why does stitching done with my french irons look worse than my diamond irons?

[dans79]

I started out with round dents, but they are more niche than i originally thought so I ordered a set of diamond and French irons to try out.

The irons arrived Wednesday, and today was the first day i really had a chance to try them out. The diamond irons are 4mm spacing, and the French are 3.85mm

2 layers of 2.5oz glued together.

The thread from top to bottom is :

Vinymo MBT #8
Vinymo MBT #5
Vinymo MBT #1
0.6mm tiger thread
0.8mm tiger thread

French on the left, diamonds on the right

 I stitched ever line using the exact same technique (minus the one mistake), and for some reason the french  lines seem off to me. All the thread except the 0.8mm tiger thread doesn't seem to fill the holes right on the front. On the back side all the french lines look bad.

Am i doing something wrong, do I need use a special technique with french irons?

 

 

Front

 

 

Back

 

The holes before stitching.

[battlemunky]

I think you may be over-criticizing it. Other than the one hiccup in the red, I think they all look pretty close to perfect. Maybe on the back side you could do a cast to get it slanted as well but I'm seeing next to nothing wrong. Maybe another leathercrafter could find a problem if they looked long enough but the rest of the population isn't going to see anything out of place, especially if its on something that isn't flat or has other things to see.

[chuck123wapati]

26 minutes ago, battlemunky said:

I think you may be over-criticizing it. Other than the one hiccup in the red, I think they all look pretty close to perfect. Maybe on the back side you could do a cast to get it slanted as well but I'm seeing next to nothing wrong. Maybe another leathercrafter could find a problem if they looked long enough but the rest of the population isn't going to see anything out of place, especially if its on something that isn't flat or has other things to see.

[MtlBiker]

8 hours ago, dans79 said:

 I stitched ever line using the exact same technique (minus the one mistake), and for some reason the french  lines seem off to me. All the thread except the 0.8mm tiger thread doesn't seem to fill the holes right on the front. On the back side all the french lines look bad.

In what way do those lines seem "off" to you?  I think they look pretty darn good.  (I've just ordered a set of 4mm French (Euripean) style stitching chisels.)  Did you hammer down the stitch lines?  The back stitching looks a little, uh, boring, to me and I agree with @battlemunky that maybe adding a cast to the stitch would make it look better.

 

[chuck123wapati]

on the red you crossed one stitch everything else is perfect . I hate to tell you but you will be about the only person that ever examines every stitch of your work so if you think you need to do better than this to sell then your wasting a lot of time and worry.  Ask your self how many times you looked at the stitching on a product to the point your are doing now.

Get to enjoying the process of making stuff the human way you don't have to be perfect your not a machine. Lets see some projects!!!

[dans79]

2 hours ago, MtlBiker said:

In what way do those lines seem "off" to you?  I think they look pretty darn good.  (I've just ordered a set of 4mm French (Euripean) style stitching chisels.)  Did you hammer down the stitch lines?  The back stitching looks a little, uh, boring, to me and I agree with @battlemunky that maybe adding a cast to the stitch would make it look better.

Take a look at the full resolution photo of the back (right click open in a new window), and you will see that the thread is shifted up on all the french lines, but is centered on the diamond lines. The fronts look the same way to me, just not as extreme.

I was casting, but since I posted the photos, I think i might have had one step wrong, and the diamonds are just doing a better job of covering it up.  I need to glue up some more practice leather, But i will give it another go this afternoon when I work through what i think i was doing wrong. 

I think the thing that makes it hard to learn, is that none of the popular personalities showing how to stich, use the same terminology. 

Edited May 7, 2022 by dans79

[dans79]

35 minutes ago, chuck123wapati said:

Get to enjoying the process of making stuff the human way you don't have to be perfect your not a machine. Lets see some projects!!!

Lol, I generally do the exact opposite for everything. I learn everything I possibly can before I start doing something. My wifes says it's an annoying perfectionist trait.

[MtlBiker]

39 minutes ago, dans79 said:

Take a look at the full resolution photo of the back (right click open in a new window), and you will see that the thread is shifted up on all the french lines, but is centered on the diamond lines. The fronts look the same way to me, just not as extreme
I was casting, but since I posted the photos, I think i might have had one step wrong, and the diamonds are just doing a better job of covering it up.  I need to glue up some more practice leather, But i will give it another go this afternoon when I work through what i think i was doing wrong.
I think the thing that makes it hard to learn, is that none of the popular personalities showing how to stich, use the same terminology. 

Interesting.  I wonder if that's technique.  I have yet to try such stitching chisels and I'm impatiently waiting for my order of Sinabroks 4mm European style chisels.  I'm hoping they will help me elevate my stitching skills.  When I get mine, I'm going to do stitching tests using Ritza Tiger .6, .8 and 1.0 threads.  I suspect the 4mm chisels will be too closely spaced for the 1.0mm thread to look good.  I like how you've done your comparison test.

 

[mike02130]

 

4 hours ago, dans79 said:

Take a look at the full resolution photo of the back (right click open in a new window), and you will see that the thread is shifted up on all the french lines, but is centered on the diamond lines. The fronts look the same way to me, just not as extreme.

When you stitch, are you pulling one side up and away from you while pulling the other side down and towards yourself to tighten?  Looking at the back side, it looks like your stitches aren't seated properly.

[dans79]

7 minutes ago, mike02130 said:

When you stitch, are you pulling one side up and away from you while pulling the other side down and towards yourself to tighten?

Yea I'm doing that, i picked that part up from the Leodis Leather video on saddle stitching.

I'm working on some practice pieces right now, and i think I have my issue corrected. However the French irons definitely seem more sensitive than the diamonds to the angle and amount of force you use when tensioning the thread.