Skiving Machine Ripping Leather, please help !

[Art]

Ann,

The longer foot can do a wider skive, but you don't have to use all of it.  With a well adjusted machine, either foot will do the job although the wider foot might feed a little better due to bigger contact area.  If having feed problems, a steel bottom feed roller is sometimes necessary; seems much more effective for veg tan.

Skiving machines are really adjustment sensitive, most factories leave them set-up for one operation and just tweak those adjustments as necessary.  All that said, you have to try it and run some leather through it to see which foot is best.  This is the best non-answer I can give, but I am far from an expert on these things.

Art

[SonderingSusan]

Thanks @Art,

 

And just for reference, which foot do you use for thinner leather? I'm trying out the smaller thicker foot now and finding it seems to respond well to thinner leather, but also to thicker leather so I'm a little confused?

 

Thanks again for your answer, although you claim not to be an expert , you seem to have more information on these things than most people and i appreciate you taking the time to share with a learner. "L" Hehe,

 

Thanks ,

S

[Art]

I use the long foot that follows the contour of the bell knife.  I never change feet, and the best reason is that I probably couldn't find the other feet that came with the Consew (which is the only bottom feed I have).  On the top and bottom feed (which is used the most) there's only one foot unless we make a special one, which has never been needed.

Art

[TheGr8Mattsby]

I didn't read everything written in this thread, but I work exclusively with chrome tanned leather so here are my thoughts.

First of all, the make/quality of the machine is definitely going to make a difference in regards to accuracy and ease of use. The problem with most of the cheaply made skivers is that the blade and the feedwheel run on one motor, so if you want the blade to turn fast (which it needs to in order to cut), the feed roll also must move fast. In this case, you sacrifice control.

On the higher end machines (Fortuna, FAV, etc.) the blade and the feed roll run on separate motors, so it is possible to slow the feed roll down to a crawl while the blade spins fast, allowing you maximum control while skiving.

Having said that, it is still certainly possible to get good results with a less expensive skiver, however the machine has to be well adjusted and the blade needs to be very sharp.

Myself, I sharpen the blade every single time I use my machine.

One thing you're going to want to remember is that when you sharpen your blade, you want to bring the knife to the exact same place every time. I have found that an optimal place for sharpening to bring your knife is 1cm from the leading edge. That means you're going to move your knife almost as far to the left as possible, so that there is only 1cm from the left edge of the machine. I imagine you may have screwed up your knife quite a bit, so it may take a while of sharpening at this position to rectify it. Every time you sharpen after that you're going to want to make sure you bring the knife to the same place.

Having been through this a year ago, if you are wanting to split leather (as opposed to skive) you cannot use a cheaper machine.

For my work I need to split, and having wasted more than a few skins, if you want to use the machine to split, you're going to need a higher end brand with separate motors for the feed roll and knife and which is presumably also more precise and well balanced to start.

Hope that helps

[RockyAussie]

Note below pic shows the feed stone is near to level with the bell edge. If the gap on yours is too large a gap at the front you will get what your pic shows. If you have the front of your presser foot to much angled down at the front you may also be able to get this to happen but as I've said before some pictures close up of the machine would help anyone to see the problem better. These are a machine with a lot of adjustable parts and take a few years to master well and without knowing the machine and how you have it set up we would all be guessing here for end-um.

[CustomDoug]

On 7/15/2016 at 2:30 PM, Art said:

 If I were to modify the one I have, I would put a second motor on, or a clutch setup to continuously run the bell knife and intermittently run the feed.  The two motor system would allow for variable speed on the feed

Do you have any specifics ideas for accomplishing this? I'd like to add a second motor also but don't know where to start.

I'd think an adjustable servo motor would be ideal for slowing the feeder speed.

Doug C

 

Edited August 27, 2016 by CustomDoug

[Art]

On mine it would just be a matter of finding a clutch that would work with that shaft.  If you want to go with two motors, it is a bit easier, just install another motor and hook to the other shaft.  I haven't tackled it as it is not high on my list.  If Consew (Chinese these days) and Fortuna (German) can engineer it, it won't be a problem, they don't use any secret parts that I know of.

Art

[CustomDoug]

A picture of a dual motor set up would be a tremendous help. I looked but could not find one. Anyone know of a site with such a pic? 

Doug C

 

[Silverd]

Id like to throw a probably obvious question into this thread from someone with only landis 5 in 1 skiving experience.  Will the Fortuna or Fortuna clome style skivers work on bridle leather straps?

Silverd 

[Sonydaze]

1 minute ago, Silverd said:

Id like to throw a probably obvious question into this thread from someone with only landis 5 in 1 skiving experience.  Will the Fortuna or Fortuna clome style skivers work on bridle leather straps?

Silverd 

Yes, we make a lot of straps with a buckle on one end.  The buckle end gets skived down so the fold over isn't as thick.  With the straight foot on the skiver. it can be set up to quickly and nicely bevel the end of the strap as well.