RockyAussie

I have never seen that before. I wonder if something was too tight or jamming the hook from turning like something in the hook race? One of the reasons I like to have those spring screws out 1.5 turns I guess. OIL should happen on the hook race ever hour of use by my reckoning as well. I am sure that Ron will help you out.

@Rossr Some of your work looks excellent above, in particular the feather one with immaculate crew punch holes. The only main points of criticism that I can see is the different use of colour threads and sometimes uneven spacing from the edge like you have not used a guide or when sanding the edges not staying true to the stitch line. I noticed in the example member @Tugadude shows in his google search above down the bottom a couple of pouches that I made using crocodile. This made me use the same search terms to see where I had posted it before and here is the link I found that you may like to check - https://leatherworker.net/forum/topic/85774-knife-sheath-template/ You will see in that post where I have done some work with a jeweller friend that made silver fittings to go onto the pouches and that may give you some inspiration to explore further. Note that he did win many knife shows for years with the work we did together.

I am sure it will work alright but I think as a general rule about 500 pounds per inch would be about right so on your measurements 16 ton would do it. Have a look here first https://www.keydies.com/faq.htm This post on page 2 has some calculations that may help

Hey Don, Do you have these patterns drawn up in a CAD file? I normally draw up in AutoCad and print to check all is correct then send to the laser to cut. Taking a hand drawn pattern and redrawing into a cad file can be quite time consuming. It is a fair bit quicker to design in a CAD format right from the start. The product above would take me 1.5 to 2 hours to draw up and get exactly right. Once you have a CAD file you can get it cut anywhere you want. Great thing about going this way is that if you want a little wider or longer etc it can be done in just a few seconds

Pretty sure a 25 tonne press will handle that alright but the 18" may be getting a bit long hanging out. I try to avoid more than a couple of inches hanging out on the sides of the top plate as it can bow your knives if you are not careful. If needed I cut left and right and only half depth then take it down and repeat the same. Not for the press so much just for the knives. The knives I mostly use are 2mm thick steel. One thing that makes a big difference is giving the outer edge of the blades a polish with a rag wheel and tripoly wax. That can give a cleaner and a way less pressure cut.

Just a thought that may be worth a try......With out the leather get a large plastic garbage bag and put it over the whole door skin then with a vacuum cleaner suck out all the air you can looking to see if it is possible to get minimal creases. If it looks possible spray the black leather on the back and lay it over the door skin and push into shape as best you can by hand then repeat the vacuum process. Then place your sandbags or just plenty of sand all over for a couple of days to dry out. This should give you a formed shape to then glue down starting off at the armrest.

I use a 2.5 watt Elksmaker to do engraving on leather and it works fine. I believe the 2.5 watt can attain the narrowest point and is therefore better for fine line work. I also use it a lot for cutting or marking my cardboard patterns and templates. Cuts in to black acrylic for making the odd stamp pretty well and I use it a lot for cutting out my cardboard product boxes. I did though rebuild it so I could do poster size work and enclosed it for better safety and fume extraction. This post I did a fair while ago shows a little bit about what I did to improve it - I do also use it a fair bit for cutting out fabrics as well for the one off prototypes and such. It is one of the things that I found very useful in quite a bit of my manufacturing.

Should be one of the best machines for the price if you want to do holsters. For wallets and purses keep in mind that the smallest leather point needles for them is a size 160/23 which means the thread size is best at 138 (20 Metric). The large cylinder end can sometimes be a pain when trying to do small gussets and such. The narrow needle feed dog set will give you a way better range of product possibilities as shown in this post - I would also suggest that you have a look on my Youtube channel where you can see a few other machines to consider for the future. Wild Harry YT Contact Bob Kovar , owner of Toledo Industrial Sewing Machines. He is a member here and has very helpful input @CowboyBob

Just to add a little to Mike's advice above. A good embossing machine will allow you to adjust up and down for the various thicknesses to get just the depth of impression you want. Some of the manual clicker presses will also do this as well as come in handy if you want to do some clicking or wet moulding as well. This picture below shows one of my embossing machines which has the advantage of a sliding table and with this I am able to position many different cardboard cut out shapes to simply screw down and position between different jobs. It generally takes about 1 minute to change the cardboard to a different shape piece and the stamping takes just a few seconds for each piece. This is another one I use that has a guide that can be adjusted to act as a stopper and that is able to be set back or forward on the table. With it I often just use a square shaped magnet on one side of the guide to set the stamp position left +right.

I agree with the comment above by @mdawson. First thing I would do is make sure that the sharpening stone is disengaged properly. The sharpening stone should not be turning. Next disconnect the motor drive belt then see if the fuse blows when you hit the peddle. If it does contact Techsew or get a new motor. If it does not blow the fuse then turn the machine over by hand and feel if there is any catching or heavy resistance then engage the sharpening stone lever and repeat the hand turning test. It may be possible that the bearings in the shaft that the sharpening stone are going but that is not common or likely. If it is contact Techsew for help or fix it.

Not sure if Bob over there has these drop down guides but if so ...all I did there is drill out a bit of 10mm (3/8") thick aluminium bar and drilled it out to take the same bolt that holds the roller normally. I have been modifying a lot of these guides to fit up better onto the 441 clones so that they don't need to have the extended lever for the foot lifting and so on. Note that some of the older machines don't have the 2 holes in the back for bolting the drop guide straight on but I can give you the location positions if you want to drill and tap them. The bolts that come with them are 6mm standard threads. Just remembered...I made this pdf file which shows the drilling and tapping instructions - Cowboy CB4500 Drilling and tapping instructions for the drop down guide.pdf

Will do. I am guessing that they would behave way better at staying against the guide but I do tend to like the slanted stitch more myself. Did you get your shims alright yet?

Good targeting with the Reverb store and excelent reviews. I dont know your competition prices but at a glance I think you may be marketing too cheaply. At lest 30% up should be alright I think. I found when I started to do some price rising of recent times that I have actually increased sales. I think as long as your quality is top notch people are quite happy to spend and support you. I cant think of many brand names that are well named because they are so cheap except for ones I would not want to own myself.

If you want to make your belt stitching quicker and easier on a CB 4500 Cowboy machine then check out this video I just made. With the Cowboy standard drop down guide I changed it over to a flat bar guide which ALMOST allows hands free sewing. This is done with a size 27 LR needle in it at the moment and I think with a smaller needle the test would have worked out better still. The video -

Not at present friend but it is a good idea let me see what I can come up with.

Just in case you have missed this oiling point you can see in this video I did at about 5 minutes in a point that should been done on these machines fairly often -

Nice looking work the @TVvoodoo. Are you running a web page yet? You can put the link here as well which may help. Welcome to the pro world

Techsew, Cowboy and a few others come to mind. What country are you in? This post may have something of interest -

What is stopping you using the machine for the top line? Are the handle attachments in the way? Move them down a little if that is the problem. You could shorten the handle part where it stitches on as well if needed.

I bet she loves the ones you made more. Any pics to share?

Good news Rick. Them little things can make a big difference

What....that's that black duck mob is it not??? You should be making her some alpha2 better stuff that does not need repairing now.

Thanks for the feedback @BDAZ Thank you as well @sbrownn

A close up picture showing how parallel your feed dog is as against the back presser foot may help. With pressure on and with the foot not quite touching. My first suspicion is needle size to thread and overall top and bottom tension. Will the next size up needle fix it. If you lower your bobbin tension a 1/4 turn and back off your top tension does it improve? Is your presser foot tension way more than need be? I run as little foot pressure as possible to keep the needle from lifting the work as possible. Is your back foot swivelling back and forth? Sometimes the back foot little tabs at the top don't snug up to the presser bar tight enough. I generally take them feet to the anvil and hammer them in But make sure when you close them in that you dont have the foot angling up at the front when you put it in. Hammer the front tab? back a bit first then look for the parallel between the feed dog and foot. I just did a search and found this video at about 4 mins in shows the sloppy back foot I am talking about - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6jfIaf3aww Other than that I am out of ideas....best of luck.

You are selling leather and mostly to people that would know the leather symbol (without the hole) so for me this one is good.