RockyAussie

Whoever said that never saw a kangaroos or crocodiles brain size. A 3.5m crocodile has a brain the same size as a walnut .

Hey Don, I am most likely out due to freight costs etc but a clicker press for that many pieces is almost certainly the better way to go. Not having any idea of the complexity of the shape and the size it is hard to be sure but would it fit into 17"x 17" or 13"x17"? Most clicking presses that people have will be limited to around these sizes but there are a lot larger ones than that,that fewer people will have. Lasers also will have size limitations. A simple die or knife can often be made for less than $200 and that works out well over 500 pieces and generally the cutting time is less than a minute each. If you would like some more feedback a picture of the product would help but, you could pm me if you don't want to show it as yet.

You can get spring style snaps that dont have any dome side on the female outer side. WE call them invisible snaps which are for this purpose. In Australia here I can get them from Marish accessories. His catalogue does not show the post part I am talking about but it is available. I would be very surprised if they were not available from Ohio Travel accessories. You will need the dies to install as well as they have a retractable post part that goes inside to hold for lining up the parts.

Does that specifically include pollies??? Eggs seem to be coming under the firing line.

That is a good point. Where there is an opening to express opposing ideas it all to often exposes the worst extremes of humanity. In my search trying to see any answers from a vegans perspective I did find it interesting that a lot of the comments below this post from Ethical Vegan confirmed a lot of my thinking on the matter. I must add that at least they have been ethical enough to allow the comments to be seen and for that at least they should be commended. http://ethicalvegan.net/read/will-animals-go-extinct-if-the-world-becomes-vegan

WOW!!!!!! ...its been awhile since I followed anyone. You just got another one. Took me 10 minutes to remember you got to go to the persons profile to follow them

Are you thinking that the Yamata FY 810. will allow you to stitch around on a made up sneaker? This type of post machine will allow good manoeuvring on an upper when it is out flat but will not be any use for getting around the toe area. The video you mention is using a different machine where you see it going around inside the shoe. The type shown there is way more expensive. You can get some shoe patching machines to do it that are quite cheap but the quality of stitch can be very erratic and takes a long to get any good at. Other than that goggle Robin Industries and have a look at their selection. They have both types. http://www.robinindustry.com/

Looks pretty good to me. As Danne said you do NOT want any burnishing agents or even any burnishing at all to get the best adhesion. Some years back in always trying to improve I got the edges so smooth I was later able to peel the edging off in a long strip. Rough nap and iron is best.

From what I can understand this position on this policy is very recent and I have found a huge amount of posts bringing this issue up now. Our website is done with Shopify and they informed us that it was possible to now use facebook/instagram to market sell our products in a connected way via hitting the shop icon to the left in facebook. Although we have tried several times we continue to get rejected product notices from Facebook as shown in my posting above as do many others now. Personally I don't use facebook and don't much care one way or the other whether we get to use the platform or not. WHAT I AM CONCERNED ABOUT IS THE NUMBER OF BUSINESSES NOW THAT DISGUISE THEIR WORDING TO GET PAST THE FACEBOOK ROBOTS AND STAFF. I SEE THAT THE EXTREMIST GROUPS WILL BE ABLE ABLE TO USE EVERY FORM OF MEDIA TO SLANDER THESE BUSINESS AND GET EVEN MORE MEDIA TRACTION TO APPLY EVEN MORE PRESSURE. As I said facebook marketing if it is not there to me is no big deal but I DO love animals a lot. I don't see how what the Vegans and some animal rights groups are proposing is not far more cruel. I have gone through their web pages for days and can find NO answer to what will happen to all of these animals. Particularly farmed animals. I would easily agree that many farming practices could be improved for the animals and that they should be focused on. To desex them gives no right to their offspring to have any life at all and for them to be mothers. Sheep and many farm animals have little to no defence from preditators so letting them loose would be vastly more cruel a death than is practised in real life at present. If they were to be somehow kept safely as they are at present and there is no economic reason to keep them, who pays and how can they be kept? Then perhaps and most likely huge numbers will have to be slaughtered. Are the proponents willing to do it or hide away and just pay for it? That may be possible because a common theme on all of their websites is DONATE DONATE DONATE. They also promote that pets should not be allowed to be kept . A trip to Bali where something similar to this type of thinking would show how cruel it is. The dogs are mostly not owned and they are thin and bony and starving and full of mange. I have cows and dogs and trust me the love goes both ways and THEY DO NOT AS THEY SUGGEST and to quote just one- " The life of the average farmed animal is filled with pain, suffering, loss, sickness, crowding, surgical mutilations without pain relief, filth, lameness, loneliness and premature death". The average statements shows me that most of these people have NEVER had any thing to do with raising animals. Because I love animals I would ask if it is possible that the forum here would consider perhaps as one of the largest group of leather workers in the world that FACEBOOK would make their position clearer as to whether leather products are acceptable or not on their platform??? I do not want any extremist groups able to get further traction that is possible at the moment. If they are in or out is all we need to have clarity on.

There are a few on here that do a little posting occasionally but you may like to have a look at a forum started by Peter Nitz. It mostly deals with the high end work and much of it seems well put. . I have noticed a couple of members here including a couple of my followers on here have joined it. I have not joined myself only because I did not find any thing new for me to learn there as yet. I may do at a later stage perhaps. I look for a broader spectrum of interest which I find here better for myself. Here is a link - https://leathercraftcommunity.com/

Never been much for facebook stuff myself but in this digital marketplace world I been giving it a go. Tried linking the web page to the facebook market place and got some rejected. Several try's later still have rejections. Got I response from them said : Our internal team has reviewed the products and it will remain rejected >> because Posts that involve sale/lease/trade/adoption/auction of >> animals/products derived from animals are prohibited on Facebook. Sale of >> animals draws a lot of negative user sentiment also there are legal >> regulations around the sale of animals/endangered species around the world Following he provided a link which shows the prohibited content - https://www.facebook.com/policies/commerce/prohibited_content/animals# As you can see at the bottom it states Any part, pelt or skin from an animal, including fur Therefore I can only reason that any thing made from leather is now prohibited !!! No leather shoes, belts, wallets or handbags? No bone or horn products? It seems that perhaps a .1% of the population is going to tell the other 99.9% how we are now to behave and sell our products. That may sound emotive BUT .... I have seen some terrible activities carried on by some vegan extremists here in Australia lately and the doors this opens for them is DEVASTATING. Why???? I did a bit of searching on line to see how some of the notable companies are handling this and found that they are mostly not mentioning words like skin, hide, leather and fur in what shows up on their Facebook Shop section at first glance. This means a new norm then is to use deceptive practices to fool Facebook and market their products. Deceptive practices in how a product is advertised within Australia is against Australian law. If a person (perhaps a vegan) complains to Facebook that the company is selling leather goods by doing that, then that company would be expected to be banned from Facebook. This.. if accomplished would give plenty of interest to every day media in a negative way to the deceptive marketing practices of the companies involved. It would be surprising if some extremist parties were not to collectively spend days trolling looking for any company they can damage and get removed. Although I do not use Etsy I did check out their guidelines on this area and thankfully it is a whole lot clearer. https://www.etsy.com/legal/prohibited/ Facebook has the right to ban what they like on their platform and that is fine but I hope that they reconsider their position as I have to ask, what comes next????? No Meat? No eggs? No .........?????????????????

My best guess is that you have too much paint on in your first coatings. Sand it all back and give it a quick (quick iron). When you have the speed and heat right it will glide along and give a smooth finish. If it looks too rough after that give it another coat without much build up and again a quick iron followed by a light sanding then another finish coat. The ironing mostly helps to sit down the nap and make it smooth as well as adhere better. If the paint sticks to the iron regardless of temperature and speed then possibly the paint is too old or faulty. A polished iron does help. Test if you go up the back of the shaft nearer to the handle if it then seems to go well. It can happen though rarely that the chemicals in some leathers can migrate into the paint and affect how it behaves when ironed. Common shoe colouring paints will generally not iron in as in your pictures. They stick to the iron and pull up too much. Check my you tube channel may help some

The scales gives the option to show Kilo's (0.000)and that is in 5gram jumps or pounds lbs (0.00) or oz (0.0) Jin (0.00) and all of these go up in individual units. Possibly on a domestic machine this may not give a fine enough reading but I would be surprised.

Checked out your video and well done. I did something a little similar with some fish scales and for the price they work great. I wanted to post some results with these as for people that are new to using sewing machines it could be used as way of setting some idea of the parameters a machine should have in regards to the tension adjustments. Here is a link to the scales I bought and am very happy with. https://www.ebay.com.au/p/Wh-a05l-LCD-Portable-Digital-Electronic-Scale-10-45kg-10g-for-Fishing-Luggage/15020246737?iid=323005161210 I did a little on this subject in this following post that you may want to check - only good for giggle I guess.....

It is not something I have done in many years. When some of the tanning was done in Australia I had to do a lot of reworking and improving the colours and fixing the colours so they did not bleed and so on. Still have a couple of the tanning drums etc. It is worth knowing a little about mostly only so you can discuss with a tanner how some part may be improved in the process. For instance if you know the % of fatliquor used in the tanning you can advise if it is too oily or too dry if want it decreased or increased. Backstraps I prefer about 11% as it gives a good feel and still allows the glue adhesion and makes the bone tops highlight nicely when polished. Due to the cost of these skins and the reputation of the skins - and your own, it is not something I think you should waste much time on other than visiting some tanneries and asking them what things you need to know on how to advise them back if any improvements are needed. Buying well done skins from reputable suppliers is in the end the better option in my opinion. Getting friendly with a tannery can lead on to good leads as well. If you can do good work efficiently and they know you can, there is no need to advertise as they will be doing it for you sometimes whether you want it or not.

I have seen several hat makers here in Aus use what looks like that leather and it is normally a very waterproof type of leather. I would like to know the manufacturer if you would care to share as it does sound very cheap if that is Australian dollars and I would like to be sure that it IS made here for sure. It looks a little like a BC Hat or maybe this Cessnock from USA??? https://www.bullhidehats.com/leather/cessnock

For reinforcing fabric an open weave cotton drill or any thing that holds contact glue well and resists pulling out of shape. I have used interfacing on some things as well ...depends on the product and the expected pressures on how you would expect it to be used. Some products like some purses and bags are further backed up with foams. For fabric linings and such check out the TABRU range in Italy as that is where we get a lot of the fabrics we use. http://www.tabru.com/

This is what I believe would have happened. Normally they would get polished until any marks are removed. Being that the discs have been so heavily sanded I would suspect that the machine has a lot of wear and I would check the post as well for a heavy groove in where the thread rubs it. Sometimes the post can be revolved a bit. As the thread goes through these discs on most machines it rubs in the same part until a groove is formed and eventually you can not get any top tension on the finer weight threads any longer. Sanding them back and polishing is a normal practice here. Similarly the bobbin case suffers the same problem under the tension spring and the easier thing is to have a backup one ready to go.I prefer to have a different bobbin case for each different weight thread. These 2 machines below are what I use and it only takes a couple of minutes. Brown tripoli polishing wax I use mostly. Do not mix different polishing waxes on the same rag wheel as that does not work very well.

For splitting it depends on what skin type and even the tanner whether it is glazed or not what product is required and many other factors. Skiving is also normal and the method depends on what is being done. Sometimes by hand sometimes sanding and often a bell knife skiver is used. This below spliiter I have modified mostly for backstrap work on belts and has adjustable spacing rollers to do that work. This pic shows how it works The now split backstrap. This can also be done with a sanding machine. This sanding machine below can be used for the backstrap work but is also can be used for thinning belly skin and leather etc. Here I am using to break the tightness on glazed skin before skiving the edges on some bangles I make. Here the bell knife skiving is done What it looks like after the centre seam is stitched What a few look like prior to having the edges folded. Lousy pic but that's all I could find of what they look finished. Note: I make the plastic insert by injection moulding it here. Didn't have a 3D printer when I started making these. For wallets you asked - What oz / mm thickness do you like to use for your wallets (and interiors?). Depends on the skin etc but mostly with glaze croc .8 to 1mm and the lining pieces get split to .5 to .6 as any less can often lead to holes in the valleys. Likewise the skived edges are normally not under .3mm at the very outside edge. You asked - Do you often use something like veg tan to reinforce certain materials? No as veg is susceptible to shrinking and and heat and moisture affects it too easily for that. With croc it is good practice to apply/glue a fabric to the back and leave compressed/flattened a little overnight or longer before applying it to the product being made.The croc skin has a tendency to go back into its original shape and without the fabric it can end up quite wobbly looking. The fabric also helps the croc be controlled when it curves over in products such as these clutch bags in progress.

They are onto an Ivan I think metal buckle blank. They have a leather backing on the other side which is about 1/8" oversize then a thin split leather is attached to the top then the croc crown piece is contact glued and attached and cut to shape then edged ironed edged etc. The edging colours are made up here to match. Sometimes I stitch them around but often the scoots get in the way and getting crowns to fit well makes the suitable for stitching ones nearly impossible. getting them apart is nearly impossible so the stitching is only decorative anyway.

I have worked with some fish skins but I would not ever work with something that is not from a farmed situation of any thing rare as I would not ever want to form any temptation for anyone to have any reason to further endanger that species. If it were not for the farming of crocodiles here there would be little education to the public as to why we need to have crocodiles in our river systems. They have to as part of their licences provide education to the public in this regard. This I promote and will stand behind. I have never been convinced for me to want to work with Elephant skin to date. Ostrich skin has some excellent look and wear resistant properties and can easily be bought from farming operations. I prefer porosus for appearance but cane toad and bull frog is stunning as well. Some almost drop it when they find out what it is but it still sells incredibly well. On pen covering the toad easily rivals the croc ones in sales. Horback or the backstrap part of croc can be difficult to work with but often produces products I like a lot. Here's a few examples might tickle the imagination The belt and bangles are from croc skin I made in this pic below.

Traditionally crocodile was mostly veg tanned but many tanneries went on to doing a mix of chrome first followed by veg to make it faster but also enhance some of the properties in use. Most of the skins I have been given to use from France are Veg tanned and I find them harder and harder to work with when they are glazed. The glazing process puts a lot of pressure and heat down into the leather as the glass or stone rubs over the skin. The Singapore tanneries mostly do the best tanning I have seen and worked with. They still get a fairly good highlight on the scale compared to ones that I used from Japan. There are various other finishes aside from Glaze and Matt and cost more generally. One I like is a semi glaze from the Chek Hong Tannery which has a beautiful feel and is very nice to skive and work with in general. They do many if not the most of the alligator skins in the world. Alligator is normally about half of the cost of Porosus and is normally a lot less desirable except that may be not so in the USA. I am not an expert in the marketing of these things as I get the skins sent to me from a lot off places and I just make up the product and they get it back. The skins all come with tags on saying what type of skin from where and generally what country it was tanned in. All these skins have to have permits to export, permits to reimport after tanning and re export blah blah blah. They sell me a bit when I want it but mostly I prefer to let them take all of those headaches. We do make wallets and purses and aplenty from glazed skin but I do have a preference myself to the matt as the skin is easier to look after and stays looking good longer.

Is it segma type snaps you are wanting? After all the trouble I had with the tandy ones (which were good about 5 years ago) I had to change to another type which meant to an unusual set of dies as well. That supplier is getting erratic and is here in Aus so I cant say try there. My research at the time was to go with names of the others you mentioned but at the time the cost was high and I would need to commit to very large quantities to make it worth the freight. I was going to have a try with OTB and the buckle guy to test out as well. As I mentioned if the female part does not have the holes at even distances down when they are pressed into shape they will not work with any equipment. The male section on the tandy ones also does not have the bulge the locks it in as well they used to. The main reason I used to get them was because of the capped male side in black and brown colours but now I have to paint my own and use the stud part off of a speedy rivet. (major PAIN in the A) If I remember rightly the pull the dot ones were available with a capped male head and if you need to get some and they work good you can count me in for a few thousand most likely. The ones I am thinking of were supposed to made in the USA????

Most of my work is with Crocodylus porosus (Saltwater crocodile) which is the best and most expensive in the world to use. It has the advantage that it has mostly the least amount of bone in it after the tanning process. It has a lot more rectangular shape scale than the alligator which is normally quite square. Alligator skin is generally tanned on the smaller skins due to the underlying bone that makes the bigger skins difficult to work with. Some tanneries can do a reasonable job with it though. Caiman is a terrible skin to work with and has a lot of disadvantages due to it having a lot of bone just barely under the top layer of skin and this leads to quick wearing out on many products. The tanning of these also shows the difficulty of getting the dyes to absorb evenly due to the bones as well and that is one of the ways that it can be identified at a glance. They also very commonly have a dishy shape scale in comparison to the others. It would be best to visit a seller of these skins to get used to the touch feel and look of these different skins and if possible try them out which will teach you faster than anything else could. Some crosses with Siamensis and porosus are getting hard to tell the difference between now and the differences between where they are tanned are the main difference. That knowledge unfortunately comes from seeing and feeling.

The heels blocks are attached by nails from the inside but these are not long enough to be seen from the outside. Mostly they have a rubber heel attached on the bottom if they are stacked leather and such but yes as they wear they could possibly mark a hardwood floor if they were to wear them inside. The damage though would be significantly worse if wearing a stiletto heel in most cases.