SheltathaLore

All right, sounds like sharpening it myself is a Big Nope. I'll probably go check out Shoe Systems, and possibly call a local sharpening service to see how they feel about sharpening it (although they mostly do knives, so it may be out of their wheelhouse.) Thanks for the advice, everyone!

It's two inches wide or so. I would rather not die...

That... actually didn't occur to me. I'll look into it. Thanks for the idea!

I've got a Landis 1 in 1 that I picked up off Craigslist; it's in pretty good shape, except that the blade is dull and a bit notched. How on earth do you sharpen one of these blades? I'd rather not replace it; too many sellers only sell to businesses, and replacements aren't cheap.

Oh nice, I really like those flip down workbench casters. Saves me the trouble of moving the pedal mount, for one. As for the table, I'm sure I can rig up *something* to get them to bolt on - I was more interested in the general specs to look for. Honestly though, since I doubt that a table with machine is likely to weigh more than 250 lbs, heavy duty industrial casters would be neat but probably aren't critical. A loaded workbench surely weighs that much or more. Any caster that isn't obviously dinky should surely be rated for at least 60 pounds, right? I do intend for the machines to live on a hard surface, but plans can always change, so I agree that it would be handy to have casters that can cope with carpet.

Aha, the "tubing" is rigid and provides an offset so that the pedal ends up in the right place. I was thinking it involved flexible tubing, which was clearly not going to be helpful.

I understand the problem you're describing, but I just can't visualize your solution. Do you happen to have a picture of how the blocks or tubing would solve it?

My floors aren't super smooth, but locking is a nice feature to have regardless.

For those of you who like to roll your machines around, do you have a favorite brand/style of casters? I'm really tired of not being able to rearrange my shop on my own, so it might be time to slap wheels on everything.

After remaking the dress, I won Best Craftsmanship at a tiny con over the summer, and more excitingly, at a medium-sized con in October. I am immensely proud of myself, and I'm definitely planning to show it off at some bigger cons next year!

Bill Shanor is absolutely wonderful, and I'm honored that I was able to sneak in a class right before he retired. Non-lasted shoes will certainly do the job with much less time investment, but they're really better suited to moccasins and flat boots - so I'm super happy about adding this to my toolkit. :D

I decided to buy a new clone from Gregg. I've been keeping an eye on ebay and craigslist and the forums here for quite a while now, hoping for one of the old Singers, but very few machines surfaced that would actually save me money over buying a new one, and of course I'd always be taking a risk on an ebay machine being completely worn out or getting broken in shipping. I can't wait for it to get here!

Interesting - the stiffness/springiness of bonded nylon has frustrated me a lot when I attempt to sew with it on some machines, so if bonded polyester is a solid alternative, I might have to stock up on some. The bonus is that Serafil has tons of colors, plus a color card that I intend to squirrel away in my swatchbook stash.

They don't have anything in stock, sadly.

Wiz: I specifically want a roller foot for this, but I will keep that model in mind if I find myself in need of a post bed. The original singers are pretty awesome, but unfortunately, it's hard to tell if a random machine on the internet is a boat anchor that was run 80 hours a week for 50 years in a factory - so I'm probably going to stick to the new clones.

Probably kidskin, kangaroo, etc. I have a cylinder bed walking foot I can use for heavier materials.

Looks like my options are, in order of cost: - Singer 51 clone, bottom feed (Artisan 5110, Cobra 5110, etc) - ???? clone, bottom and driven roller feed (Artisan 4618, Highlead 24618, etc) - Pfaff 591 clone, bottom and driven roller feed (Cobra 8110, Cowboy 8810, etc) The 4618 machines are several hundred dollars less expensive, on average, than the 591 clones - which is appealing, but since you generally get what you pay for, I'm wondering if I'm overlooking something. Do any of you have an opinion?

I have these knives and love them to bits and pieces; I switch back and forth pretty freely between push skiving and pull skiving, depending on the angle and positioning. The only problem is that I can't really use any sort of existing jig because they're double-sided and angled (on the other hand, if they *weren't* double-sided, I'd need separate knives for push and pull), and I'm always concerned that I've got the angle wrong and am messing up the knives when I sharpen. Oh well. I put a microbevel on mine to hopefully speed up the sharpening process, but I am the opposite of an expert when it comes to sharpening, so my opinion probably shouldn't count for much.

I would also love more details on your setup! Hard to believe you can run that machine with such a bitty motor, but I guess technology marches on.

I think it's going to depend a lot on both the tannage and the species; I've been told that kidskin is stronger than cow leather, and kangaroo is the strongest thing you can get for a given weight. I'd like to say that the finer-grained leathers tend to be stronger for a given thickness, but I don't know if that's universally true. However, stretch is also a factor - the cost of having a material with high tensile strength might be a tendency to accommodate the extra strain by stretching.

If the red comes out magenta, try adding some yellow to get a true red - knowing how to mix colors with CMYK primaries is super useful in dyeing.

Clearly, you should give the table top a snazzy powder coat job. Don't your machines deserve some bling?

You'll probably get more responses if you post in the sewing machines forum. However, my best guess is feed dog timing issues.

Today's project update came with this bonus: if you missed the kickstarter, you can still preorder for a moderate discount. http://villagevideo.org/store/#!/Make-your-own-boots-Streaming-video-pre-order-now-for-a-discount-ships-July-2018/p/103819639/category=0 http://villagevideo.org/store/#!/Make-your-own-boots-DVD-video-pre-order-for-a-discount-available-July-2018/p/103819826/category=0

I was using some bonded nylon of unknown provenance from Ebay. It didn't come off the spool smoothly (apparently this is a common problem with old bonded nylon), and the erratic tension caused skipped stitches. Bonded nylon seems to be a bit tricky in general on machines that aren't set up for it (I was using my needle feed garment machine with a roller foot). Even if it's good quality and comes off the spool evenly, it's springy enough to be tricky sometimes. That said, if you just want a matching color and aren't using contrast stitching as a design element, regular garment sewing thread works fine. Lisa Sorrell recommends tex 30 bonded nylon, and where it worked on my sample (I used it around the edges of the blue), it looked really nice as a contrasting color; however, if you just want it to blend in, your standard tex 30 spun polyester will do the job just fine. It's not as strong, but inlay stitching usually isn't structural anyway. I'm considering tracking down some Tex 30 Serafil - it's a filament polyester that's less springy than bonded nylon, and seems to be pretty well regarded (and also comes in 200+ colors, unlike lightweight bonded nylon). I've used the upholstery weight and quite liked it. Nobody sells it by the cone in the US, but I've contacted some suppliers, and they're happy to special order it for me - although the minimum is a box of 5 cones, all in one color. If I confirm that it works well, let me know if you'd like to take some of the extra off my hands.