RockyAussie

Hey @Wizcrafts, You did not stitch that 1" part that close to the edge when you sewed it did you? It was sanded back after stitching somewhat was it not? I hate to think of the consequences of trying to go that close to the edge on anything near that thick, especially for a beginner.

They come with a plastic cap to go over the brush which keeps it good for about 3 days or more generally. The plastic cap splits after awhile so I just wrap some tape around it to keep it more airtight. I generally keep a few spare brushes all the same and keep them soaking in some thinners between uses. The army type cans come in handy for that - Also a bottle with a bolt attached into its lid works well for the spike swapping

Yeah it does a bit. When I see that I need something better and I work out a solution I figga a few other could use the same thing also so I just share it around. That's alright mate. Friend of mine awhile back ran his Harley into the side of a bus. His missus said "How did you do that?" he replied he didn't see it. Quick as a wit she holds one hand in front of her eyes and moves her other arm around and said "BUS... WHAT BUS" Twas a bit hard not to laugh at him lying down in that hospital bed all wrapped up an all.

Clear contact cement. Try searching Duall contact adhesive. Depends which part of the world you are maybe. What you don't see much here is the strands that get around when you load up the swiper. A Kabi glue gun can make it easier.

Mostly this tells me you need a medium small cylinder arm machine. This video I made recently should be considered I think. A look at my Wild Harry web site shows a wide range of products we make and most of them can be made with the machine in this video. The machine is a clone of a Juki dsc 246. There are quite a few other brand copies of this machine including the Techsew 2600. Here is the video link - Note that the open end table is important in my opinion.

Gotta get your eyes checked mate. Even his fold up table has extended legs and that beautiful machine already has a good adjustable light. Only thing missing as yet I can see is a drop down guide in place. Double ditto on that. @bladegrinder on the back of the head you may see 2 screw holes already waiting for a drop guide as this pic below shows. I just finished modding a heap of these guides up for them so they can be a straight bolt on.

Another idea to consider is using a diode laser. You can easily change the size in the software to whatever you want by percentage. For cut out patterns on card I use mine to cut out the pattern straight with the laser. No more hand cutting for me to go wobbly on. If I want a faint line to do a stitch line or carve line pattern you just set the power as light as you want. With the program I use I can get it to do cutting lines and light mark lines all at the same time by using different colours in the drawing. Where this gets used a lot is when I cut out our product boxes where the cutting lines are black (full power) and the fold lines are green which are about 20% of full power. The colour lines are able to be adjusted to whatever percent of full power you want. Other advantages are I use it to cut fabric at times, cut thin leather or emboss patterns, cut out acrylic stamps for embossing leather and a few other things as well. The A3 Elksmaker pro I started with cost around $300 but I rebuilt it to where It can now do poster size pieces and has fume extraction and improved cooling so that I can run it for hours at a time. Those extras cost about another $500 plus my time to do it.

@Ben00 you said above to quote "You also said you hand skive the outside edges of the norbuck and croc skin specifically to avoid valleys between the leather". This had me lost and searching for where you may have gotten this idea. I believe it may be a misunderstanding from what I wrote in the watch band tutorial as below. "This one below shows the skiving done on the straps with the Fortuna and a little hand skiving to achieve no thickness on the ends. This is done to minimise getting any holes in the valleys." What I was meaning to convey there was that the skiving machine can not skive the crocodile down to zero at the edge without getting some chopping out where the valleys are between the scales. The only part done by hand with the skiving was the ends with a boot makers knife. Generally I don't go any thinner than around 1.2mm combined as mentioned in the watchband tutorial example. The thinner your edges are the quicker and easier the edging is to do. The dress belts I do will often be around 2mm at the edge and the hornback croc ones are around 4mm at the edge. The dress belt ones you can see some of the making of in this following video and note that the high profile on them is achieved by putting a filler strip between the layers - It appears that you are getting some burn marks on the painted areas and that is not a normal thing. Is the paint you are using behaving like the paint being ironed in this video? The paint should flow around like putty when it goes correctly and allow the reshaping and filling of holes fairly easily. In this video the heat is too high in my opinion. Sometimes if you go higher up above the tip can help as well if the tip is over hot. The soldering irons I use are 60 watt and I get ones with the bigger tips to enable me to shape them as I do. I mentioned that I use a light dimmer switch to control the temperature, I do this by putting the dimmer switch and a power plug with light into a box as shown below. The hotter the iron, the brighter the light shows which helps a little. I mark an ideal position onto control part when I have found a good average position. The burn marks you have should be able to be sanded off and scothbrited. It will take some time to get competent with it.

No tall post machine used in there somewhere. I just started using one recently and have found it to be an excellent addition for totes and stuff. Can cut out a fair bit of time with the right designs. I should be doing some videos on it sometime soon.

The soldering iron is my preference as it allows me to iron the paint around into the hollows and I believe it makes for a tougher finish at the end. It is possible to just sand and scothbrite between layers but I find that more time consuming as it can mean more layers need to be added to fill any hollows. The wax is only used at the end to make the finish less likely to stick to itself and give further protection and shine to the job. An example if it helps is like when you paint a door and the trim and then let it close together too soon. It gets stuck and wants to pull the paint apart when you open the door. Some wax finish helps to stop it.

Looks good Mike and good to see you posting again. What sewing machines are used may I ask?

It will work fine but I may be tempted to put a fence on both sides of the strap to keep it firmly in place. Many of my punches I polish the edge but for ones in the drill press I just leave them sanded as it sort of helps like a sawing effect which is a better finish on the back side. A side benefit of doing the holes this way is that you can leave the punch spin long enough in place to give a nice burnish look to the hole at the same time. Works real well with webbing holes as well.

I know where your at on this and with a 2mm punch on the thicker stuff you are pushing it big time. The best I can offer is doing it by hand is always going to give you a lot of trouble getting it going in straight every time. Soon as you don't your punch will fold in. There are a couple of methods I use that may help, 1. put the punch into a battery drill and spin it as you push in slow. This allows the leather to heat a little and will jam up less. Still wax the punch occasionally. 2. Even better get a small drill press and do the same thing but the drill press will keep you going in straighter and also allow you to set up guides to move your holes along at a perfect distance. With this set up shown below I put in a peg that I use to put in each hole as I move along the distance I set. This set up at the moment is for going down the edge of stubby coolers but the idea will work for what ever width you want depending on where you position the peg in the first place. Last thing....it is easier if you have a clicker press even if it is just a 4 or 5 ton hand model. You just get the knives made up and a jig to hold the knife where you want.

Sounds to me like a very good move and thank you thank you and thank you. If I hit that green bar at the top will I get to see all that political crap again and then not be able to turn it back off? People outside of the USA come here regular and don't generally come to a leather working forum to see all of that stuff. The forum was great and I think will be so again if the disrespectful commenting can be kept away somewhere else. I personally have been asked by some to step in and say something and as I believe in people having the right to their opinions so I have not. This has led to them leaving unfortunately. I have a pretty thick skin myself so it does not bother me and I have advised them they should only be upset if they think that persons opinion matters. I do moderate on a couple of other forums over here in OZ and will add that I don't for a second loose any sleep on kicking out members that are not respectful and are not contributing in what those forums are set up for. CONGRATULATIONS Johanna, Wiz, Northmount and all else involved that work at keeping this forum going.

Is this a balls up ?

Thanks for that feedback @TomE.What you see in this video is along the line of how I have done edge painting for many years now ....but ...This video was done in 2014 and the paint used then they do not stock now. There is a column shown that says Shiny and the stock shows 0. That is the range that I use. I made the mistake of buying in a fairly large order from them not realising that the P on the end of the product number makes it a pretty much un ironable paint. They may be able to still order it in but I think they have to get like 20 litres at a time per colour. I get through my contacts 20 litres of the clear AR 6350 made up to which I mix in pigments (10%+ -) that I have bought from a tanning supply place over here. This way I can easily mix any colour to suit my job. May sound excessive to many but when you mostly do expensive crocodile products it keeps you ahead of the competition.

Depending on where in the world you are...Campbell Randall had it once but I think you would have to order 20 litres of it at a time if you are in the USA. In Australia here I get Ares AR 6350 which is just Fenice 6350 rebranded. It is thermo mouldable. The other Fenice range that ends in P or plus I think is more of a poly urethane type compound which is not very thermomouldable but is a very durable edge. It seems to have to be sanded more than ironed and for me too slow to use in comparison. Many have gone to using the Giardini range these days and a lot seem to like it but it needs sanding as well. I found too many problems such as shelf life and edge splitting problems with it myself but they may have improved since those trials. For black I use OMAC semi matt black 9OM 357556 which I think may be a rebranded Kenda Farben product. Most of this stuff can be found under shoe finishing products. I hope this helps some.

Just PM me here with your address details and I will get back with the costs and details.

This link should take you to my youtube channel I think - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI6HpFVNnJrEDxdAT8gma7Q This one I used there is a nubuck camel hide but a nubuck goat or roo would be fine as well. (Nubuck is just a finer sanded swede) This is just a fabric called Jacquard we import from Tabru in Italy but any thin tight weave fabric will do. (umbrella?) That of course would depend on how will you can hand skive otherwise but you can profile a thin top leather by putting in a middle filler 3to 4mm from the edges and get a good looking result. (Foam or felt is common) I am not familiar with Latigo but any leather except beady ray I can skive or split with the machines I have. I have split ostrich and croc leather down to .3mm for watch faces in the past. It is pretty much a mixture of paraffin and bees wax but if you dont have a finishing machine to polish it in with you may be able to use a shoe brush with a clear renovating polish. Apply the polish and let it dry in for awhile then polish off with the brush and then a soft cloth. Partly answered above but DO NOT BURNISH at all at any stage when applying edge paints. If you make too smooth beforehand it may peel up and if you do it in between then it will stick to the burnishing tool and make a mess. Lastly...have a look in my profile section in the about me column and you will find a lot of projects I have done and how. Follow me here if you want to keep updated.

So very very true.

Partly you may be getting close. The rounding off of the edges looks about right. When I do this sort of job I put on 2 or 3 coats first then iron it in with a temperature controlled soldering iron which flattens out all the bumps and smooth the edges down nice. I then give it a couple of more coats being careful not to get over the edges. You can do it with just sanding steps between a few coats but I prefer the heated iron method myself. These 3 things I use mostly - A sanding block, Grey scotchbright, and the soldering iron which is controlled by a light dimmer switch. This link I did awhile back should help -

I ran into a similar problem on my 331 pfaff awhile back. I ground too much off the right side of the foot and it broke so I made one up using a bit of flat metal off some machine that felt like it had a bit better than mild steel carbon to it. The piece was just a tad thicker than the foot and wide enough to do the job. This was all done using a drill for the slot hole end, a thin disc in an angle grinder, a Dremel thin cutting disc and a bit off polishing on a rag wheel with some Tripoly polishing compound. The Pfaff foot on the right has the broken foot at the back Cutting out the straight part here was the hardest part to do because you have to be careful not to go over deep. You can see here where I have made the right side thin to get my guide up closer to the needle than the standard foot allowed Here you can see it mounted on my machine. This allows me to stitch with the guide within 2.5mm from the edge. Time taken just over 2 hours but I have done a few before this one as well at other times. (Wear safety glasses)

Hey @Wizcrafts, No I didn't forget. They have 2 thicknesses, one is .2mm and the other they get water jet cut over here and is .55mm. Don't ask me what that is in thou or ounces Just out of interest I looked it up and a Bees dick is .25mm if that helps They sell them as a set for $10 over here so postage would make it near to double I guess. Same address?

Thanks for sharing @Hypomelanistic I will have a look into it.

I am curious how you do the process black oxide? That is some very nice looking work on the servo motor attachment