RockyAussie

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.

Waaay more. #69 to #415 or in metric 40m to 7m. I have not myself used any thing over #277 (metric 10) so I can not say with certainty yet.

Thanks for the thought @fredk That would be a dream come true but so far we mostly have weirdos lacking in sufficient geek factor. This Not

Good to hear mate. The thread size is 138 (20m) with a NM160 size 23 LR Schmetz needle. Note: I don't think it is possible to get any leather point needles any smaller than the size 23 only the fabric point needle go smaller I believe.

I believe it would but I can not say for certain. If you want to try it out pm me and I will be happy to do what I can.

Thanks @garypl. I have just received another great report back yesterday as follows - "Here is your feed dog and throat plate on my cb4500, sewing a zipper in cloth with #92 thread and a #19 needle." He is happy and may do a video on it soon. I would love to know how much length of thread that size would go onto one of those bobbins? Probably gonna be a lot more bobbin sales too I guess.

No problem. I will send you a pm shortly with details and a link. (you are not the only one I have seen over time make a comment about wanting to sell for this reason and here and there they have just given up the leather work altogether.) If this saves even just a few from going that way I will feel all my efforts worthwhile.

I have. The time to take out the feed dog and put it back later is a major time waste. The job being stitched is a lot better with the dog foot in action especially when wanting the reverse stitches to line up correctly. The standard narrow plate means that the job has to be fed by only the needle and top centre foot and that means also the more foot pressure required the harder it is to get the job to move/slide along the needle plate in a reliable stitch length.

No, no help there. All I wanted is for them to send me a new main board but as my machine is more than 5 years old that's a no go. Could be just the dealers here ...who knows??? If I could just get a cost of the new one I would probably take the gamble. Wish I could speak and write Italian. I wanted to get a new motor gearbox for one of my OMAC glue machines here and that went badly south as well. Great production machines until they need some maintenance over here in OZ.

You probably have not seen how bad my hand stitching can be then I am still taking this as a compliment and thank you

You can get these on the short table that comes with castors and I find they are quite easy to wheel and pack out of the ways when not in use. If you can't fit it in then you must be holding onto less important stuff toooo much They are chrome tan mate and you know I only do quality work. I do get some pretty good sales from the workers there and I like to think they should get a bit of quality at least now and then.

OK back again with the video links - and another - and here are just a few of the practical use products this set has enabled me to do.

The Cowboy CB4500,3500 and 3200 narrow needle plate and feed dog set. Why was it developed? A few years back I decided that I wanted a cylinder machine that could handle a wide range of threads (particularly thick) with a large bobbin that could hold a lot. Smaller machines I have could do thread up to 138 (20m) but with that size thread in the bobbin I may only get 1 or 2 belts done before the bobbin needed loading again. Also the thickness of the job would often be more than desirable for the machine to handle. I managed to get a Cowboy CB4500 from our local dealer at the time and found the machine could do large jobs like tool pouches and such with no trouble but..........when I thought I could do smaller weight projects like wallets I was sadly mistaken. The large needle plate hole and wide feed dog allowed the job to be pushed down into the hole if I wanted to get closer to the edge than about 5mm and it would make a mess of any edging that was done prior to be stitched. I was approached by the local correctional centre about this time to make up for them an improved stronger personal alarm pouch and the numbers were pretty significant. I went ahead and designed a good pattern and proceeded to put it into production. Here is a picture of the finished article – Everything went well up until the stitching stage. The best way to do the job was to get all of the edging done first before the stitching and that is what I did. I knew when I was doing it that the job was going up and down a lot and was very difficult to control but I did not take enough notice of the edging at the time.. This picture below was by no means the worst one but just an average one after the stitching. “Golly” I said (perhaps something stronger and shorter to be honest) This was going to take a lotta fixin On a close inspection I found the reason. This belt strip shows that at the start of the strip as the needle enters the job all looks good. Then as the needle goes back with the dog foot and the dog foot descends the belt strip lowers down into the hole as well. The sharp edge of the needle plate was tearing up the edging every time the dog foot went down as it got to the back of the hole. This set me onto a path to find some way to get this machine to behave the way I wanted. After a year or more later and a good deal of development time with the new Cowboy sewing machine dealers here in Australia (Good people) this is what we came up with. A narrow needle plate which has a narrower hole in it than the original and also been reshaped to improve tighter curve stitching like gussets. The narrow feed dog gives the advantage of assisting the needle to be guided at all times through its motion whilst the feet are down. This means the stitches are less likely to miss and revering is now more accurate at lining up the stitches. Previously a narrow slotted needle plate was provided but that involved having to take out the dog foot altogether and at the cost of an unreliable stitch length at times, especially in reverse. This shows the original needle plate hole width in metric (8.75mm) and the next in English (.344 of an inch) This next picture shows the new needle plate hole in metric (5.54mm) and following that the English size (.218 of an inch) Due to file size limits on loading here I will follow this up a bit later with a link to a couple of video's I have done showing off the improved capability given with this new set as well as some practical use pictures I have taken whilst making some of our products.

I agree. I will post up a new video on it all going well sometime today. @Treesner after all of the info you have given I would be looking into The Cowboy CB 341 which has most of the capacities of the CB6900 but is more affordable. The 6900 can go a little thicker in thread and a little bit more in thickness but may be harder to get over there. Here is a video I loaded yesterday showing the quick table top attachment available to fit the 6900. I believe they will fit a 341 as well except that the threaded holes may not be in the arm. There are a few other video's I have done on this machine if you want to check them out as well.

Send it over here mate and I will fix that up for you and send it back Honest.

@Danne For most production type leather work I know having a vacuum is best because I have had both. But it is not always that necessary sometimes because what the vacuum does so well is reduce considerably the problem with waste sticking to the feed wheel and coming back up to wreck the job you are feeding through. Now with watchband lengths on average you can get from one end to the other before the waste comes back up. On most saddlery leathers like what @BruceGibson is used to the leather does not stick so well to the feed wheel so not such a problem. Greasy waxy leather not so bad. Some leathers will catch almost always even with a vacuum but thankfully they are pretty rare. I will be doing a 3d print version sometime soon (Cowboy machine here waiting) but keep in mind that the end of the machine has to restrict the air flow enough to increase the flow to the extraction shute. This means an end cover of sorts as well as the catching tube.