RockyAussie

Looks good and well done. Post a price here when you get that sorted. Are you working on a narrower needle plate slot as well? just wondering as you have that off and it is one thing that makes these machines WAAAAY more versatile than the original. With a ground down thinner feed dog of course.

Makes getting spare parts when you need them a whole lot easier and cheaper as well.

I'm thinking that I will do a post along the line of what machinery would be advisable to have as a leather goods manufacturer regardless of whatever type of goodies one may want to produce. Most like myself start off small with very little and make a lot of mistakes $$$$$ in what machinery they can get to do a job. Then the jobs evolve and the product range broadens and undergoes design changes and that machinery needs to be able to handle these changes as well. Because I do more crocodile skin products than any one else in Australia I have to provide a very broad range of products compared to most manufacturers and do it at a higher standard and at a price that can be done within Australia which as far as I know is about the dearest labour market in the world. This means that for myself the machinery costs may seem expensive at times but the labour costs would be impossible with out it. Many Asian countries that I have to compete with often have trouble in the opposite ways. A glue gun I use here costs say $50 and wears out every 2 years or so and labour costs over $1000 per week. In Bali when last I looked the labour was about $25 per week so that glue gun might be 2 weeks wages. In my world that glue gun would be $2000 and therefore I would be gluing 5 times slower without it and still be in front in $ terms. Gets complicated staying in front. My wife and I and a couple of part time staff = 1, pump out normally a few hundred to a thousand products a week here, where often in these countries a person would often have less than 1/10 of that capacity. They in dollar terms are still in front EXCEPT they can NOT be branded MADE IN AUSTRALIA or USA etc. (marketing is a factor) The machinery and techniques I use thankfully often mean that the quality is higher and more consistent and that is something that my customers require. That rightly does not stop them trying the lesser cost alternatives at times but it is funny and pleasing somewhat when they embarrassingly show back up wanting me to try and fix the messed up products and get me back on board with them. In a world wide forum like this I think that would present a large challenge but within individual countries perhaps it could work. I look forward to your input as well and would like to know what machinery you have at present and what type of products you are thinking of producing. If you do not already follow me here do so as I tend to focus my posts in this direction. No it is a but join.The rubber part is cut as neat and square as possible the a drop of super glue does that part. Scarfing would make the join less flexable to the tight bends in the pulley. It can be stretched out to pull the cover back over and glued and trimmed. This helps to minimise the swell of the overlap. I will do a video and post sometime soon. Finding the market I found very early on is fairly simple really. "what market is there for what I'm making" I think is the wrong way in business to think as what I found works is take some product to the potential buyers and ask them what they would buy. I started off making some purses I (I) thought were great in design and eventually had to accept that the direction my credit card slots would sell better in the upright direction rather than the other direction. Also found that they wanted thinner material lining in the pockets. Many of these designs are still selling better many years later than most of the customers own designs they pay me to put into production. Do your homework well and do not listen to only 1 or 2 customers ideas before committing... make up prototypes and get orders for them first. After that investing in equipment is really a no brainer I will have a look into that idea @Chain Thanks. All too true .... Thanks for the compliments. They can make it worth doing.

Thanks to you all that have given me your feed back on this question. I am sorry to say that the interest level is less than I expected. That's alright and I'm glad I asked before I blew too much time and effort and $$$ into this idea. Doing your homework always pays off. Given the amount of people that follow me here on L.W. and that my posts don't pretend to represent myself as anything other than a leather goods manufacturer, I mistakenly thought that there would be more people interested in gaining the experience of how to do what I do. I would have loved to know all of the techniques I've developed over the years when I was a lot younger and I realise that experience would have saved me many thousands $$$ in mistakes and slow processing and as well have made many $$$$ more into my pocket instead. I have to admit when I found L.W. I was looking for more of a manufacturing related forum hoping to swap notes and techniques etc but could not find it then or now either. I guess some here like @Matt Sare looking for similar but for whatever the reason very few others here are. Thank you @Gymnast for your kind offer of help and I would especially like to thank @JLSleather for articulating so well your thoughts that in so many ways correspond with my own. Billybop, Chrisach and Toxo Thanks for your comments and I will do my best when time allows to try and get a few vids done here and there. For now I think my next one will be how to do a join in shock cord to make a pulley belt. Try and find out how to do that on you tube . My edging machine belt finally threw it in last week My emergency replacement (2mm shock cord with a knot) Here I have stretched out some 4mm cord and peeled it back and stuck the rubber together Success at last and so far it shows good and strong after a couple of full days in use. Next one should look better I reckon.

Yeah the principles are mostly the same normally but I would be focusing more on the more average cow leathers I think. In answer to your question above I am talking about production type videos. In one of my earlier posts I made a video that was aimed at showing off a line up device that I made and use everyday when making up wallets,purses and bags and a whole lot of other things. In this video you can see some techniques in action that allow me to make up wallets like these in a 30 to 45 minute time frame start to finish. The post I am referring to - What I see often is cut down videos that if you were to follow them would take you over a day to make. In one case yesterday I see a plain leather drink coaster that has been hand stitched and for sale at over $83 au. Although some would pay to see a video on how he does this I argue that none of this is real world. To quote myself above "how to make leather goods Quickly and Efficiently and also with some basic manufacturing machinery" is what I am talking about. 99.9% of the market are not going to buy this product at that price and if you could make a comparable product (not hand stitched) in 5 minutes or less and sell it at a more marketable price why would you not do that? I am NOT saying that every thing has to be made cheap and sold cheap either but if you are crazy enough to think a drink coaster that is hand stitched is going to outlast a coaster that is machine stitched and that is why it is worth paying over 10 times the difference in price then I have to say my video's are not for you. Most of my work is based on making leather goods profitably as I can and I don't see that I would have time to teach anybody how to do it any other way. This is a picture of a wallet out of my every day range that takes 30 to 45 minutes to make.

How many people here want to make money making leather goods? How many people here would like to see a range of video’s on How to make leather goods .......Profitably? I’ve seen plenty that show me how to make stuff unprofitably so I do stress the word Profitably. To be clear as I can, what I am saying is that the videos would be along the line of how to make leather goods Quickly and Efficiently and also with some basic manufacturing machinery. I ask you these questions as I would like to know what sort of a market there would be in making and selling in some form or another, video’s and associated patterns and supplies etc. Not much point making detailed video’s and stuff if there is no interest .......is there??? For anyone here that does not know the type of products I produce please check my website link – https://wildharry.com.au/ And another place that would give you some more would be here by visiting my profile page and looking through the “about me” section which shows a long list of tutorial type posts of things I make. If you are interested please say so.....

Hello @Sangrati, I am curious as to why you are looking so hard at the hand stitching methods given that you wording in your profile says " Wallets - Interested in learning about:Machines and sewing materials" Would you not be better learning on a sewing machine? I mostly work on crocodile leather goods and I rarely see any need to do the way slower hand stitching methods. I have very little to show on how I make wallets but some can be seen in this video - I think if you want to have a look in my profile, in the about me section you can find some more information about how to make this line up machine if that is of interest to you.

Good move and congratulations. You might be needing 3 pieces of pipe maybe 3' long x1 1/2" or 2" dia and a crow bar. They are really heavy and hard to move around. Watch for the oil reservoir and any spillage.

EXCELLENT pick up hold back on selling too much for a little while. I run 3 different machines regularly and being able to dedicate one to a certain type of work and another to another work flow comes in very handy. The Kwikprint will be good for the heavier and larger type jobs and the little ones good for quick changing with the monogramming initials etc.

Well done @noobleather. Thanks for sharing the processing steps with us all.

Sounds good. Do you have any pictures of it? As you are taking it off a table I am wondering if it is presently set up with suction? @Constabulary gives a little history on this brand in this earlier post and @David Bruce has one and likes it.

Thanks @alexitbe That is a good picture. Looks like that one has been out of action for a while. I have been trying to get some measurements of a Cowboy from the dealer over here but no luck as yet. I was hoping to be able to get enough measurements of different machines to make up a universal type suction funnel affair but so far the interest looks pretty poor and not worth the effort. I suppose if you haven't used one with a vacuum it is hard know the difference it makes. On yours for what it is worth I think the guard over the bell has been rubbing on the bell and there is an cam adjustment knob on that cover to stop that. The bell is a bit far back I suspect which is why the blade angle looks overly acute. The sharpening stone has junk in it to be dressed out before and sharpening is done. I hope that is of help and again thank you for the picture measurements. Brian

Warning...the smooth stones do not grip as much and on the stiffer leathers it will not feed through well. On garment type leathers they can be good if you are going to be doing that a lot. DO NOT use the stone on the stick inside the bell too much as if you overdo it on an angle it will be worse than ever. The leather will dive in and down and holes aplenty. Are you trying out some different leathers to see how they perform? Not having seen a video yet on how the machine is performing it is still a wild guessing game as to what could be the problem.Your top foot may be not tapered/angled well or smooth as needed or many other things that can come into play. What is the brand name on the back of the bell? Does the skiving go smooth and ripple free at all on any edges for a while?

Really.................?

Most leathers are fine but some are really bad. I tend to use a 2mm chrome tan that I use for my dress belt backs but that's because I have plenty of scrap of it. I have never used any polishing compound with it so I can't say how that would go or how to use it. If a leather feels scratchy when you feed it in while doing normal skiving then that would not be a decent behaving leather. They tend to chip out your blade early.

Thanks YinTx. That sort of looks like 1 1/4" plus whatever the width is of that ruler. I think you need to hold the square the other way around. I would expect to see something about 2 1/2" . Does your skiver hinge back ? Would it be hard to put the back of the square against the frame as I have done above with the measurements shown next to the edge?

Your blade may have started of sharp but those lines are from where the blade has picked up very small sometimes large chips out of it. I mentioned earlier about stropping the blade and I say it again. Once the blade is sharp some leathers can knock the edge about within a few inches and some wont hurt it at all. Once the blade is sharpened and stropped it will hold the edge for many times longer. To strop you find a decent behaving leather preferably about 2mm thick and feed it through very very slow even stopping it sometimes. This seems to smooth the edge of the sharp blade a little and you can hear the noticeably quieter sound as the leather feeds through. Choppy lines will often lead to the chopping out holes so as soon as you see them stop and resharpen. I do not strop every time as sometimes through a long run I will let the stone lightly touch for a few seconds and continue on. This does not seem to hurt the stropped edge much. If it feels or sounds rough it will need to be sharpened and stropped. I will look at the video above more as I have not seen it previously but at a quick glance I noted around 18 minute mark where leather shavings went all over the top. No extractor. I notice the noise difference on the FAV when he skives against my Fav and when it sounds like that I know it needs stropping. P.S. Hole chops in crocodile are expensive mistakes and may be why I am very attuned to the problem.

Thanks YinTx. I need this measurement from the bell edge (the sharp edge ) to the inside frame as shown here below.

Very nice work @paloma I am sure he will love it. My hands are aching just thinking about all of the hand stitching you did.

I been thinkin......................yeah it happens occasionally, that I could print up a vacuum scoop to retrofit on to these bell skivers. I would need to know a couple of measurements on the Cobra /Cowboy and any others that are similar. The first is what thickness is the table that the machine is on. The second is the distance from the bell to the machine base as in this picture below Mine as you can see in this close up is about 23mm The next one I need is the distance from the bell edge to the inner machine frame edge. Mine is 65mm. Note on my Fortuna that there is a relief cut out for the suction tube which may not be there on the other models. See picture below These below are the vacuum scoop shape that I am talking about printing a version of. This would come up through the hole in the table and bolt in place from underneath and the attach to a 65mm nominal size pvc elbow. After that it can go into a printed funnel shaped reducer to a typical 35mm vacuum cleaner pipe if you want to go with that or a collection box can be adapted in between if desired. I intend to do some vacuum checks first to compare what difference there is on my Fortuna against a shop Vac vacuum cleaner. The only disadvantage I can think is that the vacuum may need to be off when sharpening the bell blade in case any sparks could be picked up. As for the videos ..I will see if I can come up with a few short instructional ones in a sort of a series. It takes me forever to do editing on these and if I try to do too much together in one it may never happen. While I am on the video subject I would like you to note the video of the nippy that a couple of people said they would like theirs to go like. Watch only the feed stone and take note of how many times you see leather going around and around and even a large strip fly out. I am happy to say that is something I almost never see on mine. FACT is every time one of those little pieces is coming around you end up with a thinner piece where that bit comes through. Sometimes that don't matter but it looks pretty awful on a smooth bit of leather when it gets glued down. Brian

Thanks @Mark842 I found some pics in a manual that help. I wish I could say that I have found some video's worth watching on this subject but have found nothing that I could really recommend. I absolutely hate making videos due to lack of confidence in my speaking/voice but I am starting to think I might just have to. For instance the sharpening guidelines mentioned in a video earlier in this post and his later video showing how to skive leather are not very good at all. They sort off remind me how it was when I first started using a skiver and being almost scared off it. I don't agree with his dropping back the bell and putting a second bevel on the edge and then bringing it back forward. The grabbing/bunching up at the start and hesitation as he starts a skive would be avoided by just angling the start and taking a little piece off the corner first and then going full in. This overcomes the stall so to speak as well as the occasional hole cut. If the blade is sharp and the feed correct there should be no difficulty holding the leather in place as it slides through. I am in no way meaning to rubbish these videos as anyone going to trouble to share their knowledge should be commended but unfortunately if no one says something then many may assume what they see to be correct.

WELCOME @DaddioDigs and its never to late. Your here now. I look forward to seeing you develop your style. I guess guitar straps will come in there sometime.

Thanks for the compliment @plinkercases but honestly I would be embarrassed to say how many thousands of backstrap I sanded on the finishing machine by hand one edge at a time using the same angles. Same said with my edging machine sadly. It would be good to see ahead what other people come up with that may be inspired by something that I shown here.. Yeah that makes me think I should do a post on a heap of backstrap products I make. They can be quite challenging to make use of with all of their peculiar bone variations and skinning cuts. Here a couple anyway might be good for a little inspiration- Hornback crowns into buckles Hornback belt with some of my bangles as well another hornback belt That should give some ideas A?

It is great that you have a good contact there jimi. I will look forward to see what they can come back with on this.

Thanks for that @jimi. Would it be worth considering to use a piece of teflon or nylon instead of the steel wiper? I dont know the noise and wear factor on the feed wheel with the steel one but I would have thought the others may be better. I don't notice much metal embedded in your feed wheel so I assume that the spring pressure is quite light and just well positioned. The slop on the shaft probably helps as well with keeping it centred over the stone curve I think. I would very much like to see some comparable pics of how YinTx's Cobra wiper is orientated as against yours which I think is a Fortuna if I am correct. Can anybody with a Cowboy or Cobra skiver post any other pictures to assist in any further comparison discussions?