion and see what happens. It sure can't hurt anything!!

I don't like the arm type lights. I have several. I like halogen goosenecks (expensive) and this Danray gooseneck which is my current favorite... inexpensive, rock solid gooseneck, great switch, and handles cheap, powerful 100 watt incandescents which throw a lot of light on what I am doing. http://www.amazon.com/Danray-Products-LLC-...6483&sr=1-5 I wish they had a 34" model so I could use it on my new Toro 400 LA-25. I may get another one of these and set in on top of the LA-25 and then loop the gooseneck around over the top and down. The magnet is very very strong.

This is certainly something to think about. The PED 600 stand is by no means petite the way they set it up for this machine. The table is 34" wide and the metal wings it sits on are about 28" wide! It will NOT fit through a door. To get it through the door we had to remove the table completely and bring the head, table, and stand in separately and then reassemble the stand in the sewing room. On the plus side the stand has a base that is I-Beam shaped so it has good spread of the load. The casters are about 3" and they are the factor that destabilizes the stand. They are good locking swivel casters but 3" is probably too small for such a big machine and all the weight of it. You can remove the casters and get the stand planted on terra firma. That is probably wisest but it then becomes immoveable. So I guess you just lock them down and deal with a little bit of shakiness. It won't flip or fall over or anything like that. It is just shakier than one might be used to. The machine is a very smooth sewing at slow to medium speed and the shakiness has no effect unless you are at max speed. I don't think that I care too much about it as of right now. It is a trade off... rock solid stand... versus the ability to easily move the machine around the room at the cost of some instability. Also remember that you have to get 675 pounds into your sewing room with the big stand versus 465 pounds with the PED 600. BIG difference. In my case we had to unload it at the freight terminal. It was MUCH easier to unload the PED 600 that it would have been to unload the full size stand. I think that I am happy with what I got. Time will tell but so far so good. There are some annoyances about the stand. It has a nasty and hard to isolate squeak when you hit the foot pedal. Thee manufacturer didn't use any bearings on the foot pedal assemblies... at least none that I can see so somewhere there is metal on metal and it makes a terrible sound. But I will track it down and get it greased up somehow. I am not worried about it. Little stuff like that can bug you. But that kind of thing happens with just about any machine these days so whatcha gonna do? If I need to get it more stable I can simply remove the casters or increase their size. Those things would help enormously.

About 225 lbs. It's BIG!! I have had out of town company so I haven't had a chance to process the PIX but I will try to get to it tomorrow or Monday. Heck I have all this new equipment to set up and learn how to use it. We just got the spot setter built and configured.

You discovered what I did. Now I have a Toro-4000 LA-25 as well as my four 29 class patchers and my Juki 1541-S plus five other sewing machines of various kinds. Each machine has something that it does well. None of them excel at everything. One thing you can try with the #69 thread is to double the stitches. Sew one complete set and then slowly sew right in the same holes using a round point needle so you don't cut the thread. That will thicken up the stitches and increase the strength.

Don't dome them then as the act of doming them, no matter how you do it, will of necessity damage the coin. It won't be flat anymore. You could try to epoxy a Chicago screw to the coin. That won't permanently damage the coin as you can get the epoxy off with some work.

The Artisan T-4000 LA-25 on the Ped 600 is simply HUGE!!! We just got it uncrated and put the head on the stand. It is enormous. All of the Weaver equipment arrived at the same time. The Tippman embosser arrived a day or two before. I have a ton of unpacking and assembly to do tomorrow. I will post some PIX when I get a chance. It's just HUGE!!

Start by writing a business plan. And ask yourself how one worker bee is going to do production for 6 ranges of products and maintain the website and order supplies and maintain supply inventory among other things? Try one or two ranges first. Get to where you can produce ONE product (not range) well and in volume... then think about #3, then #4, and then #5, and then #6. Methinks you guys are biting off more than you can chew right now. My $.02

Nope. 138 thread is about the max you can go with a 29-4. Quite frankly I think 138 is a stretch. The needles you have are fine but they are fine for the thread that the machine is designed to handle. I think that the machine runs best with #69. That is what I use in mine. You can go a little higher but you will have a lot of trouble. Heck the bobbin... even the large bobbins for my 29K60... simply can't hold a lot of thread... even at #69. They are very small. At 207/277, you won't get much thread on the bobbin at all. It just isn't designed for that size thread. You will have many other problems with tension, thread fraying, stitch skips etc. Linhanyl is good thread. Artisan is a good supplier. You can also go to the Thread Exchange where I buy most of my thread.

Ed... really to be honest, you can get yourself a roughing gouge to break the blanks down to cylinders and you could cut your coves with strips of sandpaper!! It is dusty but it certainly can be done. If you need tools just get the basics... a roughing gouge, a bowl gouge, a skew chisel, a scraper, and a parting tool. You could probably get away with a gouge and a scraper!! LOL! All you need to do is put a few coves into the blank. EZ as pie to do.

The deal is simple... if you spray flammable paints, solvents, varnishes etc., you need an explosion-proof blower and explosion proof lights. If you spray volatiles without these things you are violating the law and endangering yourself and your family. Here are some links to look at. http://www.fmins.com/pdf/safety_SERVICES/S...ay%20Booths.pdf http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/Spra...oth_Safety.html http://www.blowerwheel.com/fans-explosionproof.htm http://www.briansmodelcars.com/tutorials/tutorial/23 Some solvents are so volatile that they can flash off the flourescents. I remember when I was working as curator of the chem lab and carbon disulfide was only permitted to be opened under special fume hoods because we didn't want it blowing up! One school building at a different university blew up because a student poured it into the trough and down the drain. The vapors rose out of the drain, flashed off the lights, and blew the building apart as it flashed back through the drain system. Hope that helps a little.

UPS Freight called and the machine will be at the terminal on Thursday. I have lured 4 of my Niagara Falls Harley Owners Group guys to help load the machine on my Dodge RAM and then unload it at my place and help get it set up. I lured them with BEER. I had some left over from a party I had for some HOG friends from Chicago. Many thanks to Dave for his help in greasing the skids on this delivery... all 460+ pounds of it. I will report more when the baby is in the nest. Oh... my new Embosser is on its way as well as my new Heritage Spot setter and skiver. So I will soon be surrounded with production equipment to begin my little business come 2009! Now I need to make some space in the shop and the sewing room.

I took his Swivel Knife Control class and he is really excellent. I walked out of there with a piece of swivel knifery that I simply didn't think that I could ever create. Chan made it seem easy. You will be very very happy you got the opportunity to learn from this Master. I am.

The minute I saw Emiko's dolls I knew that they would win Best of Show. The detail was simply extraordinary. I can't forget the little cameo and the cat... the hair... the shoelaces... the chair... the floor... all made of leather. The shawl made of leather... all of it just blew me away. Even the wedding gown couldn't shake me loose of those dolls. I was one of the people who voted for Emiko. Great job. Incredible work deserving of the highest praise.

I was looking at that Excelsior over the weekend and the guy from Rockler who I respect told me that the casting is very poor on that device. He said that the Jet and even the Delta was far superior. So I bought nothing. I did see a cheapo $22 attachment that converts a drill press into a lathe. For an occassional and non-critical turning this might be just the ticket! http://www.pennstateind.com/store/DPLATHE.html I might get one myself!!

I know a guy who does this. He domes the coins so the attachment of the Chicago screw isn't visible. It sits under the dome. He built a doming jig out of coved out leather layers and just puts the coin in there and bangs away with his ball peen hammer. In a few seconds it's beautifully domed. A Chicago screw is similar to a rivet but it screws in so it is removeable. It is soldered in using a good solder for attachments. I think he used silver solder. Prongs would work also but you would need to solder them on as well. I think the Chicago Screws are the easiest method. My $.02

What a bunch of losers! Glad they are behind bars. Maybe things will calm down now.

I am going to chime in. I like having a BIG table surface. I have a 96" x 30" workbench which I built out of 4" x 4" Douglas Fir legs 2" x 6" stringers and 1 1/2" of MDF with laminate glued to the MDF. It is solid as a rock and big enough to handle large hides. Your work bench needs to be very sturdy, stable and as large as you can make it. Heavy is good. I have a large cutting mat that sits on the table for most cutting. I use an 18" x 24" x 3" granite surface plate (flat to .0001") on a heavy stand placed at the end of the table for some cutting and most tooling operations. I like having it apart from the table versus inset but that is just my preference. It gives me the ability to clamp stuff to the granite... and move it if need be. I keep all my sewing machines in a separate room where I only do sewing. I don't want them in the same place as my sometimes dusty workshop. I definitely would be very hesitant about putting my expensive sewing machine(s) near an airbrushing booth. Do you have proper ventilation, negative pressure, and a explosion proof motor on the blower? Do you have a blower?? If you blow volatiles through your airbrush without proper ventilation, you can injure yourself and possibly cause an explosion and/or fire. Be very careful about this aspect. A proper spray booth is pretty expensive because the explosion proof motor is going to cost big dinero. For your layout and plan, I would suggest a larger insert. The largest you can reasonably fit into your table. You won't regret it. Also keep your large table surface accessible. So raise up the storage on the left high on the wall (or under the table or both) to make sure that you have left side table accessibility. A clear work table will always be welcome. A cluttered worktable will always be a nuisance. Also it is a good idea to make certain that your table has a lip so that you can attach clamps to the table lip. You won't regret that lip but you will regret it if you can't attach clamps. Good luck!

That's gonna light up some chopper rider's butt!!

Excellent. Just excellent. Question... on your belt did you skive the belt tongue down? If so how many inches up did you start the skive? What is the construction of the belt? Two layers of x oz of such and such leather etc?