What's The Next Step?

[Trox]

Wiz is right about the bell skiver, it takes time to master it. However, it is no problem to split even strips of leather up to 50 mm wide. The knife is round, and so is the presser foot. It has the same radius as the knife, set at the same distance flat against the knife and it will act as a splitter.

I use mine to skive and split thin skin/garment leather. When I make welts for my leather backpacks, I have to reduce the thickness of the leather to use it to make welts. I split garment leather strips about 30 to 40 mm wide on my bell knife skiver. I then roll them around a rubber core to make round welts.

The machine is no replacement for the bench top splitter. When set up for garment leather, you have to change feed roll (a steel feed roll works better on veg tan) and do many adjustments to split/skive veg tan leather. In addition, do many test runs on scrap leather.

When you learn to use the bell knife skiver, you can adjust it without doing many test runs. However, it takes time to get there. I leave my bell skiver set up for garment leather and use my bench top splitters for lap skives, and splitting belt and straps.

You will see yourself what part of your work process that take the longest and what machine you need to speed things up. I need both splitters and the bell skiver because of the variety of leatherwork I do.

If I have to skive some veg tan leather, I will just grab my skiving knife or round knife and do this easy skive. It has to be some yards of skiving before I will readjust my bell knife skiver for that job.

Garment leather on the other hand is more time consuming to skive proper; it is jobs for the bell knife skiver regardless of the length of skive.

Trox

[Trox]

The easy way to split 50 mm (two inch) wide leather strip on the bell skiver without any adjustments. If your skiver is set up for a normal 25 mm (one-inch) bevel skive, you can run a strap twice true the machine. Skive one side, turn it, and skive the other side. Then you will have a level split without messing up your skivers set up.