So my wife and I have been perusing the threads for a while, and we have sort of settled around the Juki 1341 as the leading candidate for a medium duty handbag/tote/purse machine. She is going to start working with heavier cottons like denim, canvas/waxed canvas, and a couples layers of 6oz or less leather. The other candidate we are strongly considering is the Cobra Class 26 for a cylinder arm machine.
Probably the main reason the Juki leads is that we live very close to a great Juki dealer and support will be first rate if there's ever a problem. He will set the machine up with the speed reducer etc like my wife would like, deliver it to our home, give instruction, etc. One issue we can't seem to figure out is whether this machine has accessories for it that will allow for smooth feed dogs etc for working with leather, or if its generally not necessary on this class of machine.
One of the few complaints I've ever seen about the Class 20/26, which has a smooth feed system built in, is that if you feed anything other than leather or maybe a canvas through it, it doesn't do as well. I'm sort of worried about having that problem in reverse, with the 1341.
I've seen that other machines, like the Cowboy 4500, which is a heavier class machine, has vendor support for both types of accessories so you can feed practically anything through it as long as you change out the feet/feed dogs. Its unclear to me whether these things exist for the medium duty machines.
My wife also does upholstery work and so we're looking at a 1508 to pair with this machine. The 1508 we are also hoping will handle leather projects that lend themselves to flat table work. So we do have a little flexibility on the setup for each.
One other thought that we had was that we could get the 1508 for flat work and basically set it up with 92 thread, and then perhaps get something heavy like a CB4500/Class 4 and set it up for 138 or 207 thread, so the machines would cover a range of work basically as thick as we'd ever go, but we are also a little worried that the CB4500/Class 4 might be a tad overkill for bagmaking and maybe wouldn't be utilized?
I was hoping someone would chime in who perhaps had experience with one of these machines and the clones and let us know what might be some good thoughts for us to further consider.
