Another "bonjour From France" :)

[mikesc]

Hi, I'm Mike, Irish originally , but living in France ( firstly Cannes and then St Tropez area , now Brittany ) for nearly 25 years now.

BTW..I noticed when Caroleb13 ( salut Carole posted her intro, that CustomDoug asked about acting as a "go between" for some folks here who might want to enquire about items from french suppliers..If anyone here needs translation of what they see on french websites, or phone calls making to french suppliers about something that is on their sites ? I'll be happy to help out;) it will help to pay back some for the wealth of information and tips etc that I've already picked up from reading here at leatherworker.net. I found ( when looking for information about a Juki machine* that I was negotiating on, and subsequently bought ) about a week ago that leatherworker.net came up high on Google page one for just about every question that I needed an answer for. Great resource, especially when here in France we don't have any forums, even in french language, for users of pro machines who work with leather.

Brief ( very condensed, leaving out a lot of stuff so as to keep my "intro" post short(ish) history follows.

I'm an artist / sculptor / designer, first began working with leather way back in the early 70s at artschool in the UK, then later occasionally painting on leather in the late 70s ( while also working in advertising and illustrating ) Did some leather apparel design and pattern creation as a freelance in the 80s.
Travelled a lot.

Arriving in France, and speaking almost no French at all, fortunately met the Breton/French mother of our ( now 21 year old ) son. Took me around 3 years to get reasonably fluent in the language, another 2 years or so to get to the point where I dream and think in French as easy as English ( and speed read in both ), still make some mistakes in writing French though, but as it is such a complicated grammar system ( with masculin and feminin words ) most french people also don't write their own language correctly, so my small errors get past everyone except my wife and son ( they "proof read" any legal or official stuff that I write, so it goes out with no errors ), I learned a huge amount of the language by working leather ( airbrushing on cuts and jackets at biker rallys in France during the 90s ),opened a clothing business here.
Selling decorated "destroy jeans" ( shipped used 501s from the USA and "embellished" them ) also genuine Harley mechandise, and tee-shirts, and bikinis ( the shop was only 50 yds from the beach near St Tropez ) eventually we moved slightly inland and opened a custom painting and trompe l'oeil business in 2000 square feet of workshop in amongst the vineyards of the South of France. Airbruished and painted leather, Harleys, powerboats, painted countless rearing horses, tigers , clowns etc on circus trucks and fairground attractions for "carnies" from all over France.

Made sculptures for some of the "rides" ( polyester resin ) , made custom bodywork for the motorcycles ( HD and Japanese ) in carbon, kevlar and standard polyester, did some vintage restoration too, I needed a bilingual "showcase" website in 2000 , a friend showed me how to code for small PCs ( I'd learned fortran etc in the 70s for design work using mainframes ) , started working more with computers,buying domain names, bulding sites for us ( and occasionally sites for friends ), we shutdown our custom painting business in 2003 and moved 1200 km to Brittany to look after my wifes mother who was ill.

She died a couple of years later.

We bought out the other relatives shares in the house,( french "inheritance laws", you have to buy out the other inheritors if you want the house for yourself ) it isn't big, ( but there are only us and our son, he has the top floor ) waaay smaller than our workshop ( atelier ) in the south was, (but, it is 2 minutes walk from the sea, can see, hear , and smell the ocean from the door we live in a small village, of mainly old stone or white walled houses with slate roofs ( typical postcard Breton fisherman's houses ) big open grassy space behind our place, lots of trees around the edge, owls hunting and hooting as I type this at 01.40 am in the morning with the door to the garden open, summer is hanging around late this year.

Not so much call for custom paint work on bikes etc here, it rains more than around Cannes and St Tropez, did some airbrush and sculpture carney work , and a few airbushed bikes, some "classic old school" brush sign writing, and some customised airbrushed tire covers ( mainly to the USA ) and some more leather.

Leather apparel ( of all types ) has always struck me as being very expensive here, compared with the USA, UK or Germany , Italy or Spain, so, began designing our own range of leatherwear. France is not a good place to be a "craft artisan " in, social security payments and taxes take a bite of well over half of any gross made, but not so high if one is designing and having most or all of the designs made elsewhere.

But, that still means that you have to make prototypes, if not, the OEM manufacturers tend to make errors and send back items that are not what was ordered, so, I'm having to make "control samples" of everything I design, and "rectify" any errors that still get in, so now I'm designing, making patterns, sewing silk, lace, lycra and leather.

Machines ( both new and used ) and supplies are expensive here compared with the USA, ( new machines are 2 to 3 times the USA price, used machines are also 2 to 3 times USA prices ) and many things ( such as elastics for lingerie and boning etc for corsetry ) I have to import from the UK or Asia, leather fortunately is not too much higher than the USA, and I can get Italian Lambskin direct, and even have access to "offcut" ( they use a tiny piece and then leave the rest of the skin ) leather from Parisian Haute Couture houses, I noticed there is a lot of goatskin used in luxury handbags and jackets from the Haute Couture brands.

But, as I said above, if I can be of help in contacting suppliers or sites in France that anyone has difficulties with due to the language, or translating what you see on sites, just ask

OK, for what was going to be a "short(ish) intro", that kind of grew;) but, done a lot of things ( not to mention being a pro photographer for a while and other stuff ), like a lot of people here, ( I enjoyed reading the thread about what brought some members to here, their history, their pathways, lot of knowledge here , a very comfortable, welcoming atmosphere I have been interested by so many things, always creating, and always trying to do so with head , hands, and heart.

Intro done, if you read this far, have a beer , you deserve it

My apologies for the numerous typos, my keyboard is french layout, my system ( on this machine ) is linux mint in english.the resultant conflict means that on some sites, ( this is one of them ) my spell checker underlines everything I write ( be it in english or french ) in red..and I'm too tired to keep editing ( now 03.00 am here ) when all the words are underlined



*More about this purchase in another post ( I could still use some help about certain adjustements, settings, docs etc for it ) as I think this area is reserved for "intros"

Edited September 30, 2014 by mikesc

[caroleb13]

• Hi Mike ! Nice to "meet" you ! I was brought up in Scotland and we could see Irland from the island. Always said it was a sheep's throw away I've just exchanged my sewing machine with one that has just arrived fresh from Brittany. The needle system is the 794 type. Do you know of any good online suppliers in France. I found a wonderful topic somewhere in this forum with a supplier in the US. There seemed to be a much larger choice of needle tips and as I didn't toggle it, I can't for the life of me find the link.... grrrrrr.

Anyway, if you're in the Bordeaux area, let me know !

[mikesc]

Hi Carole, you'd have to be a real good sheep thrower to reach where I'm from ( nearest town that anybody knows is New Ross.."Kennedy homestead" country )..Sheep would have to pass over Wales, dangerous place if you are a sheep

Supplier..try here ..hamon-paris.com ( I don't know what the "prevent spam policy" is here about newbies posting live links, so you'll have to make that live yourself ) They are friendly on the phone, I use French with them, but they tell me that they do have people who speak / read /write English there if that is easier for you ..Their site says that the customers are welcome to bring their own scissors to their shop ( I've never been to the shop, I do not like Paris at all, far too many Parisiens there ) to sharpen them themselves.I figure that any shop who thinks to add that line to their site must be the "real deal", they have been in the sewing supply business for well over a hundred years.Also the cheapest place that you can get sewing machine oil from ( even if you include their "chronopost delivery charges" at about €8.00 per litre for the delivery and about €5.00 to €6.00 per litre for the oil itself ).If I think of any others, that you can work with in English ( don't know how fluent in French you are ? ) I'll let you know . Got to go, spent waaay too long ( and got behind with work ) today reading the jokes ( still haven't read them all ) in the adult area. "Paddy O'furniture" gave me "coffee nostrils " and required a change of Tee-shirt

Off to clear space for my Juki DLU 490-4 "aquisition", before I begin asking questions about it, can't find an owners manual anywhere on the internet, ( service manual yes, parts manual, yes )..Not a real unison feed walking foot leather machine, but all I could find for sale within a 200km radius last week.

anyway ..that is for another thread..Hope the above address helps for now

PS...any admin or mod can tell me how to permanently switch off graphic smilies from my posts ?

Edited September 30, 2014 by mikesc

[King's X]

Hello Mike.....and welcome to the forum!

[caroleb13]

Hi Mike, the only link I found, you have to pay about 5 dollars on the Juki site. My supplier is coming on Monday to sort out the new machine I bought and my problem with needles. It's not Goek Beckert it's Going Bezerk ! Anyway, he sells Juki so I'll ask him.

Thanks for the link. I'll try them, haven't heard of them before...

Depending on where you are exactly in France (Brittany but where ?) I have a delivery system from the UK every second week. He brings over beer from GB for my brother in law and horse food in that order. He actually brought my second hand machine from somewhere near Villefranche but charged a little extra... Anyway keep it in mind, it may help.

Really hope your Juki works out well for you. I've come to the conclusion that there isn't the perfect machine and you deal with what you get... I thought I was doing a good deal on mine by selling the adler only two years old to switch to a Global. But now I have to add a servo motor and buy the needles from the UK... A link which might be interesting is the tannery in Bellac called Gal Tannerie. This is where I get my leather from. I go from time to time and also go through their bins The offcuts from their preparation for stirrup leather work really well as bag stiffeners ! You have to get to know them a bit and then can get the leather delivered. A couple of times I haven't been happy and they have resent free of charge.

Most of my hardware I get from Ohio Travel Bag. They have a great sales service, very friendly and eager to help. The pricing is good and they have a wide selection. Some brass ware I get from Japan. Very nice, very expensive (custom's duty, tax etc)

[mikesc]

Hi Carole, yeah the Juki manual at their site I already had,( it is the machanics manual ) the one I'm looking for is the actual owners manual, I'm hoping that it explains how to regulate the variable top feed ( on this model the top and bottom feed speeds can be varied in relation to each other, actually the bottom dogs speed stays fixed, but the top walking foot speed can be varied, this model was originally designed for "gathering", but I tried it on leather and it works fine for what I need ).I'm going to have to strip it entirely ( hence I got the mechanic's manual and the parts list "manual" ) as the oil was nearly out ( waaay below the bottom line, only about 250ml in there ) and the oil was also the wrong type.

the French dealer / mechanic that sold it to the woman I bought it from should be taken out and shot somewhere ( or at least beaten with the biggest clue bat in the "tools for dealing with b's'tters , idiots and crooks" box ).He sold it to her and delivered it in the condition that I bought it .

Dirty as all hell, rusty tension discs, virtually no oil ( he told her that any "mineral oil" would do, most sewing machine dealers / mechanics here in France come out with that "line", they don't actually know that "mineral oil" just means not "plant derived oil", he said that she could use baby oil ( because it says "mineral oil" on the bottle ) or even lightweight car engine oil, or even linseed oil ) few seem to have any understanding of oil tech at all. But they'll make up crap at the drop of a hat to get a sale, or to charge a customer for a site visit.

Guy didn't explain to here how the foot pedals work ( it has two, speed pedal and reverse pedal ), she had no idea how to get it to reverse ! it also has an efka auto control box . ( vario stop type VD 552 , so auto needle positioning, and this model has a bult in thread cutter in the base ) he explained none of that to her, so she had no idea why the machine was doing what it was.It has a 550w clutch motor , with a big pulley ( garment machine can run at around 3500 pm ) , obviously for leather she would need a smaller pulley ( or a servo motor ) it ws originally set up for 380v tri-phase, someone has rigged it to 220v mono ( easy to do, change the position of the connecters and add in a condenser to kick it into life, and maybe sometimes a second smaller condenser to keep it bowling along, you lose a little power running 380 tri-phase on 220 mono, but in France "domestic electricity" users don't easliy get the option of 380tri-phase unless they already had it supplied ), but the way that the earthing had been done meant that the machine and the "cone stand" and machine table legs etc were "tingly" , not enough of a jolt to kill you, if you are big ( I am ), but you woumld n't want to touch it if you were small like my wife or if you were a child or had a weak heart!

He actually tried to tell her that all would be well if she just had her house supplied with 380 tri phase, which EDF are really not keen on doing for "residential property" ( plus the monthly electricy line rental gets expensive on 380tri, I have had it everywhere except this house ).

This being her first time with an industrial machine ( she bought it to sew plastic made from seaweed, she has a contact at LMVH, they wanted to try a short run of tiny bags made out of the stuff, like the cardbord or expensive paper bags that "Leonidas" sell you 200 grammes of their chocalates in, seaweed based plastic is very hard and smooth, quite brittle, and would need rubber coated feed dogs and foot to pull it through ) this machine is set up with the standard all metal "gathering foot and the standard feed dogs ( I'm going to put an alternative foot , dogs and plate combo on it that is made for what Juki call "tight curves", looks much more like a classic walking foot combo ).So, she had machine that was dirty, couldn't have the tension adjusted, had the wrong feed, didn't understand, was wired dangerously and compared to her classic "domestic" machine ran so fast even if she just touched the pedal ( clutch motors can be scary beats scared the crap out of her.

She put up an ad, I saw it, travelled 130km each way to see it, and bought it cheap ( it ran , stitched into a peice of quarter inch thick boot with some up and down thickness changes that I cut up and took with me of and it stitched backwards into the same holes, then after less than 6 inches of stiching, the thread broke due to the rusty tension discs ) she threw in hundreds of leather needles, a half a dozen really good unused strong polyester thread cones, about 5000 metres on each, and in colours that match the leather I use, around 50 bobbins, and a selection of feet and dogs and feeds.

I have to admit that I haggled the price just on principle ( she has a big house, as near to the sea as ours is, costs money to be close to the sea, she had a big car in the drive way, and is not short of money, or LMVH contacts <= these I will be keeping in contact with here about:).She damn near bit my arm off on my low offer, I think that she just wanted it out of her garage and anything was better than having to pay someone to take it away!

I need to buy it ( or make out of sheet rubber or cork ) a new "pan gasket", clean/polish or replace the tension discs ( there are two sets ), order a servo motor from China / Taiwan ( they all come from there anyway, and I can get one and have it shipped, pay cutsoms and VAT etc for less than half of what the French dealers charge ), strip and clean and oil it.

Make the electrics safe ( I've rewired all our houses and workshops down the years, plus much of our equipement, etc both 220 and 380 tri so that is taken care of easily ), the hard part is getting hold of the owners manual, or finding out how to regeuilate the variable tension via trial and error if I cant get a copy of the owners manual or "guide book".

Thanks for thinking of me anyway and thanks for the address of the tannerie , I looked at their site, they appear to be very high quality from what is written about them in the French Press, but they are mainly "cow leather", I use mainly lamb , with some goat or buffalo.Just ordered a batch of lambskins yesterday.

Hardware , one of my OEM manufacturers has family who make anything in stainless , brass etc that I want ( providing that I take 1000 units per design ) and he works from my designs, another guy in the same area makes my labels and ( if I want them "hang tags" )..Corsetry supplies ( tapes , elastics, hook and eyes, busks, spiral bones etc ) I get from the UK in small quantities, or Asia in larger amounts..In France even the "industrial trade suppliers " want ridiculous prices, have very limited range of items, and impose stupidly high minimum quantities for what they are reseeling from the same Asian suppliers I use, one guy here ( who supplies a lot of the "couture houses" and "pret a porter" manufacturers wanted me to take 30000 mtres ..yep 30km! of picot elastic ( used to elastic edge lambskin thongs etc ) ..I use the same Asian supplier he does, their true minimum is 100 metres.

I like many things about France, but their markups on many things are just ridiculous, especially if it is involved in the "luxury market".

[mrtreat32]

Hello Mike.

Welcome to the forum!

You mentioned that you have access to "offcut" leathers such as goatskin and other leathers.

Do you know if any of these places ship to the U.S. ? I guess there are advantages and disadvantages no matter where you are located when working with leather....you mentioned the US having better prices on machinery but on the other hand it is very hard to find the variety of leathers here that seem to be available in France and Asia. We have plenty of veg tan suppliers and Horween but unfortunately for me the style of leather goods Im interested in making I would much prefer goat in a variety of colors, calfskin (Haas), and shrunken calf which I see used often online from European leather workers but I can't find here. If you have any sites for this type of info I would greatly appreciate it and if there is anything you are looking for that is hard to get in France maybe I can point you in the right direction.

[caroleb13]

Yes, the Bellac Gal Tannery are specialized in vegetable tanning "cow/calf" leather, but but but I did buy some really nice goatskins from them, so it's Worth giving them a call ? You ask for Patrick and should get a good deal. Other than that, I will be going to a Tannery near Montpellier soon to check out their vegetable tanned leather as they seem to have quite a good stock, but will have to see the quality and they appear to be more chrome tanning. After I've been, I'll let you know my thoughts. (rubbish as the Freddie the fox would say)