RockyAussie

Your welcome. If by how much leather, you mean how much Croc skin ....it would have been 2 croc skins around 42 to 44cm. Over here they measure croc skins across the belly from the 3rd scoot down across. Some places measure across the widest part of the belly.

With some leather they have a loose top surface and that generally runs through in the same direction through the hide. This I think is something that is caused at the tanning stage when the put the skin through rollers to apply coating or to soften and break up the tension in the hide. To the left in your picture above you see a saw cut appearance and that is a sign of a small chip in the blade. The chopping out like that is most likely the top loose skin moving as it tries to feed itself through. The skin top gets pushed back by the presser foot and that creates an extra thickness that then gets pushed down into the blade cutting all the way through until that thick bit is gone and again and again until you get back onto firmer leather. Its a bitch yeah I know but it can be less of a problem with a roller presser foot. Also less spring pressure on the feed. Also some wax polish or silicon spray on the top to reduce the friction of the foot. ALSO a VERY sharp blade. Run a piece of medium temper leather (DO NOT ask me to explain that) through VERY slowly. This sort of acts like you are stropping the edge by smoothing out any rough bits from the sharpening stone. If your bell drive is not separated from your feed that may not work so well. Please post some pictures of your machine if you keep getting any more problems. Mostly where the spring adjustment pressures are and feed stone to bell relationships are laying etc. ( everyone goes through this at the start so do not expect that you will get it all right from the get go) Last thing...on soft leather make sure that you have a wide bevel on your bell edge as in about 4mm from the presser foot edge as shown below. Any less and the extra pressure required to push the leather through will give you more chopping out as well. If the blade is sharp and you don't have about 4mm then you either need a new sharpening stone that is bigger and rounder or you need to move the sharpening stone back as shown in the pictures below. The bolt to loosen Note the gap below is about 2 or more mm. Here the gap is fully in but I would not move more than 1mm to start with on a fairly new sharpening stone Make sure that the stone is squared up to the bell edge when you tighten it. Disclaimer.....if you cut yourself or whatever else whilst doing this ...............someone else wrote all of this. BE CAREFUL around sharp or hot sh.t OK. .

Ha Ha I was hoping that you might get to see it. There is a LOT more info I will need to add as I can find the time and hopefully I can make them better without all the background noise involved. This video is only a starting point and many other settings need to be explained yet . Thankyou @suzelle Thanks Wild Bill, very kind words. I hope following vids get better. Doing the editing and adding words and such in Corel video studio is taking a lot to learn for me Keep in mind I have been using these machines for nearly 30 years. Each machine type has its own peculiarities and some settings like spring pressures will vary somewhat. Many people when things start going wrong make the mistake of tightening these spring pressures up and find that the machine just keeps getting worse. Be careful not to bevel the inside of your bell when sharpening as this will encourage the leather being split to bite in and skive out too deeply. Thick and stiff leathers need a little tightening adjustment (second or third notch normally) and sometimes even a little bit of back angle on the feed stone if after a heavy bevel skive. Softer leathers you will get the best results by having minimal spring pressure (first notch on the outside normally), a very sharp blade and the feed stone at a minimal distance from the bell. If you want VERY thin leather then set the bell (.2mm) from the presser foot like as I show in the video . For very thick leather take the bell back so that you have a .5mm gap. With leathers thicker than 3 mm and you want to do a heavy skive try doing the skive in 2 stages instead.

Here is another link that shows some skiving I do with a bell skiver when making crocodile belts. Not part of the series but shows what can be done with one in a production setting.

Regards to the attachments, I hope you have not wasted tooo much time looking. I designed and made them myself with my 3D printer. If you get a machine and want a set or any particular size let me know. On the price...you will find quite a surprise with shipping and remember that the dealers normally go over and fix up any electrical issues and the like. With regards to the finger guard and safety...That is a very thick piece of acrylic on mine if you look and to make it easier and quick to change over I offset the bolt holes so that I only near to loosen the screws and turn and pull the guard off. Any which way I reckon they are pretty good value.

Many leather workers will go on to own their own bell skiver at some time. For most at the start these machines are very difficult to learn how to use and the instructions that come with them are generally not very good. Most video's I have seen to date are full of bad information often made by very inexperienced machine operators or dealers who don't have a clue how to use them. Some of these are well done video's and by charismatic people that look good if you don't know what you're seeing is so wrong. My video's are very rough as my life is making leather goods not making video's. If you can stand to watch your way through them you will see that the results I achieve with the bell skiver are way in front off the other 99% you will find out there. Skip to 15 minutes in if you want to be sure of that. ( A properly set up skiver does NOT need you to pull it through at all) This video shows you the first most important step in using a bell skiver and that is how to sharpen the bell. Remember to follow my channel if you want to see more. I hope that this series will go on to help some of the very talented people out there that are struggling to learn how to operate them. This video series is being made to go along with a manual I am making for the bell skiver and it will have references to these videos within it. Do me a favour.......hit the like button on the youtube and share it around.

@hickok55 I got your pm and for the benefit of other members interested I have answered you here. Yes I work a lot with croc and produce a wide range of products with it. As to the question of veg or chrome it does not much matter but most croc that you think is veg tanned is often partly chrome tanned to speed up the process and then finished with a veg tan to give a better colour depth to the finish. This is particularly true when the skins have to have a glazed finish. The chrome tanning also helps to reduce shrinkage. Croc skin is quite suitable to attach to many different things be it metal, wood and plastic and so on. That said a few things that have to be taken into account when using crocodile skin is that it comes from a round shape animal and the stretch has a tendency to go up and down and wherever it likes. To overcome this on pieces that are large or from near elbow areas it is common practice to glue a fabric to the back to stabilise the stretch. What fabric chosen will depend on the end use and the size of the finished product as well. Quite often on large sections a padding is used as well to give a better feel to the product. These following pictures were taken a while back and the quality is not so good but they should do for now I believe. This jewellery box has the top done with a foam padding attached to the box followed by the croc attached over the foam and down onto the side edges. The sides are then done by attaching the croc to a thin cardboard and folding the edge then wrapping around the box to attach over the top and base. In this briefcase example it is a little similar Here you see some foam attached to the wooden box frame I made on the lid and back. This shows the cut out croc pieces used to make it Here I am attaching a fabric to make the croc sit right and note that the fabric does not go all the way out on the edges. These 2 pictures although not croc use a fairly similar process as well and show the briefcase better than the croc picture I have above. Hope that helps for now. Brian

In the start of your short video above the cutting edge of the bell looks like it is very rough and probably the sharpening stone is not in the correct position. It may be too far forward perhaps and making it sharpen on the very edge of the bell only. I would have to see some pictures of the machine from underneath to be more sure. From under the machine with a 12mm spanner you can loosen this bolt to allow the sharpening stone to be moved further forward or backward to change the bevel angle where the sharpening happens on the bell. A little forward as shown in this picture would be best for heavy leather and would produce a steeper/blunter angled bevel - For softer leathers a longer angle is better as shown in this position.Note that the shaft is further back. This adjustment also helps to maintain a wide bevel when the sharpening stone wears away and needs to be moved back to keep the wide angle. After you have finished sharpening the blade fully you should have a bevel on the bell that measures about 4mm from the presser foot as shown in this picture below. (Note: roller presser feet require different settings to these.) I have loaded up a video for now to help you see how to go about the sharpening process. I may not be a good video maker but if you would care to look at about 15minutes in on the video you will see that I can get a bell skiver to do its job a lot better than 99% of the other less experienced video makers are capable of. There are a LOT of videos out there on this subject and a lot of untrue information in them as well. Follow the steps I show in this video and you should get good results. I will make a few more on how to use these machines occasionally so subscribe (follow) me on my youtube channel if you want to see them.

I have one here and use it fairly often. For the money they are very good value. I have made a few video's on them you can see my channel and here is one if it helps -

There is quite a bit that does not look right in this video. Why are you not using a guide to start with? Secondly, the edge of the bell knife looks very rough and I would say that has not been through the sharpening process properly. I am concerned that the sharpening stone is not in the correct place for your type of work as well. They can be adjusted to do longer and shorter bevels in the way they sharpen the bell and yours may be way too short. I will take some pictures tomorrow of a few places I would like you to take pictures of to help me see what is wrong. I will try and get a short sharpening video done as well. These machines can take a long time to master as they have a lot of variable adjustments to do what every job you want it to do.

Make sure they see your video because I think you have been making the screws tighter. They may need to use an impact screwdriver. Pauline... why are you wanting to take out the bell? It does not look like it has much wear if any. Normally you can get them down to about 25mm before they need to be changed.

@vovo I don't have a machine like that but do a fair bit with sewing machines. As far as that foot lift lever ....does it lift the presser feet or not? Normally this part would not affect the presser feet action other than to lift them. Unfortunately I am up in the Rockhampton area.

The 277 thread and the 25 needle combination should be correct. That said some threads I have have gotten from some suppliers varies quite a bit from another supplier. 2 things other than that possibility come to mind and one is have you rubbed/tapped the threads down and 2 the focus is all on the threads here because there is no burnished edges. I think that an LR or S point needle would also improve the look.

Pauline...That has got to be about the most dangerous thing I have seen in a long while. Do NOT hold the bell knife with your hand like that. Please get someone to help you. Get the stronger to use a good quality screwdriver to unscrew the screws while the other holds the shaft at the other end where the belt goes around it. Sometimes an impact screwdriver may be needed but normally it can be done with a good screwdriver and strong hands. Once the screws are taken out a tap with a plastic hammer on the back of the bell could be necessary to get the bell loose. Let me know if you get it as I am doing some video's and a manual one one at the moment. I could do a quick one up for you if need be.

That is an excellent detailed set of instructions on how to do this job @Nick777. Thank you very much for sharing here on LW.

Very nice work there @Spyros. Some good design ideas there as well. Front fitting catch is a extra nice feature.

Good job and way more practical in use. I do like the foot pedal set up that way myself as well.

Good to hear. Look forward to seeing some belts and sheaths done with it sometime.

Hi Noel, Welcome to the forum. I am up in the Rockhampton area and mostly into producing Leather goods (Wild Harry) and dabbling into the machinery that I make and use. A check of my profile would fill you in more. Cant help you much with the tooling as I don't do it much any more but there is a whole lot of members here that can for sure.

Quite difficult with croc and time consuming. If I were not recessing it I nearly always attach the croc skin to something that keeps it from going everywhere it wants. IN the case above I would put in a firm veg backing about 1mm thick and skive the croc edges to about .6 to.8mm if needed. Any less and you stand the risk of the knife knife cutting through the soft area between the scales/tiles. when combined, any thickness less than 2mm is easy to edge and gives a good looking finish. . After that I second cut them both to size then colour the edge before attaching. If the croc is veg tanned (pretty rare) you may be able to burnish if you prefer.

Whether it is worth the trouble would depend on how much you would find having a bell knife skiver for your work. I have seen on aliexpress or alibaba where it was possible to get that whole arm in one piece at a reasonable price.

Don't forget to get some videos and share some here. They could assist in getting even more.

It looks to me like you may be missing a major component that would look like the part I am showing in the following picture. That section has the feed wheel attached to it and the shaft that is hanging down in your fits into the end and drives the feed wheel.

Great news and I believe that it will be more rewarding more every time. shoosh