RockyAussie

I am thinking that after you lift the presser foot you are at the same time having the tension discs open up which then do not come fully closed as quickly as they should. Try and see if there is something catching the little rods that opens the discs or the rod that pushes the plate that opens them. Might just need a bit of oil.On the other side of the machine check if the parts that push that little rod are not moving as freely as they should as well. If all this gives you no joy....try lifting out your needle until only the tip is in place then only partly lift the presser foot and then do your turn. If you have the needle positioner on your machine you may have to disable it first.

The guide used in that video has enough play in the screw holes to be angled that way. Many other guides may need to have a little more work to achieve the desired result. An example is the roller guide set up on my Pfaff 331 which I have replaced the roller with a 1/4" piece of flat. This is probably where I first found that I could get this effect because when I first tightened the screw to hold the flat it wanted to feed the work away all the time and by setting it in at the back I then found it fed the job into the guide. This shows the roller as original And this as modified which gives the flat to work with and an angle if I want it. note you can see the angle goes in closer at the rear. Sometimes though a roller is still better at getting into things like this bag handle A bit of 3D printing involved with the left guide in this case. Just thinking now I should go and try my new tall post machine on this job. It might do it all in one go. @alpha2 you may be able to change your roller over as I have done in the pictures above. As long as you can get the bolt to hold nice and snug I cant see why not. Dammit ....now I gotta go an do one for myself.

This is a short video showing how I set up my sewing machine guide before I start stitching. A guide that is not set up well can actually make your job want to veer away from the guide and the results can be a wobbly stitch line through to even running off the edge of your work. This video shows me doing belts but the same set up can help on many other projects as well. This video is also the first in a few videos I intend to do showing off the capability of the Cowboy cb246 sewing machine and how most of the products we make at Wild Harry can be made using it. I do believe it to be an ideal first machine for anyone wanting to make small leather goods such as wallets and purses and handbags. Please consider liking and subscribing to my channel if you find the content to be worthwhile. Oh yeah and SHARE

Do you have any pictures that show the gussets you want to stitch that you could share? AS you have previously been alright with rounding the throat plate etc I would consider looking at the holster plate instead of the stirrup plate as you don't need to take out the feed dog then. The holster plate could be ground down (rounded) a lot closer to the needle hole slot quite a bit without any loss to the back foot holding power. Have a look and see what you think anyway. It looks to be chrome plated the one I have here which may mean an all over the top clean up perhaps.

That would have been one scary stitching exercise for sure. Remembering to open the stitch length on the last quarter 1/2 turn while trying to keep the line true and tension right. Congratulations.

Does this Hobbs meter thing tick up the hours when the power is on? If so that may be partly a good idea so long as people remember to turn the power off. Sometimes with these new servo motors its hard to remember that they are still on. I tried a cheap rev counter thing once and it was a dismal failure at keeping up with the machine. Your welcome. Hope I get time to do some more soon.

The binding tape type can make a world of difference here. Weave that goes straight across and looks like gross grain will work better. Try some leather instead as you may find it better.

For any of you that may be reading this and have bought a set please check this post out if you have not already done so which shows some adjustments you may like to know about -

Sounds like a great idea if you can find out how. One of my tecky staff purchased a phone that can pick up and show heat differences on things and I would have to guess that any bush or bearing surface would likely show up more if it was needing to be oiled more urgently. I an sorry to add that in my opinion that as far as I have seen in most manuals and videos a great many points that should be lubricated do not get shown. For instance why do you think that most presser bar adjustment screws have a funnel shape at the top? Seems to me that it acts as a bush for the presser bar to go up and down in and the engineers thought some oil should go down there. Maybe a bit hard to put red paint there so some of the manual writers though lets skip that one. Same with the needle bar on these machines which often has a rubber cover over the hole. How dose oil lubricate that shaft if you don't put some there? Take some time out to look for every moving surface on your machine and know that in most cases it will need to have lubrication at some time or other. Some parts rarely and some like the 2 I just mentioned a lot. How long and how well a machine operates is in YOUR hands at the end of the day. (2 to 3 drops minimum per hour in the shuttle race). It will sound quieter and smoother.

Yes I forgot when I set up the bobbin earlier for this video that I had the bobbin running with the spring (anticlockwise) and in the video I loaded it up to run clockwise which does give that thick thread a lot more tension. Just lazy of me but I often just switch the thread direction in the bobbin when I go up in thread size rather than adjust the bobbin spring if I don't need to. Thanks @adventureleather, I think that people will always find different ways to try and get their machines to do something more than they can as made and for me with all of the crazy stuff I make it is great to find ways to do this when I need to.

Thanks for sharing that @bruce johnson I have had one of these for like 30 years and had not realised that potential. Only does a bit over 1/8" but with a bit of luck I will be able to get one with a bit wider spacing. Now I will have to look to set my stitch length to near perfectly match the overstitch wheel but for some jobs it should be well worth the effort.

This post I have done to assist buyers of the narrow needle plate sets we developed here in Australia for the Cowboy CB4500, Cowboy CB3500, and most other 441 clone machines including the Techsew 5100, and Cobra Class 4. Many of these machine owners have now purchased these sets and couple have reported back some rubbing issues when changing over to the new plate. In most cases their machines are set up well but occasionally some machines over time get a little out of ideal alignment with how either the needle centres into the fee dog or the feed dog locates into the needle plate. These instructions should help for any needle plate feed dog relationship alignment issues on these machines, whether it is for the standard needle plate feed dog set or our Narrow needle plate combination set. For those of you that have not seen the narrow needle plate set in use and what they can do you can see some here in this video link - https://youtu.be/a83lCJe4JKo or this one - https://youtu.be/wdloxyjeB1w You can see more on these plates in this earlier post I made here - The next video I will do is to show the drop down guide for these machines and how easily they can be installed and why they can be a better choice. Follow my Channel if you want to catch more like it.

No the 2.5 watt laser. I am not sure if the 5 watt would do it that neat but I have not tried it yet. If I get the time I will give it a go and let you know.

I could do that but I am thinking of setting up another laser for cutting the leather. I do a lot of product box cutting and the fine beam of the 2.5 watt is excellent for cutting the fine lines into the cardboard for folding and it does that better than the 5 watt diode one does. The 5 watt cuts twice as quick but does not do it quite as fine. the beam does not go down that small. Same with the engraving a bit. I was surprised awhile back that when I started making stamps out of black acrylic that on the finest setting it cut through 3mm no problem at all and I had to speed it up quite a bit to get the cutting to only go 2 or 2.5mm deep.I now only do the stamps on 10mm thick.

So that means you are using only around 40Watts? The 4" lens gives you that sort of improvement? I was thinking awhile back on one of these 50watt fibre lasers that I think are getting better on price. One fella over here said he only paid about $7000 for one and another said he got one out of China for under $4000. I know they can cut metal to some degree (they make stamps) so now I am really starting to wonder if they could do leather as well as you can with yours.

Yeah I shoulda done it but that knife/die was made ages ago and I have not had any negative feedback on it before now. Sometimes I just don't like the look of slots with holes at the ends. Rather than use a crew punch often I will hunt up a bit of box tube and make a punch that cuts a U shape instead. That has the advantage of keeping whatever strap that goes in tight and neat looking when finished. In the right side back of this picture you can see one of these punches I made to use in the tote bag I was making.

The top and bottom have to be open if the wearer prefers to wear it in line with the belt horizontally. They have to be open just enough for a belt to be pushed through. If worn vertically in the direction you have your strap attached then the 2 slits allow you to feed the belt through that way. In wear this method will not hang out as much as the folded over strap does at the top as in how you have yours at present. Yes it means 3 layers to be stitched and I would have thought that would not be a problem with your machine but as you say maybe you should just give it a go. Another view in case it helps - Ignore the crappy stitching, one of my staff asked me to make it up 1/2hour before his finish time and I did not even have a mould to start with.

Option 4......Put a piece right across to the sides with 2 slots down the middle of it. This has the labour advantage of not having to add any extra stitching at all and the pouch can hang vertical or horizontally. If used vertically the 2 slots will form out nicely with a little use and be easy to thread the belt through. Here is a picture of one that has not formed to the belt yet but will show what I mean

I had looked previously on how some have gone about setting these holster plates up and using them and I think that may have left me thinking that it was all too much trouble to bother with. After doing a trial for myself I think that I was WRONG. 2 minutes if it was that and I was sewing. I was on the understanding that the feed dog had to come out and maybe it does on the standard feed dog but I can say that it does not with the narrow needle plate dog foot set. I just switched the needle plates over (remove 2 screws and put back 2 screws) and reduced the foot pressure down and that was that, I was stitching. Reverse on mine also worked fine but that may be just mine who knows? Now there may be some confusion as to what is a holster needle plate and what is a stirrup plate. The smaller one is the stirrup plate and that does have to have the feed dog removed to use it and the bigger one is the holster plate which in my experience does not. I do have to point out that you need to check that the holster plate can go back in far enough for the needle to be in the centre of the needle plate slot. I had a check on 2 machines and it showed that I had to grind the needle plate back edge about 1mm (about 2.5 oz) to get it right. Anyway ...I found a video that shows a holster plate being used to stitch some stirrups and in that part it is good to see. I would take not much notice of the set up procedure. It is great that at least he made the video and shared it which is more than can be said for many other that could have. https://youtu.be/WCoamFAgxng

I think I have been using the same oil and not have had any problems like that yet. I will have to do some testing on it now. What type of leather did it leave a mark on? Brand wise I have used the Singer oil you can get on line and never had any issue but may depend on the leather as well. I generally keep a cloth under the feet when not in use and I also wipe the feet down before I start a job and that may help but on the other hand I also often put a felt somewhere in the sewing thread line to oil the thread which helps to stop the glue from sticking to the needle. Doing that sometimes leaves a little hint of oil around the needle hole but that has always disappeared by the next day.

Thanks for sharing @Gulrok. It gets very interesting when you experiment and come up with good solutions. The few changes I have made on my little one have worked out very satisfactory for me and it gets a lot of use nearly every day. Putting a larger cooling system (2" fan) and a shroud to give some air assist as well allows me to run a full power for hours at a time. There seems to be no drop off in performance over the last couple of years to my surprise and I think the larger fan aside from keeping it cool, helps to keep any smoke away from the lens as well.I do run an extraction system as well which works very well as well. My bed I rebuilt to do poster size and that works well but I would not mind if it was a fair bit larger. Where yours will do it in seconds mine would take a lot lot longer but good thing it keeps going while I get to do other stuff instead. It started off as a 2.5 watt Elksmaker pro which was open air (scary) for just under $400AU and I think I would have spent about another $600 getting it way larger and safer. Again I thank you for sharing

Thanks for the video @Gulrok I would not have believed that possible without seeing it. Now I am starting to think of going bigger than my little 2.5 watt diode laser. How big a size cutting area can yours handle? Must be fairly big if you can cut belts. I assume there is some serious $$$$ to spend to get that far.

Certainly not the type of machine I expected to see and considering that ....I have to say for a beginner you are doing pretty darn well. Sort of like going to a fight with one arm tied behind your back I think. A cylinder arm can be a flat bed as well if you want but not so good trying to make a flat bed be a cylinder. It is good to see that it has not stopped you and no doubt in time you will find ways to make it work.

That for sure would be a dream to see. What thickness and type of leather may I ask? Do you top seal the leather first?

@Tio I would try loosening the bobbin spring by about 1/4 turn and try that on the same weight leather and thread. It looks to be pulling in down well on top so the bobbin tension is where I would be looking.