More On Hand Stitching..and clamps

[thecapgunkid]

I saw the post reply by Lippy in thehand stitching thread about the series of articles I once wrote onhand stitching, and thankfully have met several crafts folks viae-mail because of them once he posted them.

I haven't a clue about how to movethose articles onto the website, but for some reason still have theirdrafts and pics on my hard drive. The photopoint reference is longgone and my e-mail has changed.

Like most writers, I can't stand thethough of re-reading my past work, and have not looked either at anyof my published articles or novels. I believe the hand stitchingarticles were printed by both the Gunfighter website and The CowboyChronicle, and, if I can get some help, I suppose I can suck it up,re-read the stuff ( yuccchhhh) and get it posted.

In the meantime, several folks haveasked me some questions, so I thought I'd post this to try to help

How to make a hand stitching awl

How to make a stitching clamp

How to make stitches tighter

How to make a hand stitching awl

My master made his awl out of thesteel shank of an umbrella shaft about five inches long where onefull inch was sunk into the handle. In between berating me because Iwas an impatient cuss in my youth, he gave me a piece with which towork and I still use it today.

You can use one of the commercialproducts from retailers. If it has one of those thick shanks with asuddenly rounded tip then you will be using the sharpening stonequite extensively. You might wanna rub on the sides of your stonerather than on the face, because this action will cut a groove intothe stone. Accept only awl blades with a diamond shaped crosssection.

Dremels are OK to grind with, if youare not one of those butchers who gouges and hacks with thetool...smooth, repeated and patiently worked grinding is the order ofthe day. Make sure the rotation of the wheel goes from handle out totip so you don't get an eyeful of your work when it binds on thesanding wheel.

The trick is to taper and polish it sothat there is a finely graded taper from awl handle to point that iseven and steadily degrades in thickness rather than does so all atonce.. Again, it will also have a diamond shaped cross section,where top to bottom of the cross section is longer than side to side. The tip should be so fine that you get nervous about it when not inuse and stick it into cork and such. This has two purposes; first,the gradual taper behaves like a depth gauge to regulate the size ofthe hole you are stabbing. Second, by starting very fine andgraduating it allows you to stab without forcing or fighting to makethe hole. When braced on the opposite side of the leather by yourindex finger and thumb ( spaced so that you don't stab yourself) awell tapered and polished awl slides in and out with pleasing andsurprising ease.

I had my original awl handles turned ona lathe., and used this formula. The distance between the secondknuckle on my ring finger and the second knuckle on my index fingerplus one half inch amounted to the body of the awl handle. At thebutt end, just beyond that distance, the handle narrows to a throatwhich is right in front of the butt where that cute little buttontip sits at the end.

The reason for this has to do withbeing able to keep the awl in hand when stitching. By wrapping yourring finger around that little throat and keeping the awl againstyour palm between stitches, you could still use your index fingerand thumb without having to put the awl down and pick it up again.The appropriate platitude here is that time is money.

Some folks like those awls that havechucks in them to accept different blades. They're OK, but I found'em more useful if I took a band saw and lopped off the chuck. Ineither case, I prefer to drill a fine hole in the haft of the awl,seat the blade in a small vise, and tap the handle onto it with aleather mallet. Baby strokes, here....don't engage the happy hammer.

How to Make a Clamp

The clamp I had made for me in 1976 bythe wood shop at Colonial Williamsburg cost me an arm and a leg, butit can sit near the couch or at the hearth and elicit a question byjust about every visitor who eye-balls your furniture when theyvisit.

Once I took a band saw to the inside oftwo two by fours to make a clamp, but that was when the twins werelittle and the mortgage was huge and disposable income was going todiapers.

In between was this rig I found at aflea market.. It is crude and unfinished, but it works like a jetand is part of every shoemaking demo I do when at one of those quaintforts or historical homes.

It is made of ash, and, while I did notmake it, I know how it was made.

Take a two by four and a hardwooddowel. Cut three four inch lengths of dowel and lay 'em aside. The2 X 4 should be about four feet long. Along one edge, equidistantfrom the ends, sink a peg half an inch from the edge.

On the opposite edge, one at each end,sink the other pegs about a half inch from the edge and an inch fromthe end. Somewhere in between good old mountain savvy and nuclearphysics lies the domain that allows you to envision this as a jig inwhich you are going to bow both aides of your clamp. It is really ajig by which to bend wood, as if it were gonna become a bow andarrow.

Go down to the specialty wood sectionof the lumber yard and pick up two five foot sections of ash. Theyshould be ½ inch thick X 5 feet long X 3 or 4 inches wide.

Put the tea kettle on, and when thewater is really cranking and roiling steam the wood as evenly as youcan along the middle third of the board. This is how they makeashwood snowshoes, and, having done it, I can tell you that it worksonce you get the feel for it. What the hay...we're all craftspeople,right???

Put the jig in a vice or screw it intothe workbench. While the wood is still steamed, place one end up bythe peg at the far end, bow it around the peg in the middle, and setit under the peg at the near end.

Repitez vous reading this until you gotit firmly in your mind's eye. Fix me some tea while you're up. Whenboth sides of the clam are dry, fit them together. The guy who mademine used a pine wedge at the base, nailing one side of the clampfirm and securing the other with a leather hinge. A little short onfinesse maybe, but workable. In the middle, at the wide part, he ranthis really ugly cross bolt with a gi-normous wing nut to secure andopen the clamp. I still wonder whether a leather or rubber washerwould look better. I had to round the edges of the jaw and put on acouple of sueded pads to avoid scarring my projects as they were setin the clamp, but, God bless it the thing works real well

The bow of the clam has enough room tohang the part of your project not being stitched while being held inthe jaws, and I set it long enough by trimming both ends so that itstands at chest height whether I do seat work or mount it in mywoodworking vice when working at the bench.. Even the elves like it.

How to make stitches tighter

A lot of really good crafts people areusing harness needles the size of ten penny nails and rotary holepunches. That's OK if your work is good enough to get by with that,and I have seen plenty of pieces that do.

True hand stitching, tho, looks visibledifferent to the eye. For one thing, the holes stabbed by the awlare barely visible and for another, when the seam is flattened byrunning a pricking wheel over it, the neatness of it all isunmistakable.

Put your work into the clamp, where theseam line to be stitched is maybe ¼ to ½ inch above the clamp. Leave the drill presses for the kitchen cabinets

The first element to this type ofstitching is to stab a fully pricked seam line, one hole at a time,when you are making one stitch at a time. Make sure that yourdiamond shaped hole is stabbed vertically rather than horizontallyalong the seam line..

Whether or not you use purchasedtapered thread or fuzz and taper the ends yourself, the smallerneedles, combined, are just wide enough to fill the hole you stabbed. When the full bulk of the thread fills the hole, there is nodaylight or space showing through.

Using two needles at opposite end ofthe thread, try to close each stitch the same way every time. Theregularity of that is enough to make your work look great and themonotony of it was enough to make a lot of apprentices disappear.

Keeping the awl in your stabbing hand.Push the needle on the left side of your work through and close itjust enough to leave a loop about the size of your fist left to bepulled through. Now do the same with the needle on the right sidepushed through to the left...same fist sized loop remaining.

Now, stop.

Look down on your incomplete stitch andplace your eyeballs directly above it. The thread that came throughthe left side of the clamp and emerged on the right side should becloser to your seat...behind the other thread on a horizontal plane...outside the loop and level with it. Sounds a littleconfusing or pedantic, but it makes a big difference.

Before closing the stitch, bring this thread on the right up through the loop you made on the right. Youcan see the thread twists up through the loop and twists around thethread making the loop itself. Close the stitch. The twist ends upinside the hole, invisible, and is called a half-caste. It is thesame knot you make when tie-ing your shoe laces.

You have to be careful when you staband eyeball the back side of the seam, where you have not pricked, tomake sure your stitches are even. Some folks like to run a groove onboth sides, equidistant from the edge, so they can set a little tinytarget where their awl emerges from the stab. By keeping the diamondshaped hole vertically instead of horizontally, you ensure that eachstitch will stretch the side of the hole only ass much as needed toclose. Don't snap the thread, but close evenly, firmly and tightly. A pinky thimble of scrap leather will keep you form blistering sothat Your Mom would be proud.

I gotta go now so's I can add some moredecorations for Christmas because those twins cited earlier arecoming out here from Connecticut and have grown up. Now I gotta grabevery Christmas I can with 'em.

Hope this helps

Don't shoot yore eye out, kid

The Capgun Kid

[Lippy]

Hey C'Kid!

Bet you also have a big white beard and a red suit 'cause you just gave us a really nice present!

Cheers,

Lippy

[thecapgunkid]

Hey C'Kid!

Bet you also have a big white beard and a red suit 'cause you just gave us a really nice present!

Cheers,

Lippy

No beard, no red suit...just a paunch that won't go away....

How do I get this stuff onto this website?

Capgun

[crissy]

No beard, no red suit...just a paunch that won't go away....

How do I get this stuff onto this website?

Capgun

greetings,

if anyone reading this post has picture reference I would love to see them in a post. I so want to learn the finer art of stitching but just don't have time to take clases as work gets in the way. . thank you for the how to's hope to see the thats thems

thank you again

crissy

[Lippy]

Capgun,

If you still have your original article drafts you could just open the documents, select all of the text and then copy the text. The next step would be to go to the LW forum and create a post and then . . . assuming the article text is still in your computer's memory just do a paste into the post window.

Look here . . . I've just done a copy and paste of your third stitching article's first paragraph (see next paragraph) from the online article which was in the Cowboy Action Shooters' Discussion Archive at www.gunfighter.com.

"This is the third, and last posting about stitching for beginning leatherworkers and shooters who want to try their hand at making their own gun leather. It's also a little late after the first two pieces. Sorry. There are a lot of other things occupying our minds lately, so I did not push it."

Another alternative would be to save your original documents as PDF files and then just attach the PDFs to the post as you would do for any photographs you wanted to post.

- -

Now back to stitching. If you were doing say eight to ten stitches to the inch which needle and linen thread combo would you suggest?

Cheers,

Lippy

[shehog]

I saw the post reply by Lippy in thehand stitching thread about the series of articles I once wrote onhand stitching, and thankfully have met several crafts folks viae-mail because of them once he posted them.

I haven't a clue about how to movethose articles onto the website, but for some reason still have theirdrafts and pics on my hard drive. The photopoint reference is longgone and my e-mail has changed.

Like most writers, I can't stand thethough of re-reading my past work, and have not looked either at anyof my published articles or novels. I believe the hand stitchingarticles were printed by both the Gunfighter website and The CowboyChronicle, and, if I can get some help, I suppose I can suck it up,re-read the stuff ( yuccchhhh) and get it posted.

In the meantime, several folks haveasked me some questions, so I thought I'd post this to try to help

How to make a hand stitching awl

How to make a stitching clamp

How to make stitches tighter

How to make a hand stitching awl

My master made his awl out of thesteel shank of an umbrella shaft about five inches long where onefull inch was sunk into the handle. In between berating me because Iwas an impatient cuss in my youth, he gave me a piece with which towork and I still use it today.

You can use one of the commercialproducts from retailers. If it has one of those thick shanks with asuddenly rounded tip then you will be using the sharpening stonequite extensively. You might wanna rub on the sides of your stonerather than on the face, because this action will cut a groove intothe stone. Accept only awl blades with a diamond shaped crosssection.

Dremels are OK to grind with, if youare not one of those butchers who gouges and hacks with thetool...smooth, repeated and patiently worked grinding is the order ofthe day. Make sure the rotation of the wheel goes from handle out totip so you don't get an eyeful of your work when it binds on thesanding wheel.

The trick is to taper and polish it sothat there is a finely graded taper from awl handle to point that iseven and steadily degrades in thickness rather than does so all atonce.. Again, it will also have a diamond shaped cross section,where top to bottom of the cross section is longer than side to side. The tip should be so fine that you get nervous about it when not inuse and stick it into cork and such. This has two purposes; first,the gradual taper behaves like a depth gauge to regulate the size ofthe hole you are stabbing. Second, by starting very fine andgraduating it allows you to stab without forcing or fighting to makethe hole. When braced on the opposite side of the leather by yourindex finger and thumb ( spaced so that you don't stab yourself) awell tapered and polished awl slides in and out with pleasing andsurprising ease.

I had my original awl handles turned ona lathe., and used this formula. The distance between the secondknuckle on my ring finger and the second knuckle on my index fingerplus one half inch amounted to the body of the awl handle. At thebutt end, just beyond that distance, the handle narrows to a throatwhich is right in front of the butt where that cute little buttontip sits at the end.

The reason for this has to do withbeing able to keep the awl in hand when stitching. By wrapping yourring finger around that little throat and keeping the awl againstyour palm between stitches, you could still use your index fingerand thumb without having to put the awl down and pick it up again.The appropriate platitude here is that time is money.

Some folks like those awls that havechucks in them to accept different blades. They're OK, but I found'em more useful if I took a band saw and lopped off the chuck. Ineither case, I prefer to drill a fine hole in the haft of the awl,seat the blade in a small vise, and tap the handle onto it with aleather mallet. Baby strokes, here....don't engage the happy hammer.

How to Make a Clamp

The clamp I had made for me in 1976 bythe wood shop at Colonial Williamsburg cost me an arm and a leg, butit can sit near the couch or at the hearth and elicit a question byjust about every visitor who eye-balls your furniture when theyvisit.

Once I took a band saw to the inside oftwo two by fours to make a clamp, but that was when the twins werelittle and the mortgage was huge and disposable income was going todiapers.

In between was this rig I found at aflea market.. It is crude and unfinished, but it works like a jetand is part of every shoemaking demo I do when at one of those quaintforts or historical homes.

It is made of ash, and, while I did notmake it, I know how it was made.

Take a two by four and a hardwooddowel. Cut three four inch lengths of dowel and lay 'em aside. The2 X 4 should be about four feet long. Along one edge, equidistantfrom the ends, sink a peg half an inch from the edge.

On the opposite edge, one at each end,sink the other pegs about a half inch from the edge and an inch fromthe end. Somewhere in between good old mountain savvy and nuclearphysics lies the domain that allows you to envision this as a jig inwhich you are going to bow both aides of your clamp. It is really ajig by which to bend wood, as if it were gonna become a bow andarrow.

Go down to the specialty wood sectionof the lumber yard and pick up two five foot sections of ash. Theyshould be ½ inch thick X 5 feet long X 3 or 4 inches wide.

Put the tea kettle on, and when thewater is really cranking and roiling steam the wood as evenly as youcan along the middle third of the board. This is how they makeashwood snowshoes, and, having done it, I can tell you that it worksonce you get the feel for it. What the hay...we're all craftspeople,right???

Put the jig in a vice or screw it intothe workbench. While the wood is still steamed, place one end up bythe peg at the far end, bow it around the peg in the middle, and setit under the peg at the near end.

Repitez vous reading this until you gotit firmly in your mind's eye. Fix me some tea while you're up. Whenboth sides of the clam are dry, fit them together. The guy who mademine used a pine wedge at the base, nailing one side of the clampfirm and securing the other with a leather hinge. A little short onfinesse maybe, but workable. In the middle, at the wide part, he ranthis really ugly cross bolt with a gi-normous wing nut to secure andopen the clamp. I still wonder whether a leather or rubber washerwould look better. I had to round the edges of the jaw and put on acouple of sueded pads to avoid scarring my projects as they were setin the clamp, but, God bless it the thing works real well

The bow of the clam has enough room tohang the part of your project not being stitched while being held inthe jaws, and I set it long enough by trimming both ends so that itstands at chest height whether I do seat work or mount it in mywoodworking vice when working at the bench.. Even the elves like it.

How to make stitches tighter

A lot of really good crafts people areusing harness needles the size of ten penny nails and rotary holepunches. That's OK if your work is good enough to get by with that,and I have seen plenty of pieces that do.

True hand stitching, tho, looks visibledifferent to the eye. For one thing, the holes stabbed by the awlare barely visible and for another, when the seam is flattened byrunning a pricking wheel over it, the neatness of it all isunmistakable.

Put your work into the clamp, where theseam line to be stitched is maybe ¼ to ½ inch above the clamp. Leave the drill presses for the kitchen cabinets

The first element to this type ofstitching is to stab a fully pricked seam line, one hole at a time,when you are making one stitch at a time. Make sure that yourdiamond shaped hole is stabbed vertically rather than horizontallyalong the seam line..

Whether or not you use purchasedtapered thread or fuzz and taper the ends yourself, the smallerneedles, combined, are just wide enough to fill the hole you stabbed. When the full bulk of the thread fills the hole, there is nodaylight or space showing through.

Using two needles at opposite end ofthe thread, try to close each stitch the same way every time. Theregularity of that is enough to make your work look great and themonotony of it was enough to make a lot of apprentices disappear.

Keeping the awl in your stabbing hand.Push the needle on the left side of your work through and close itjust enough to leave a loop about the size of your fist left to bepulled through. Now do the same with the needle on the right sidepushed through to the left...same fist sized loop remaining.

Now, stop.

Look down on your incomplete stitch andplace your eyeballs directly above it. The thread that came throughthe left side of the clamp and emerged on the right side should becloser to your seat...behind the other thread on a horizontal plane...outside the loop and level with it. Sounds a littleconfusing or pedantic, but it makes a big difference.

Before closing the stitch, bring this thread on the right up through the loop you made on the right. Youcan see the thread twists up through the loop and twists around thethread making the loop itself. Close the stitch. The twist ends upinside the hole, invisible, and is called a half-caste. It is thesame knot you make when tie-ing your shoe laces.

You have to be careful when you staband eyeball the back side of the seam, where you have not pricked, tomake sure your stitches are even. Some folks like to run a groove onboth sides, equidistant from the edge, so they can set a little tinytarget where their awl emerges from the stab. By keeping the diamondshaped hole vertically instead of horizontally, you ensure that eachstitch will stretch the side of the hole only ass much as needed toclose. Don't snap the thread, but close evenly, firmly and tightly. A pinky thimble of scrap leather will keep you form blistering sothat Your Mom would be proud.

I gotta go now so's I can add some moredecorations for Christmas because those twins cited earlier arecoming out here from Connecticut and have grown up. Now I gotta grabevery Christmas I can with 'em.

Hope this helps

Don't shoot yore eye out, kid

The Capgun Kid

Capgun,

Thank you so much for taking the time to share all of this excellent information. I hope the elves can make me a stitching clamp by Christmas, it is at the top of my list!

Merry Christmas.

Shehog

[thecapgunkid]

Capgun,

If you still have your original article drafts you could just open the documents, select all of the text and then copy the text. The next step would be to go to the LW forum and create a post and then . . . assuming the article text is still in your computer's memory just do a paste into the post window.

Look here . . . I've just done a copy and paste of your third stitching article's first paragraph (see next paragraph) from the online article which was in the Cowboy Action Shooters' Discussion Archive at www.gunfighter.com.

"This is the third, and last posting about stitching for beginning leatherworkers and shooters who want to try their hand at making their own gun leather. It's also a little late after the first two pieces. Sorry. There are a lot of other things occupying our minds lately, so I did not push it."

Another alternative would be to save your original documents as PDF files and then just attach the PDFs to the post as you would do for any photographs you wanted to post.

- -

Now back to stitching. If you were doing say eight to ten stitches to the inch which needle and linen thread combo would you suggest?

Cheers,

Lippy

Thanks, Lip. I sorta figured that part, but how do I get all the pictures in?

[Lippy]

Hey C'Gun . . .

Ya' first have to answer my previous question . . . If you were doing say eight to ten stitches to the inch which needle and linen thread combo would you suggest?

Now, to post an image when you are in the process of doing a new post or reply just look below the box where you are typing and you'll see the heading "attachments". You can either type the name of your images in the smaller box or click the browse button to search you hard drive for the images. That should do it!

Cheers,

Tom

[thecapgunkid]

Hey C'Gun . . .

Ya' first have to answer my previous question . . . If you were doing say eight to ten stitches to the inch which needle and linen thread combo would you suggest?

Now, to post an image when you are in the process of doing a new post or reply just look below the box where you are typing and you'll see the heading "attachments". You can either type the name of your images in the smaller box or click the browse button to search you hard drive for the images. That should do it!

Cheers,

Tom

Tom, m'boy...

You probably need a mid-sized harness needle...say a 4, 5 or a 6. The strain comes when you have to get a really fine taper to get through the eyes. I used to work with a five ply barbours flax thread, unwaxed, until I met a couple of spinners in my old rendezvous days and they spun up some flax in single ply. Then I got some hemp and rolled them into a two part hemp and a one part flax. Dunno why, but that was what Walter taught me when I trained with him at Bethpage Village Restoration when we had a really weak democratic president who let Iran walk all over him....I am told that the old timers used to use that with coad...also referred to as handwax, but that's another post.

I would wrap the five ply around my left index finger once, leaving about four inches on the end. Then I would un-spin that end and seperate it to where I had it pinned at the crotch of it by my index finger and thumb. With my clicking knife I would scrape the three ply gaggle and then the two ply gaggle until I had fuzzed out tapers to an inch or two on the two ply and two to three inches on the three ply.

OK..so now the phone would ring every time, and really piss me off. The good news was that pinning the thread between thumb and forefinger would keep this operation in tact until I finished gabbing.

Once fuzzed, a little spittle on each length would set it up so that I could twist the thread gaggle IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION FROM WHICH IT WAS ORIGINALLY WOUND Repeating the operation on the other gaggle I would sit down, lay both wound gaggles on my thigh. Exerting firm pressure, I would roll them away from my Knee and then toward it, pulling with my thumb/forefinger lock to keep tension. Another roll or two toward my knee and the tapered point was locked up real pretty.

When you get the knack, the twist in the taper is even and neat with both gaggles equally intertwined. If you allow one to wind faster than the other, the thread would bind in the stitch holes.

Now I'd wax the crap out of the thread. The total thread length, with a taper at both ends, was what was referred to as a span, where it was no longer than your arms could reach when both outstretched.

Grasp el-needle-o, senyorita ladyola. Pierce the taper well before it thickens to the original thread thickness, somewhere in betwixt the point and that thickness point. Direct the needle backwards along the thread and pierce twice. If you gotta use your awl to make the holes because the taper is oh, so tight, you are doing it right. Move that double pierce toward the eye and thread it. Hopefully you got just short of an inch or so going through the eye. Now pull the two awl holes back over the eye and you will lock the thread into the needle. repeat on the other end.

Here's the secret...you gotta mess a few up before you will get the right combination of needle, position on the taper and gentleness of the taper before you get a smooth lock where the thread is only as thick as the needle AT THE EYE. This prevents a lump that sticks in the hole. Die before you pull the thread through the stitch hole by the needle.

SSSSSOOOOooooo, anyways, my biggest problem is when I try to put an attachment on I get the error message telling me that my jpg's are too big and use so much fuel they only get one mile to the gallon. Haven't a clue how to get 'em smaller, and, having worked in the computer industry before I found my calling with the Knights Of Columbus, I really grew to hate computers. I really want one that has only one button...THE ANSWER...

Let's get offline for a spell, and use my e-mail gjgeiger@zoominternet.net, and we can maybe get this stuff moved over.

I'm thinking some kind of video someday....Maybe an academy award for a documentary so I can refuse to show up and spite all those fruitcakes in hollywood....yeah, right.

Merry Christmas to you and all the other coyotes using this website; you have become a special kind of gift to me this year.

Don't shoot yore eye out, kid

The Capgun Kid

[tonyc1]

When I make threads from hemp, I always wax mine before I roll them and then with a small piece of leather folded in half between thumb and forefinger, with the thread between the leather, run it briskly up and down the thread and it heats up the wax all through in the thread and the sets pretty firm.

Tony.