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Hey fellow hide tamers. I've been making do for a few years now with an older Consew 255B. Nope, no reverse so I'm looking to replace it with a cylinder arm. I've found a Pfaff 335 that has a good maintenance record. Guy says he sews up to 8oz with it. The best I can tell the lift is 7mm on the 335 so that seems to be about the upper limit there. I'm hoping I'll be able to get him drop some from the 1500 he's asking (I hope so, its a 4 hour drive one way) and that seems reasonable for others I've seen listed. I do a lot of bags, belts, holster, harnesses, collars. I use a lot of Tony See's patterns and will stitch them on the machine when I'm in need of speed. Given that my holsters are usually 9 0z, I imagine I'm still gonna be doing a lot of hand stitching. All the rest will certainly be within the limits of the lift. My primary goal is to increase my output of bags, guitar straps, belts collars and the like. This as my wife retired a couple of months ago and we'll be setting her up to go to fairs and festivals next year. Need some inventory rather than just the steady individual commissions. My questions are, maximum needle and thread size? Looking at specs I couldn't really decipher what the upper and lower stitch lengths are, so what am I looking at there? Known issues from others that have had or do have and are leather folks? Finally aside from the fact that I took up this art about a decade ago, does looking at this as an option fully land me into the crazy column? I'm also looking at a vintage Singer 29K-71. To me it seems it would be limited in how I can use it to increase production. Thoughts on comparing that apple and orange? Thanks, Leo

Hi , I was looking at buying a cylinder arm machine for edge binding and bag closing . Just wanted to understand the benefits of a synchronised binder vs a non synchronised swing away binder . Will the non synchronised version do just as good job ? My preference would be to have one machine such as a Seiko lcw 8 bl that I can use to close bags which also has a binder attachment for finishing the seams . Or is it worth having a dedicated synchronised binder such as a pfaff 335 , thanks for you help

Hi folks, I've started using a couple of machines that I've had for a while and was wondering what type of oil and grease you would use for it. My fabric industrial machines came with a few litres of clear machine oil (no label) which I use for them but I'm not sure if they could be used for these machines. I have a Pfaff 335-17B (Cylinder arm for Light-Medium weight material) and a generic 801 Skive machine (bottom feed, no brand name). The 801 Skive has a grease catchment in the top left corner and I don't think every oiling port is visible or I haven't noticed them, the manual that came with it was in Chinese and I downloaded an English version but it wasn't much help (diagrams were too small). With the Pfaff 335-17B I've found the oiling ports and painted a red ring around them. The other question I had would be when I've oiled each port do I run the machine with some scrap leather to clean off the excess oil or do I just wipe it off? Cheers, Jim

I'm really confused with needle and thread sizing for this machine (the whole system really) so if anyone could explain or point me in the right direction regarding a few questions I have that would be greatly appreciated. I've found a great post on here from 2015 which is awesome and I've found an array of needles at https://www.college-sewing.co.uk/freight-charges-explained/ 1/ Can I use round point needles for this machine? The needle type is 134-35 LR. Does 135 mean it's a thicker needle? 2/ The thread type is synthetic 40/3 according to the manual of a newer model but I've only seen the thread types in Australia as M20/M25/M8 with no other details. I bought a cotton-poly M20 but it's much too thick for the one needle that came with the machine (Organ 20 on the shank) but I don't know what the equivalent of 40/3 is (which I understand is the twist and cord number) and can I use cotton-poly? 3/ I'd love an Australian supplier of both needles and thread! The M type thread I can get from Birdsall (Syd) and Qld Wholesale Canvas (QLD), I got my thread from QWC.