chrisash

If you have a side of leather then you would normally have the leather cut straight along the back, so its safe to assume the opposite to the straight edge is the belly, normally it will have some stretch marks, Unfortunately without seeing the leather no one can say 100%

It must be well over ten years since i last noticed someone smoking a pipe in the UK, I used to enjoy one myself about 40 years ago

If you stay with chrome leather under about 2mm thick your domestic machine may well work ok enabling you to make many items like bags etc, Veg tan unfortunately does need a industrial machine to power through and a walking foot is nice but some use industrial ones without the walking foot for thinner veg tan, Wiz has a good description on the machines to look for on the forum A member of this forum tells of sewing through plywood with a singer 201 so anything is possible I guess, but may not be the best solution

Hi and welcome to the forum Shops https://www.artisanleather.co.uk/leathercraft-starter-kits.html https://www.identityleathercraft.com/index.php/fastening-buckles.html https://buyleatheronline.com/en/12-catalogue-leather-hides Italy but supplies UK http://www.leprevo.co.uk/ https://www.abbeyengland.com/ https://www.jwoodleathers.co.uk/ https://www.leathercraftlibrary.com a free site with lots of how to do books and instructions from Tandy all free to download

I thought you Aussies had your guns taken away by the government

With due respect to your skills, I would ask you to buy a few of the cheap imported items and take them apart, Yes they are mass produced to keep the price down, and also to avoid learning many skills like you have, they use modern production methods where maybe one person sews one part of the product, then next person does the next part and so on, each a expert in their part but maybe poor in any other area. When you have taken it apart you see its actually well made with consistent stitching, glueing etc, the only area they save in is normally the leather maybe using split or working with a lower grade with some tiny normally unseen flaws or tick marks Many people make single items very well but at a huge cost in man hours, where mass production means far better use of manpower time without compromising quality With the exception of Tooling, If you make standard pancake holster at one at a time, If for instance you made 5 the same you could probably make all five in just over twice the time it takes to make one, obviously some guns are so rare its not worth having that number on the shelf, but say for a 1911 model it could pay dividends Some items from all countries are totally crap, but you cannot just right off a hole country by a few poor makers. Made in either the USA, France, UK, Japan, China is not a sign of quality, some products will be poor, from each country will be excellent products

A tension gauge was a blessing to me when i had embroidery machines totaling 18 heads and each head had 12 threads, the operator girls would play with the tensions after nearly every new design and often get completely lost no matter how many times i tried to teach them the basics. With the gauge I could quickly reset them all to a common position and slightly adjust from there as necessary. Quite a large adjustment from light colour thread to dark

Just been watching some youtube video's on laser cleaning using lasers google "Laser Cleaning". the price is high at the moment but bound to come down, for those of you who restore old steel or other objects is something to consider in i guess a couple of years time From my time in the navy with a chipping hammer in my hand and latter a windiy hammer, I would have sold by sole for these machines

Having never brought Veg Tan Belly I was wondering as it obviously has stretch marks, but is there any way to smooth them out a bit to make more usable area's or are they only useful for small items like wallets cut out from the flat pieces

Great work It would be nice to see a video of the whole process from start to finish

For Dog collars the easy and cheapest way is to use hand sewing, you can buy what we call pricking irons from a company https://www.abbeyengland.com/ or https://www.artisanleather.co.uk/leathercraft-starter-kits.html. a dog collar does not take much time hand stitching You can learn a lot about leatherwork on YouTube.co.uk I think its fair to say that most people start with hand sewing ( a basic skill you need in leatherwork anyway) and only move onto machines at a later date, you could also look up on this forum and youtube for the Chinese patcher sewing machine, it a hand drive machine thats built for leather at just over £100 on ebay etc, not perfect but many use them for small things as their first machine

Try Here https://www.steelexpress.co.uk/toolsteel/ also Harry video on making them at

Harry Rogers has a video on youtube about when he started making his own, might be worth a look

Motors off the machine give you far more flexibility for the future if you need to get a new one rather than a built in version

You could always design and fix the new pulley to the old one and just adjust the position of the motor to line up machine and new pulley You would naturally need to keep it balanced

With all the potential companies with cash flow problems at the moment, I guess they may be open for discounting if asked, a little pressure on a new machine may go a long way

There is some good video's on YouTube

Found this large walking foot sewing machine in Ipswitch if anyone interested https://www.gumtree.com/p/arts-crafts/sewing-machine-/1368997996

Stop talking about those crock in the romney mashes Mike, they are a secret weapon against any invaders, Hush Hush

Ask your mother is she still has granny's old washing mangle

Remember in the 1960-70 Armagnac was the poor mans brandy, it was outside the brandy area and sold as cheap liquor, but then some clever marketing person did a wondrous job on it. I used to love it, but unfortunately that was before i new the beauty of single malts, and the skills that went into it

Nigel armitage has a wallet pack that shows how to make a selection of wallets

Thanks Constabulary Is there no way to control it via a electronic pedal? I understand making a foot controller, but no easy way to lock that sort of controller to the black and decker table i have the machine bolted to, and its often moved out of the way Have considered using a domestic 120 watt motor and foot pedal, but prefer not to go that route

I have a 29K without the professional sewing table, looking to fit a table top motor to drive it, but what do you use for a foot controller, are there flexible ones like domestic machines that will operate the servo or do you have to make a mechanical one to use the servo imk. For a normal industrial you naturally have the existing pedals, but for something without them how do you control the servo

YouTube is by far your best friend, a massive number of video's on all models of sewing machines Many machines are clones of other machines so if yours is not shown go to google images and see if you can find a similar machine photo and then Youtube that model. Try Juki models first as they are one of the largest See