Bree

Details? Wet-dry? paper or cloth? type of abrasive? URL?

LOL!! Great story and great advice. I knew these Christian Brothers that taught at a local catholic high school. The brother that taught woodshop had a leather strap very much like the one you describe. I guess he used to have the boys who were bad bend over, hold their ankles, and he would whack them right below the butt at the top of the thigh. They would immediately levitate towards heaven.

Which machine did you buy? Another 3000 class machine or did you go to the longer arm? I bought my Artisan 4000 LA-25 from Steve and he is #1 in my books. So I second the motion. Let's just make sure he doesn't get a big head about it!! LOL! I do have a lot of respect for the other guys too! But Steve has that "je ne sais quoi"!

It was really ridiculous. I was tugging as hard as I possibly could and then rocking the leather to get some slicing angle on it while someone was holding the heavy steel stand with a 3" X 18" X 24" granite stone on it and the splitter clamped to the stone... to keep the whole thing from tipping over!! When I finally gave up on it, I took a fresh 1 1/2" belt blank, put it into the splitter and skived it like a hot knife cutting through butter. Go figure.

I don't think that thing would fit on my Tippman embosser. But the only way to know for sure is to test it.

OK Report results!

I resemble THAT!! I am the world's WORST guitar player!!

The painful part is that I have a side and a half of this stuff lyin around and I would like to use it up. It's very nice so long as you don't split it on the butt end.

Walked away from one yesterday. Guy comes over with an expensive purple racing style leather with white and lime green leather stripes. The purple leather was perforated. The garment had beautiful green and white inner pocket flaps/liners and some pretty snazzy lining under the coat and sleeves. Well seems that the dog got hold of it and generated a 4" L tear on the outer backside of the sleeve. It's a nasty tear because the lether was sheared so it basically created a 1/8" graduated skive. A stitch in one of the perforations next to the tear can't hold because the leather is too thin to hold the stitch. Stitching it in the next perf hole yields the ugliest Frankenstein repair imaginable. Underpatching it is essential but will be very visible. The tear itself has to be held with cement... probably high strength vinyl cement. What a mess. Best suggestion... underpatch with cement and stitches to stbilize the rip... cover with sew on patches or design appliques on both sides of the racing stripe on the sleeve... probably both sleeves to be symmetrical and hide the fault. No way was I going to tackle it. You can't charge enough and the customer will seldom if ever be happy. I sent him away with free advice and turned down the job.

Best to use a water-soluable dye since methinks that the absorbent on the tape edge is triggered by water not oil. Still it's pretty darn good tape and may well perform just as well with oil. Just not sure since I have only tried it with water-based.

Jeez Bruce you're killing me!! LOL!!

ROTFLMAO!!! Dayum Bruce... I almost coughed up my coffee!!

Saturday I was working on a large belt for a guy. It was a 6" tapering to 4" belt. I cut it from a side of saddle skirt veg tan and then took the 6" strap and set my Heritage splitter (Osborne 84 type) to reduce the thickness and give me a uniform thickness. I gave the blade a good honing with a hard Arkansas stone and a strop. It was razor sharp and ready for splitting operations. I set my depth and started the strap through and was getting a nice split unitl I got to the thickest part of the saddle skirt. It was like hitting a brick wall. I couldn't even cut the leather on a diagonal slice much less a straight pull. I couldn't rock it to cut... nothing worked. Luckily I had split as much as I needed to make the belt and I cut off the strap at the furthest point of successful splitting. I took some PIX of the leather and wanted to share them with you. Maybe see what you guys and gals have to say about this odd circumstance. BTW... the first part of the split went just fine... very easy cutting action... til I hit the "wall".

It's your business. You make the call on who you will produce custom work for and under what circumstances. I have turned down jobs... some with pretty substantial price tags and at times when I didn't know how I was going to make the mortgage payment. Nevertheless, they violated my sense of what is right and good for me in a pretty big way. Looking back, I feel good about standing up for my own values.

Pretty cool stuff. Now how the heck am I gonna get that 20" x 40" clicker down into the basement??? LOL!

Great work by Peter. Now we are just about ready for a Peter Main-Bob Parks (Hidepounder) Belt Competition!!! The prospect takes your breath away!

Nick... Bring your needle down to the very bottom. Then raise the needle 1/4" and move the reverse lever all the way up. The needle should slide right into the original holes. That is how you do it on Artisan machines. Other machines may have a different technique. Your tension may be off a bit on the bottom. You can adjust your tension a little to see if you can get a nice even bottom stitch. I would not have done the two straight stitches across your sheath's back. I think that seriously weakens the sheath. I would also increase my stitch length a bit. But even so your stitch length should be constant so I think you have a problem there. Might be a feed dog problem. Might be that the machine needs adjustment. Not sure. Give details about your machine.

I am very happy with Weaver for my blanks, double shoulders, and bends. Most recently, I picked up some bullhide double shoulders from them had them cut into blanks and split. They did a beautiful job at a great price. The leather is lovely with excellent color, body, and no flaws. There are lots of good folks from whom you can get quality leather. Try several and find a couple that you really like. For me I enjoy working with the Weaver people. They have been highly responsive and have given me good service along with some real nice product.

In the forums that I moderate, I ask people to use a simple principle to guide their actions... RESPECT the other members at all times. I don't like to lay out a lot of rules as I don't think that helps all that much. However, I will demonstrate what RESPECT means when someone becomes DISRESPECTFUL. That I will do immediately, firmly, yet in a friendly fashion. Subsequent acts of disrespect generate increasing doses of medicine. Usually one or two doses is all that is needed. I think the key to success is quick intervention when the line is crossed. People must not be allowed to learn bad behavior because the moderator failed to act quickly enough. Stop it fast and everyone learns that bad behavior can generate bad consequences. It doesn't happen all that often. The members tend to police themselves. But if they have been around for awhile, they know that I won't hesitate to act to protect the members and their enjoyment of the message streams. BTW I have been a mod for some motorcycle forums for many years. My $.02.

Tom... For ordinary double layer gunbelts, I start with identical blanks split to 7 oz. each. The face blank is tooled, embossed or otherwise left plain. I don't really cut the inner blanks like Hidepounder does because I'm just not as good as he is at creating beautiful swivel knife cuts. I usually leave them very natural and plain. I dye the face blank whatever color I want. I may lightly oil the blank depending on its condition and the effect that I want. I like the belts to be stiff and to stay that way so they can provide a strong platform for a gun so I don't use much oil. A little bit is OK. I bond the natural blank to the face blank in a jig that gives me just about perfect registration so I don't have to use an oversize liner. Saves time and a little expense. I do use oversize liners for other types of belts especially if I use a suede liner like on a padded support belt. I apply Barge cement meticulously to both blanks and use a tamper to rub every inch of the belt blanks so they are bonded from edge to edge, end to end with every area cemeted and firmly bonded. This is really important to me. I sand out any deviations on an oscillating spindle/belt sander. I punch the tip and the end and clean up the edges at the sander. I burnish the belt with Ivan Sampson's burnisher, tape up the blank(s) with Frog tape to the width of the edge I want so that I get a perfect crisp edge, and then I apply edge dye with a piece of thick felt. After it is dry to the touch I remove the tape and let the dye dry thoroughly. Sometimes I groove the belt and sometimes I will sew without a groove. But before sewing, I will use an airbrush to apply sealer on the edges and the blanks... both sides. Once several coats are dry I head to the sewing room and sew the belt with a Toro 4000 LA-25. I like to do sewing close to the end of the process. I don't want my thread dyed or affected by other operations. I stitch slowly and carefully because making a mistake in the stitching is often unrepairable and kills a lot of work and adds greatly to the expense. Once the stitching is done, I punch my holes, assemble the hardware and I'm done.

Frog Tape won't work for this purpose. The absorbent material coats the edge of the tape not the center. You would need a tape that has the absorbent across the whole tape. Right idea but the wrong product. Sorry

Heck... I saw the thread title and thought... Oh my favorite knives are my Cold Steel fixed blade Tanto's and my CRKT M-16 Spear Point Flipper. Whoa!! the question is really about swivel knives!! I am not a great carver so my opiniuon isn't going to be worth much on this question. I have a few swivel knives now and I like the one I got from Barry King with a thin shaft. Feels good and allows nice tight turns for cutting smooth curved lines. The blade stays sharp and cuts very nicely without binding on the leather.

Yes I adjust the length but not on the machine dial... just a SWAG of the adjustment needed and bringing the needle down to just above the leather and then using the knee lift to raise the foot slightly and add or subtract a bit from the stitch. It's pretty easy. You are just spacing the adjustment over three or four stitches versus one stitch so it is harder to perceive the difference in length. Of course as I get older my math gets challenged sometimes so it's only the last inch that I work with!! I suppose the more scientific way would be to know your stitches per inch and compute the deviation several inches out and adjust on the machine so it hits exactly the right point with an ever so slight unnoticeable adjustment. Calls for good math, good measurement, and a very accurate machine capable of very small differences in stitch length. Seems like I am always missing one or more components of that so I just SWAG it. Edit... I always start at the buckle end so my back stitches are less visible.

I would suggest that it is a commercial product that is sold with the advantage of their proprietary trademarks. Using HD's name or their marks is very dangerous if you charge money and especially if you are selling anything connected to motorcycles. If there can be any confusion in the mind of a consumer as to whether you have any association with them, you are in trouble. If there can be any idea that you are approved by, recommended by, endorsed by etc. you have violated their rights and they have a case. Remember that they sell tool bags and you are competing against them using their marks that they paid to develop, market, and build!! That competition is unfair and they have rights. As for the bar and shield... we have a guy just outside of Buffalo who was using it and the name the Hog Farm. The MOCO got aggravated and whacked him for both. They lost on the HOG Farm but they won on the bar and shield. Here is the ruling: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getc...2nd/979446.html

Well Bob smokes the competition and sweeps all the top awards!! Yet another swivel knife is added to his already huge collection and once again I am left speechless by his incredible skill and finesse. The man is AWESOME. What is a body to do?? I think I am going down to the shop and turn a wooden pen!!