Machine For Roughing Grain Side Edges For Assembly

[Andrew Chee]

I made this machine today so I thought I'd share it with everybody. When I make turned gusset bags, I find that the glues out there don't hold the grain sides of the pieces together well. I've tried all sorts of glue and none of them hold the pieces together. Please say to rough up the grain side so the glue absorbs and holds. The problem with a turned bag is that you usually do something like a 1/4" or 3/8" seam allowance so the width of the roughed edges have to be less than that or else the roughed area will show up with turned.

I've taken to using a sanding drum on a dremel to rough my edges. Much faster than doing it with sand paper. It's a pain to make sure that you're hold the dremel to the right width. I wanted a way that I can rough up a consistent width from the edge and also be able to handle different types of leather.

I've been thinking about how to do this for a while and I came up with this solution today.

It's a dremel with a sanding drum and the router attachment clamped horizontally to the table.

I added a thin strip of metal to the guide to slide my work against. I now have a machine that will consistantly rough up the edges of a piece of leather to a consistant width. I adjust how far the sanding drum is exposed and that adjusts the width of the roughing.

I adjust the position of the guide to adjust for thicknesses in the leather. I have just tried this out on a bag I'm working on and it works like a charm, you just feed the leather through and it roughs up the edge to the required width.

Andrew

Edited September 1, 2013 by Andrew Chee

[GerryR]

Nice idea! I guess that any similar-sized trim router could be modified the same way. Did you try using stones to see if they worked, or is the sanding drum the best solution?

Regards,

Gerry

[Andrew Chee]

I haven't tried stones yet but the drums seem to work just fine and the sandpaper is replaceable. I think probably any trim router will work but the deemed ones work nicely cause they are small and have small openings. Larger routers will have larger openings to accommodate larger bits so they might not work as well.

Andrew

[Colt W Knight]

Routers spin very fast, and are much more powerful than a dremel. If the leather was somehow to get tangled in the bit, it wouldn't end well for the user. That being said, you can make a new baseplate for the router, and use setup a similar jig and pretty nice results. I have seen enough things caught in routers to have a healthy respect for their destructive force.