JeremyG

Hi everybody. I make a lot of wallets and I recently got a new set of pricking irons. In the past, I've used the diamond stitching chisels from Weaver leather supply, and they were okay. I switched to the Sinabroks 3.38 mm pricking irons because I wanted something a little more refined. I've really enjoyed using them so far but I've come across a problem. If I'm stitching down a row of pockets like in a vertical long wallet, I can't seem to figure out a good placement for the holes. If I put one tooth on the bottom edge of one pocket and another tooth on the top edge of the next pocket, there isn't enough clearance because of the slant of the teeth, so there's only a tiny bit of leather there to hold onto the thread. If I were to stitch that up, it usually rips the edge of the leather. On the other hand, I can't put a hole between the two pockets because then there will be thread going between them and they won't meet up edge to edge flush and clean. Is 3.38 mm just too small? I'm pretty certain I've seen people stitch up wallets with that size before, even finer sizes. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

So I've been getting the hang of card holders and wallets. I'm trying to move up to long wallets with zippers and multiple rows of card pockets and I'm running into some trouble. What I normally do is attach my t pockets onto a larger piece of leather that will in itself become a pocket as well. So when I make my patterns, I give the edges of my t pockets an extra 1/8" on either side. Then, after I've sewn on each pocket, I can trim off the excess and then finish the edges. That's the idea, anyway. The issue is the bulk. Even when I skive as much as possible in the appropriate areas, I can just barely get the pockets to sit down on the main piece of leather by the time I get to the third or fourth one. This this leads to poor glue adhesion along the edges because the pockets are hardly even touching the base, which then also leads to sloppy stitch lines, and therefor uneven stitches. I've included some pictures to try and make what I'm talking about more clear. What bothers me is I see folks on youtube go through this process with no bulk issues what so ever. Look at this video for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UEauYrGzAE&t=346s Skip to 4:40. This guy doesn't even give himself any extra trim allowance, and he even pre-punches every piece of leather so they have to line up PERFECTLY. And he just goes along and slaps them right on with no alignment issues, no trimming, no bulk, nothing. Does he maybe make each pocket slightly wider than the last so they all just line up? Do any of you do that? Seems like that would be really hard to get right. Any advice on this topic would be much appreciated. Thank you. This link will take you to the pictures of what I'm talking about. I had to use a link because the file sizes were too big to upload them directly. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z3bio0Yub_EJYTLHcxcJELhUux8t0nYlbgrhRQqTwPQ/edit?usp=sharing

All good suggestions. Thanks everyone

So I use Barge cement to glue up my leather pieces. The glue works great, the problem is when I then go to finish the edge, you can always see the little lines of glue rather than just a perfectly smooth edge. Usually what I do is glue up the pieces, then trim to size, sand the edge, then burnish with tokonole using a wooden edge slick. No matter how much i sand you can always see the lines. I see other people's work with utterly glass-like edges where they obviously were glued together. Is it because of the type of glue I'm using? Any advice would be appreciated.