Why Ritza Thread?

[SUP]

@DieselTech got it! thank you, especially for the photograph. That really helps.

[tsunkasapa]

I tried that pierced thread thing once, about 25 years ago. Never did it again. I have found it to be totally unnecessary. YMMV

[SUP]

21 minutes ago, tsunkasapa said:

I have found it to be totally unnecessary

Not for me.  If I don't pierce the thread, it comes off the needle as the thread gets shorter, which is a pain. 

@DieselTech I tried this S-method and it works! Not had the thread tangle as yet this morning. 

[DieselTech]

1 hour ago, SUP said:

Not for me.  If I don't pierce the thread, it comes off the needle as the thread gets shorter, which is a pain. 

@DieselTech I tried this S-method and it works! Not had the thread tangle as yet this morning. 

Well I'm glad it's working out for you. I was hoping you could understand my jibberish instructions. 

 

That's also why I figured, i best include a picture of it. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. 

[sparctek]

22 hours ago, SUP said:

@sparctek, rather like I do with my laced bags, but that is much easier, since the lace is much wider. At this point, I am making items in which the beauty is in the pattern and leather itself and I keep the stitching discreet and in the background. Perfect time to practice until I get it right. Thank you for the detailed guidance.

Hopefully it helped some. I am still learning, and I still spend time practicing my stitching. I don't pierce the leather all the way through with pricking irons.So, I have to keep practicing with the diamond awl to make those neat straight lines on the back side. Learning to use the French stitching clam wast the hardest thing I've learned in leather work so far. LOL

[Mablung]

30 minutes ago, sparctek said:

Hopefully it helped some. I am still learning, and I still spend time practicing my stitching. I don't pierce the leather all the way through with pricking irons.So, I have to keep practicing with the diamond awl to make those neat straight lines on the back side. Learning to use the French stitching clam wast the hardest thing I've learned in leather work so far. LOL

Related to that, do pricking irons generally make narrower holes than stitching chisels? I have some of the regular Craftool black-coated stitching chisels, and the holes end up fairly fat in veg tan leather. I have some of the Craftool Pro ones with thinner tines but in too-narrow a stitch length for most of my stuff. Been thinking about getting pricking irons in order to make less obtrusive holes for firmer stitching. 

[SUP]

@Mablung, yes they do. They make fine, angled pricks on the leather. The final stitches look so beautiful,  but a lot of extra work, pricking each stitching hole before placing a stitch. I am lazy though. I try to make items where the stitching is not on display, use thread of exactly the same color as the leather and do simple straight stitching - no angles at all. Took a bit of practice to get that but it works for me. 

French pricking irons take too much work, . Imagine a backpack done that way! or something bigger!

I do practice  saddle stitching though, in case I decide to use its beauty. But I doubt I will use French pricking irons. No patience.

@sparctek, the French clam is a bit awkward to use, since it has to be positioned with ones own knees. I have an English style one, with a seat. One of the first things I bought. It's great. But people used to the French one swear by it. So to each his own, I suppose. What made you decide to get a French stitching clam?

[NatesLeatherGds]

20 hours ago, DieselTech said:

This is what the "S" looks like on your needle. Then from there you just slide your thread over the eye of the needle. From the pointed end.

 

Yes to the 'S'

[DieselTech]

Yeah I just decided I'm going to order a set of KS Blade v2 diamond pricking irons. Expensive, but I hear good things about them. The diamond is slimmer on them. 

[Mablung]

11 hours ago, DieselTech said:

Yeah I just decided I'm going to order a set of KS Blade v2 diamond pricking irons. Expensive, but I hear good things about them. The diamond is slimmer on them. 

Just looked those up, and the tines look very similar to those on the Craftool Pro stitching chisels.  The holes in the example picture look awfully nice.  I might experiment doing more with my chisels and using them like pricking irons.

Speaking of which, I did a knife sheath last night with a very thick welt at the top that I had to skive to a taper.  The only way to push through from the starter holes I had started in one side of the sheath was to use my awl, as my chisels would never get all the way through.  I polished my awl well and used it to stitch the whole sheath, for good measure.  Holy crap does the backside stitching ever look terrible--maintaining a proper angle with the awl is hard!

[SUP]

3 minutes ago, Mablung said:

Holy crap does the backside stitching ever look terrible--maintaining a proper angle with the awl is hard

LOL. Exactly. it requires a bit of practice to get the angle absolutely 90 degrees to the leather for each stitch. 

One way to avoid this, is to punch holes on both sides. For this you will need 2 sets of chisels - one angled in the opposite direction from the other.  Maintain the proper distance by starting with one point over the edge on the same edge on both sides. I'm not sure if I am explaining clearly. 

Incidentally, 

15 hours ago, SUP said:

I do practice  saddle stitching though

when I said this earlier, I meant angled stitching. Else it makes no sense.

[Mablung]

11 minutes ago, SUP said:

LOL. Exactly. it requires a bit of practice to get the angle absolutely 90 degrees to the leather for each stitch. 

One way to avoid this, is to punch holes on both sides. For this you will need 2 sets of chisels - one angled in the opposite direction from the other.  Maintain the proper distance by starting with one point over the edge on the same edge on both sides. I'm not sure if I am explaining clearly.

That does make sense.  I thought about doing that but had not gotten my welt properly proportioned, so I knew I would need to do a fair amount of trimming after I stitched everything together.  I also had to eyeball my chisel placement when doing the initial holes, so I knew it just wouldn't line up properly.  I'm not very good at spatial reasoning and my depth perception isn't very good (partly due to an ocular issue with one of my eyes), so I took my chances with the awl--and while it looks bad, it was probably easier to do it that way, lol.

[sparctek]

17 hours ago, Mablung said:

Related to that, do pricking irons generally make narrower holes than stitching chisels? I have some of the regular Craftool black-coated stitching chisels, and the holes end up fairly fat in veg tan leather. I have some of the Craftool Pro ones with thinner tines but in too-narrow a stitch length for most of my stuff. Been thinking about getting pricking irons in order to make less obtrusive holes for firmer stitching. 

Stitching chisels are meant to be punched all the way through the leather you are sewing and do leave a substantial hole in the leather. they are good for heavier leather and larger items. If you are making wallets or smaller items those may not be a good fit.

As for pricking irons, the traditional ones such as made by Blanchard are not intended to punch all the way through the leather. They are intended to mark or "prick" the leather to guide your awl. The teeth are usually set at an angle of ~45 degrees, give or take a couple. If done correctly the resulting stitching is very neat with a pleasing angle to the stitch.

Having said that, there are manufacturers such as Kevin Lee, Amy Roake and others making "modern" pricking irons that you can punch all the way through the leather, up to a certain thickness. Using these modern irons removes the need to use the awl on one stitch at a time.  With these, as long as you are careful to keep the iron straight up and down when punching through, you will have neat, straight stitching lines on the back.

I'm likely in the minority here, but I still like to do the traditional, one hole at a time with the stitching awl method. Granted I am a hobbyist. I'm sure if i was doing this for a living I would have to change that.

[SUP]

@sparctek I thought all pricking irons are like the traditional ones. If the ones by Kevin Lee and Amy Roake and other allow punching through the leather, that is one good reason to buy their instruments. I do not use leather thicker than 5-6 oz anyway so they should work for me. Usually I avoid expensive tools - seem to do perfectly well with more reasonably priced ones. I am a hobbyist too and I guess if I was doing this professionally, the tools would matter more.

When you say 'and others', who else, do you know?

54 minutes ago, sparctek said:

such as Kevin Lee, Amy Roake and others making "modern" pricking irons

@Mablung I learnt how to use the edge of the leather for punching holes on both sides from one of the patterns I bought online. Don't remember where. If I have to do it, I use an iron with round tines since I do not have opposite facing angled irons.

[tsunkasapa]

2 hours ago, Mablung said:

Holy crap does the backside stitching ever look terrible--maintaining a proper angle with the awl is hard!

Yes, that is important, but the geometry of your awl will affect that as well. If one (or more) of the 4 planes on your is off from the rest it will cause your awl to not want to travel straight through. I hope I explained that clearly, I don't do diagrams on a computer.

Edited February 22 by tsunkasapa
typo

[Gosut]

On 2/21/2024 at 11:40 AM, tsunkasapa said:

I tried that pierced thread thing once, about 25 years ago. Never did it again. I have found it to be totally unnecessary. YMMV

I did on my first two projects, one of them stitching together a belt keeper. Since then, I place the needles a little less than a quarter of the way from the ends of the thread and allow it to slip through as needed as I stitch. It makes a lot of thread to pull through the hole, but i don't have to contend with pulling a long length of thread at the start of the stitching.

That said, for a small project without an unwieldy amount of thread, I'd probably lock down the thread.

Edited February 22 by Gosut
Corrected misspelled word.

[Gosut]

17 hours ago, SUP said:

French pricking irons take too much work, . Imagine a backpack done that way! or something bigger!

As luck would have it, that's what I'm considering now. Toying with the notion of making a thicker work belt and/or reversible belt, and both will require stitching. Daunting to say the least.

[SUP]

@Gosut makes sense for a belt though. A narrow strip of leather, the stitching will be visible, so might as well make it beautiful. And think of how smug you will feel once it is done!  Smug, not just satisfied. LOL I would, with all the stitching work involved.

[DJole]

On 2/20/2024 at 7:39 PM, SUP said:

But really! Such an expensive thread and then needing to go through all this trouble - thread the needle in a particular way, sew in a particular way, lay the thread in  a particular way. Unless they have a color that I cannot get from any other brand, it's just not worth the trouble at this point, at least to me. 

I rarely, if ever, knot the thread onto my needles. I find it more bother than it's worth, personally, if I need to take out some stitches. I also haven't bothered to lay the thread in a particular way. I guess I'm not that much of a perfectionist!
I just recently bought some Vinymo thread to work with (round polyester thread from Japan)-- good colors and a variety of thicknesses. I've been pleased with it so far, although I do find it necessary to lightly wax it before using it. 
I have a variety of thread to work with-- Ritza flat braid, Vinymo round, waxed Irish linen in a variety of colors, a spool of Since linen thread, chunky waxed Tandy thread (which came in only 3 colors, and which I rarely use now,)and a sampler box from Maine Thread. Different projects use different thread types, after all!

[DieselTech]

This is what I think is funny. These are all budget diamond stitching chisels. All 4mm spacing or so they say on them. All saddle stitched with a right hand cast over & .55mm poly-braid thread. 

Look at how they all appear. The tandy 4mm stitching chisels have a huge spacing difference compared to the other 2 brands. 

[SUP]

28 minutes ago, DieselTech said:

The tandy 4mm stitching chisels have a huge spacing difference compared to the other 2 brands. 

Did you measure to check which is the most accurate?

I made a bag from Dieselpunk recently where he suggested that we use a 6mm stitching chisel set, sine he had set the stitching holes accordingly.  Tried mine from Amazon -  the distances were slightly off. I could only use the 2 tine one but at least it cut the punching time in half. He uses Sinebrok. No idea which is more accurate and not buying expensive chisels.

Edited February 22 by SUP

[Danne]

15 hours ago, DieselTech said:

Yeah I just decided I'm going to order a set of KS Blade v2 diamond pricking irons. Expensive, but I hear good things about them. The diamond is slimmer on them. 

I don't think you will be disappointed, I have the V1 and they are awesome. The holes from Kevinlee premium is as good as Ksblade, but the advantage of Ksblade is their ergonomy, and also very easy to align against a scribed line, since the prongs are slightly rounded at the end.

Edit: I saw you wrote diamond, I have the French irons, but from what I've seen on Instagram their diamond stitching irons are also awesome.

Edited February 22 by Danne

[DieselTech]

10 minutes ago, SUP said:

Did you measure to check which is the most accurate?

I made a bag from Dieselpunk recently where he suggested that we use a 6mm stitching chisel set, sine he had set the stitching holes accordingly.  Tried mine from Amazon c- the distances were slightly off. I could only use the 2 tine one but at least it cut the punching time in half. He used Sinebrok. No idea which is more accurate and not buying expensive chisels.

No I never put my calipers on the tandy chisels to measure them. They look closer to 6mm to me than 4mm. I might do that today when I get in the leather room. 

[DieselTech]

6 minutes ago, Danne said:

I don't think you will be disappointed, I have the V1 and they are awesome. The holes from Kevinlee premium is as good as Ksblade, but the advantage of Ksblade is their ergonomy, and also very easy to align against a scribed line, since the prongs are slightly rounded at the end.

Edit: I saw you wrote diamond, I have the French irons, but from what I've seen on Instagram their diamond stitching irons are also awesome.

Yeah everybody I've talked to, says they love their KSBlade chisels & pricking irons. Stupid priced thou for a full set. Lmao what ain't expensive anymore. Even McDonald's!

Everybody I've spoke to, thinks the KSBlade chisels really refined their stitch work. 

[sparctek]

3 hours ago, SUP said:

@sparctek I thought all pricking irons are like the traditional ones. If the ones by Kevin Lee and Amy Roake and other allow punching through the leather, that is one good reason to buy their instruments. I do not use leather thicker than 5-6 oz anyway so they should work for me. Usually I avoid expensive tools - seem to do perfectly well with more reasonably priced ones. I am a hobbyist too and I guess if I was doing this professionally, the tools would matter more.

When you say 'and others', who else, do you know?

@Mablung I learnt how to use the edge of the leather for punching holes on both sides from one of the patterns I bought online. Don't remember where. If I have to do it, I use an iron with round tines since I do not have opposite facing angled irons.

Rocky Mountain has some: https://www.rmleathersupply.com/products/rocky-mountain-premium-pricking-irons?variant=33226012360813

But, so do other supplier like Maker's Leather Supply, etc. I think for the most part they come from the same manufacturer overseas. The key is the prongs are longer and narrower than the traditional ones. That let's you punch all the way through without making a huge hole in the front. I looked at the KSBlade ones when I was looking to buy mine, but the teeth on those seem to be wider.