What Size Needles Do You Use?

[Iron Pounder]

I bought the book "The art of Hand Sewing Leather" It doesn't cover much about what size of needles to use. Trying to sew 2 layers of 7 oz bull hide together. We are using 000 harness needles and they seem too large to go through the hole we make with the awl.

[Hilly]

  On 3/18/2011 at 3:39 AM, Iron Pounder said:

I bought the book "The art of Hand Sewing Leather" It doesn't cover much about what size of needles to use. Trying to sew 2 layers of 7 oz bull hide together. We are using 000 harness needles and they seem too large to go through the hole we make with the awl.

You're using the harness needles from Tandy, huh? Are you using their pre-waxed thread, too? Are you stabbing more than one hole before you put a stitch in it? The holes tend to close up rather quickly, so stab a hole and put a stitch in right away. You can also wiggle the awl blade a tiny bit to enlarge the hole a little. Just be careful or you'll break the blade.

OR, you can get smaller needles and thread. C.S. Osborne makes smaller needles. Call them for a catalog and to find a distributer near you. Royalwood makes lots of different sizes of prewaxed linen thread in tons of colors.

Hope this helps a little.

[Iron Pounder]

Yep using the tandy stuff. Pre waxed and the harness needles just don't want to go through. I only do 1 hole at a time but that is a nightmare. I just wanted to know if everyone else is using the same size needles or something smaller.

[dirtclod]

Try a O size i think that what i used when i was hand sewing. If i can rememeber to look when i'm in the shop i'll check and make sure.

[dbusarow]

000 is way too big. Contrary to what you might think looking at that size code, that is the largest of the harness needles. Here's a chart I copied from the CS Osborne site.

Lost all the formatting when I posted. Here's a link to the chart.

I usually use #3's but have 1s and 2 also. That's with linen thread though, I don't think I could thread any of these needles with Tandy's prewaxed thread.

Dan

Edited March 18, 2011 by dbusarow

[Lippy]

Generally a number 3 or 4 harness needle is my choice with an 18/4 or 18/5 un-waxed linen thread. The needles are much smaller than the crowbars sold by Tandy. First, you need a really sharp and polished awl. Then, you need to taper the thread ends as shown in the hand sewing book. It's harder to get a good taper with pre-waxed thread. Rubbing a little paraffin wax on the awl blade and the needles also helps.

Here's a post link that has a nice video and links to hand sewing/saddle stitching info. Hope it helps.

http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=28041&view=findpost&p=176210

[Iron Pounder]

Thanks guys. It just seemed to me that the stuff Tandy sold me was the wrong stuff. Maybe I can get somewhere now .