Howdy from Cleveland. Meet my vintage machines.

[faithblinded]

Hi folks.  Just joined, and I can already see I'm going to learn a lot.  I come to leather work through general curiosity, and my machines.  I started sewing my own bags and pouches for camera gear less than a year ago.  That led to a collection of vintage sewing machines, which in turn led to me acquiring some nice industrial machines as well, for the heavier work I want to do.  I want to use them as intended, and this seems like the perfect place to learn best how to do so.  Let me introduce my babies.

This is one of two locked up 29-4 patchers I picked up for a song.  This one was stripped down to bare metal, and is now reassembled for testing purposes.  It should be a great machine, once I get the couple parts I need.

The next two are my compound feed machines. The Singer is a 111w103, and is full compound feed.  The Adler is a 67-7562T, and is needle feed only.  The Singer is ready to work on anything up to medium heavy materials.  The Adler needs a few parts, but moves like it was in service yesterday.  It may become my main machine, once I finish going over it completely.  It has a much larger bobbin than the Singer.

Last is my 31-15.  This one I plan to switch to a wheel foot, and matching feed dogs, for garment leather.  I lack a table for this one at present.  

 

I am a total novice when it comes to working with leather.  Here is my most recent project, sewn on a domestic Bernina sewing machine.  Just some simple notebooks that I covered with patchwork made of leather scraps.

 

[faithblinded]

Here is my 29-4 as it sits now.  It moves very well, and I am getting just a hair over 6 stitches per inch.  I understand that is pretty good for a 29-4.  It's old, born in 1912!  There's really something magic about the sounds of a treadled patcher doing it's job.

[MikeG]

Nice!  Old sewing machines are addictive.  Looking forward to seeing your patcher all painted up!  There are lots of folks on the "Leather Sewing Machines" section of the forum to share info with.