RockyAussie

Have a look at this before you go any further as it will only take a minute to find out. With your presser feet down, take the top foot pressure adjustment thing right out as shown below - Then lift the feet up and the spring will be easy to grab out With the Cowboy machines they come with 2 different springs, one for softer work and one for the hard stuff which is most likely the one you have in there. These buggars are not squared off on the end like they should be. This shows one end - this shows the other - Sometimes if you are lucky one end will be near to square and if you put the squared off end in first you may find that the feet now don't bind up on the shaft when they lift. When the spring is under pressure and it is not squared off it pushes the coil above on an angle enough to make it rub a lot into the presser bar shaft which is what I have found the problem to be previously. What I do to rectify is sand them down until they are flat and to make that easy I have a wooden block with a squared off notch attached to the bed of my belt sander as shown Then on and off I sand it down until its fairly level on both ends. This has worked very well to fix this issue for me so I would do it first before adjusting anything further. P.S. I broke a needle a couple of months back myself but I'm not telling anyone here about that

Just a note on this point. I have found if I try and load an over size picture it will not work to delete it and then try and put in the smaller picture size. It still tells you it is too big. I have found that you have to drop that posting go out of it then reopen and start again with the smaller picture and then it works. Sometimes if your quick it will remember all your words but allow the smaller picture to work.

@YinTx, Now if you have the needle bar and hook in their right place I think you should follow the steps as in this Video by Uwe. It does get to the end alright if you just follow the sequence in the order he has shown.

I should have pointed out that the rubber and eva type soles become a fair bit more flexible when heated and that also makes them curve to the edges better which in turn helps for better adhesion. In fact I used to warm the outside some before heating the glue side for that reason. Sorry its been maybe 20 years ago since making shoes for me.

Most solvent based contact adhesives used with shoe making will adhere best if heat is used a little. Ideally the heat will be applied to the sole to get the whole surface a even and ready to go contact. The sole will normally hold the heat for a minute or more and that gives you time to use a broad head hammer to quickly thump down on your sole which is held by the last and stand. A press is better but not that essential as long as you have applied a good layer of glue. A heat gun can be used quite well with some practice. If you start to see any bubbling then you are too close or too hot and you have overdone it. Heated up glue will be quite sticky to the touch compared to unheated glue. Do some practice with a few pieces before trying the soles.

You may find a product called Topy rug which is pretty good wearing but you would likely want a 3mm layer of aircelite between the upper and the sole for better cushioning. Aircelite is sort of a form of eva foam rubber a bit like thong rubber if you like. I have to ask ...what injury are you talking about?

After you have determined that you have the needle bar set at the right height, Open the stitch length lever to the widest possible stitch all the way out. Take the needle down to the bottom and keep going untill the needle is just about to start coming up. At this point the hook should be sticking out about 1mm. If not then loosen the 6mm Allen head bolt then keep going back and forward nipping up the allen head a little at different spots until you get it right. Unless you get this part right first there is no point doing any other adjustments.

I would suggest you have a long look at all the various types of soling material made by Vibram. I have to ask why you want to do flat soles on these shoes? Men"s shoes normally have a 3/4" or so raise at the heel be it a wedge or heel block and that is because ergonomically they are better wearing that way. If they are too flat you will generally get knee issues and heel spurs just to name a couple of the top of my head. Track running shoes are a different thing because your saving weight and the heel hardly comes into use. By the way hardness rating does not necessarily come into meaning they will last longer. Hard rubbers can often wear out quicker because they have no give. Some heels can be tapered at the back a little to increase the surface contact area which greatly increases the length of wear. This does make for a slightly more rolling walk which is not so bad.

Topy anti slip is very long wearing on the sole area but for the heel not so. For heels Topy strong is good but not much good for soling, too stiff. https://www.leffler.com.au/topy-strong-5mm-black-/ If you can post a pic of the type of shoe you want to do would help as some of the Vibram type soles may be better for your needs.

Sort of half half really. The feed dog is still a binder type which means it will not drop down and come back up when it feeds, just back and forward on the same level. Reverse if it works is probably done through that electric control box on top. Re the tension assembly I think what is there is alright to go with.

Smallest size made for any leather points is NM 160/23 I believe. Would like to be proved wrong though.

Shame I could not find any video's on the Artisan 2618-1B. I would like to check out for certain the claim about not needing a speed reducer on it. When you are starting out being able to go as slow as you want is a real blessing compared to the motors I started off with. For any help sorting out bugs you can get plenty of help with the cb341 on this site but I can not say how much help you would get on the Artisan. I think if you check you can get the pedestal table with the cb341 as well for a bit extra.

The top picture is too small to make out the problem very well. Are you using a slotted needle plate without the feed dog? Or are you seeing loops of the top thread and your top tension needs tightening?

Redrill yes but watch out for the belt running into the table slot while you are at it, no good rubbing against it either.

The techniques they use in this video is mostly similar to how we do it except I have made a few tools to do it a fair bit quicker. This 3 minute video I did awhile back shows how we do it normally - Most of the pocket tops get split to around .7mm and that can be done easily with a bell knife skiving machine if you don't have a band knife splitter. The fabric we use we import in fairly large quantities from an Italian company called TABRU and it is a coated non fray fabric that many other large name brands use. It can come with your logo all through it if you get a large enough quantity.

Sorry for the delay again Michael. Turns out that Australia post will not accept it to NI. Don't know what the issue is but the best method would be via a courier company. Jess will be in contact with you shortly with some details. @dikman I have just checked with Jess and she has some in stock

For what its worth...I just tried to get a set of needle plates sent to NI through Australia Post. They will not take it. It will have to go via another courier. This is stupid beyond belief and adds a lot of extra cost into the equation.

90+% of my work we do here for over 20+years has not been done with my logo. Fact is most of the product we make that is on our Wild Harry website are just throw in extras we do make when doing a run for other customers orders.We do a lot of products for different brand names (some big and some small) and that suites me fine as I don't need to do so much advertising and customer handling that way. Lets me focus on what I am better at really. I assist this also by helping them get their brand done for the size of the products they get and that gets applied to the products as they are getting made.

So true. What will sell products is how well you design and make the product. Very very few will fail because of it being machine sewn. Other factors in design though can make a big difference and educating people on why your product is better than other products on offer is every bit as important as your actual skill in making the product. First thing a customer wants is something that will Last,second thing is the workmanship quality of the manufacturing and these days where it was made, what country.

Sorry for the delay in answering. I have tried to get a price for postage out of Australia Post online and that is not working out. I will have to get into the post office to find out and I live a good ways out of town. I will try and find out tomorrow for you.

Thanks for that feedback Wiz. I am not sure how that will go on thinner weight stuff as I think the foot would put a fair pressure down into the slot in the needle plate. Might be one instance where the standard narrow needle plate may work better. That said I don't have one of those inline feet to try myself. I have found that other funny foot the comes out the front works well when I want to do something like that oil stone pouch in the picture shown before. This is another couple of pictures showing the foot I mean stitching that same oil pouch. I will be interested to see how it goes. If it works ok I might just have to get me one of them feet and try it out.

Been getting a few sales I am happy to say but I need to point out that the needle plate and dog foot sets for the cb 4500 (441 clones) are a different size to the ones made for the Cowboy cb3200. Please be sure to identify which machine model you have when you message me. For any of you that have ordered please feel welcome to post here your findings when you get them. If there are any pictures that would be great. If there are any improvements you think may help.

Damn that is really good @Spyros. I think you just might be a natural LW.

When you have clicker knives and a press available you have the advantage of doing any cutting way quicker. When you have to join pieces together the same size you can waste a lot of time trying to get every bit to line up as perfect as possible. My general practice is to make a first cut offset larger 2.5 to 3mm larger all the way around and then after all the bits are attached I then second cut to have a quick and easy perfect line up. Sometimes it can also be quicker to not even cut a piece to size like say if you were wanting to do coasters with a cork sheet backing. Do a first cut oversize for the top and glue in bulk down onto the sheet of cork getting the pieces in tight all over the cork. Then get the finished size knife and cut them all out thereby giving yourself a nice true edge to work with in a fraction of the time to line up otherwise. Where it works for me really well is when I have a lot of credit card pockets to go in a wallet. No need to get perfect first because the second cut does it for you.

Good effort on the knives mate. I would bore a few large holes in the wood though to enable a quick push out if needed especially if doing thicker leather. The lid flap I would add a second layer at the front most likely. The way I would suggest is to make a larger back panel/lid as a first cut and the same with the front lid flap piece and then second cut with the existing knife. I do a lot of patterning with second cutting in mind as it gets all the parts nice and lined up even which is not always easy by eye.What and where does the circle piece go? Some similar bags made by saddler's here stitch the front to the gusset so the seam is inside and that looks pretty good as well.