So recently I bought several things from C.S. Osborne and decided to share my experience.
I needed a leather splitter and even though there was little firsthand info on that particular one I decided to get it because of the good name they have and the few videos on youtube where it seems to work great. But the reality is that is a piece of garbage that is waaay overpriced. First of all there are a lot of wobble in the rotating axle. So if you pull the leather down (this way the rotation helps you and the pull is easier) the axle moves and you just can’t get even split, no matter what you try. So you should pull it towards yourself which is quite harder but not impossible.
Second minus is that even though it is 8 inch wide you can hardly pull more than 3 inches wide piece of 3,5 mm leather through it (pulling towards myself, not being helped by the rotation) And my blade is hair popping sharp, I personally polished it.
Third (and probably the one I hate most) is that the parts that touch the leather are not stainless. See the attached picture of vegetable tanned I just splitted, the machine was used yesterday and wasn’t left in damp environment.
Totally unusable piece of .... garbage.
And being on the topic about that “legendary” brand - in the same order I got a round knife and a skiving knife. The round knife was wobbling in the handle so I filled it with superglue just to find you that the whole thing is bend and because of that cutting in a straight line is qiute challenging. Also there was a chip in the blade, but I guess if you can’t sharpen you don’t buy a round knife, right? The skiving knife has really thick edge right behind the blade which catches on the material being cut. Something that is really annoying and not a problem on my no name chineese skiver from ebay.
To summarise - I am totally disappointed by C.S. Osborne and will not buy anything from them again.
