RockyAussie

That is the main advantage which I find important for the product I make. I have even designed a smaller cap than the original cap to enable even tighter products to fit within. It can do what the others do most of the time except the other 2 you mention can take thread larger than #138. They go to #210 thickness. If that is important in your product line I would go with the 2700 as its needle is close to the edge like the 2600 and has a reduced cut out which at times would allow for fairly tight tubular curve stitching.

So you have to dye them yet? Are they veg (tan colour) or chrome (green grey) tanned or a retan?

A speed reducer can be a bit of an advantage when you are starting off and can give you a fair bit more punching power but I still have plenty of clutch motors that without reducers and they will have to wear out probably before they get replaced with servo motors. I have one small juki flatbed that I changed to a servo recently and without a reducer and it seems fine and more controllable than with the old clutch. Note: the servo motors make NO noise when they are not turning and that can be a trap as if you hit the peddle and don't realise the machine is on it takes off and .......Hopefully you don't have a finger under the needle or something. They do save a fair bit on the power usage as well compared to a clutch. I think I saw a near new 355 on here for sale a day or so back for only $1900. Here is the link -

I was curious as to the quality of your Segma snaps and thought I see if I could find your business. I eventually succeeded and then found in your terms and conditions NOTE: We do not ship to addresses outside of the USA and Canada. I would like to try these snaps out if you can help me there but I am in Australia.

You could consider putting some thin cork on the back like the flooring type. Also if you transition to leather I would consider just stamping the designs in as against the laser and the associated cleaning up and sealing etc. There is where the clicker press may come in handy as well. That can go at about 30 seconds per stamping per piece.

Ha Ha ...you gonna have ta lay offa that rattle snake meat Chuck. I do hope you are not suggestin my pouches are not functional an meant to be used Dammmm...Wyoming is waaaaaaaay over there.....

I agree with Gary they all look great Alex. I don't think you have much reason to excuse your work for as I am sure many here would like to be so good.

All so true. I do prefer the Strongbond (ex Venus) as it behaves less slippery in the tension and behaves better than any other I have tried. It does not suffer from that hairy look when you finish and burns off nicely as well. Only problems is here in Australia it is getting very low on the colour range available these days and if they don't have it, you have to buy a whole carton of the one colour.

Bags, belts/straps, shoes uppers,wallets purses up to 10mm (3/8") thick and just about anything you can see on my web site. (Not the linesman's pouch) If I were starting all over again this would be my first machine. It can do anything that you can do on a flat bed and most things that you can on a post machine as well. Main limitations are the thread size at max #138 and the thickness it can sew. A larger cylinder gives you more difficulty getting into tight gusset areas and if you look at my wallets I sew all the way around which to me is quicker and neater.

Very nicely done contrast colouring and the thread swapping adds a very nice detail.

Normally I buy 3x20 litres at a time along with a drum of the thinners for it as we need to thin it for the glue machines and for spraying as well. I ran short of the thinners once and found that I could use general purpose thinners (GP Thinners) be that it was not as good as the proper thinners. Your paint shop will be able to help.

They both have 1 advantage in that they can sew in any direction (360 degrees) but the feed is only achieved by the top foot grabbing and pulling the job along. This can be a problem for getting uneven length stitches and foot teeth marks and sometimes when sewing up the arm keeping the thread to the left or the right of where the needle goes into. It is worth having one but the money would be better saved and put toward a cylinder. In my experience looping tension problems can be hard to avoid as well. I have many years of experience using them and can get a pretty good result but that only comes with years of practice that you get from sewing inside shoes and following the same holes etc.

I have a wide range of machines but the one I use most is a small cylinder arm machine. They can do a wider range of operations than other machines and give professional results. This one here from Techsew called the 2600 is along the type I would start with. http://www.techsew.com/machinery/industrial-sewing-machines/cylinder-machines/techsew-2600-narrow-cylinder-leather-industrial-sewing-machine.html For just over $2000 I would consider their finance options.

For bags and backpacs and wallets etc I would try and find a cylinder machine to start with like a Pfaff 335 or Adler 69 or there are a lot of clone copies of these that some of the sponsors on this site could help you out with. The 2 I mention here have a small cylinder diameter around 46mm there abouts and come in handy when you have tight areas to get into. Many use a table top attachment with these to give them in affect a flat surface to work on.

Hey Gary if the problem you are having is along the lines in this picture below you could try using the slotted needle plate or if you have not seen it yet here is a post I did awhile back might be of interest. Problem below shows what happens when trying to sew close to the edge with the standard dog foot/needle plate.

At that thickness I would make sure the 2 pieces are sanded rough to help good adhesion but make sure that the outside piece is a good 2" or so longer. Without gluing wrap one piece around your waist and then the other on top and you will see that there is a huge difference. If there is too much difference when they are put together the glue will have a hard time holding it together. I would split the difference between out straight and curved all the way around and I'm thinking that's about 2". Getting it stitched would be a good idea.

What you are suggesting sound about right to me. Before you start though ALWAYS make sure that what you are about to fix is worth fixing. There is no point throwing good money into a thing that is no good any longer. If you find that a with little pressure that the rip opens up more then show this to your customer because whatever stitching you do wont last very long and then you look at fault. If it is only sheep skin ...don't bother you are wasting your lifetime.

Very nice ...that will be one very proud uncle I reckon.

Yes I have in the past milled leather in a drum which is like a large tumble dryer or front loading washing machine. The time it takes varies on the skin or skins being milled. Often pieces of carpet and even old sandshoes get thrown in to help it happen faster. The falling action helps it to soften. There are a lot faster machines for normal leather which use a series of pegs on one drum with a series of holes in alignment on the other drum. These turn and pull the leather through and can be a very aggressive method. Either method if overdone will wreck the fibres eventually and the softening process should ideally employ some oils if possible along with or instead of. If the skin you have is glazed then I would not look at milling it as it would craze crack everywhere. Not knowing the skin and how it is tanned I can only suggest applying several coats of Nivea cream(the one without any alcohol in it) and letting it soak in between applications. If it is a glazed skin a bit of quick rough sanding on the rough/flesh side can break the tension and make it a lot better to work with. This must be done so as to not let the sanding get hot in any one position or the skin can end up burned and harder. I think I may have shown a bit of this earlier in this post on some glazed skin cut for bangles. A dremel wont be of any help on this.

The answer really depends on whether you want it for hobby use or regular work use. Many of the cheaper products use bushes instead of bearings and I found out the hard way that going with the quality products is often in the end cheaper. A bigger factor also is the dust extraction as that fine leather dust aside from going everywhere also can build up in your lungs. If your thinking of long term production let me know and I'll load some pictures of a few different machines I use that do this type of work.

Small world isn't it. I still miss him a lot, as you say... he was a real good bloke. Loaned me $10,000 when I got into ostrich products manufacturing many years back but of course I then had to give his work priority at least until I paid him back. You never seen someone so unhappy to get his money back.. It didn't really change though as I still did my best when I could for him. You know ...he never told me he won all those years in a row or that he ever won anything at all. I only found that out at at his funeral where of all things they had a big screen showing all of his knives and awards. I had to leave a bit early

That was done to start with 2 pieces of wood routed out to receive the blade nicely then attached together. After that I sanded down until I liked the shape in relation to the knife and the thickness of croc that covers it. The tip and the other end were left short in the covering and from there Morrie made his silver pieces and trimmed the excess croc to the shape. The silver parts are then araldited and pinned onto the wooden section just covering slightly a little of the croc skin. Best as I can remember on that one. Some of them were really quite detailed in the making.

Yes the top ones are Australian saltwater crocodile, the top one is from a large elbow section and the bottom one is near to the tail tip. As for the sheaths in the last picture ....I made them along with a jeweller friend whose hobby was making the knives. I only made the exotic leather working parts and he made the silver attached parts. He won awards with his knives for so many years they actually have an award named after him today. Maurice (Morrie) McCarthy Here is a link that shows better some of his work - https://www.australianbladeforums.com/vb4/knife-show-pictures/787-melbourne-2011-maurice-mccarthy.html Thanks mate... I am going to have to find another knife maker so I can try out a few more of these I reckon.

Thank you. These are what motivated me to get a 441 style cylinder machine. All the above was done at the time on a little 335 phaff cylinder machine.

Hi Tor, long time no see. I myself have only tried working with the ABS a couple of times and did not get great results. I did try the acetone on it and it seemed to work some. Mostly I use this pla+ which claims to be stronger than the abs and a few other alternatives. So far I can't fault it.