What can a Juki TL actually do?

[DrmCa]

22 hours ago, CrankAddict said:

Again, I appreciate the insinuation that I'm stupid enough to think salespeople are 100% forthcoming.

OMG, you really are angry. What do you know of their margin and sales targets per model?

[Matt S]

1 hour ago, CrankAddict said:

But isn't "leather" interchangeable for "wood" in this regard? 

Yes, to an extent. Essentially you've gone into a hobby shop and asked them for a table saw for cutting wood. They've recommended a £400 Proxxon FET. It's a well made, easy to use machine with a lot of handy features. Unfortunately it's a model maker's wood saw and you want to build furniture. Does it cut wood? Yes, it's great for ripping floorboards for a dolls house or planking for your Bluenose model. However try to cut a bunch of chair legs from 1.5" stock and it's going to struggle and break. Same as "your" TL2010 when sewing anything heavier than a couple millimetres of soft leather.

Your Dewalt jobsite saw is a far better option -- it's got fewer fancy features, it's heavier, bulkier and probably would make a mess of those dolls house floorboards, but it's far more powerful, robustly built, and is actually capable of the job you want to do. The sales person in the hobby shop either mostly thinks of wood as little bits of basswood that come in handy packs in aisle 3 (and therefore their experience says "the Proxxon is entirely suitable for cutting wood") or doesn't care -- they don't sell professional power tools and don't get their commission/hit their quota by sending customers down to the builder's supplier round the corner.
 

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Yes, it's nice to have a bandsaw, miter saw, track saw, and table saw.  But before I had all that I was able to make some decent items using only a jobsite Dewalt table saw.  That seems like the Juki TL class to me.  Is it as capable as a Sawstop or Powermatic cabinet saw?  Obviously not.  But for its class of machine it is well built and with the right setup and blade I can definitely achieve good results.

At the risk of being very blunt, no it's not and I think every person in this thread has tried to explain why it's not and offer alternatives that are a bit more like what you want. Unfortunately the options are limited.
 

On 2/4/2022 at 2:36 PM, CrankAddict said:

I've spoken to people directly who have used a 2010 to alter leather coats.  My friend's wife is a manager at a Juki dealer.

Out of interest, is your friend's wife a dealer in industrial or domestic/hobby Jukis? I believe that Juki keeps those two things very separate.
 

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You wouldn't refer to a furniture maker or cabinet maker as "the average man on the street" as if to imply he knows nothing about wood.

No, I'd refer to the man on the street as "the average man on the street". Compared with a furniture maker or cabinet maker he would know very little about wood. He might think of wood as the flat things Ikea furniture is made from. Nobody on this site looks down on people who use thin leather for watch straps, wallets or bags. However if you went on a woodworking forum and asked "what can a Proxxon FET actually do? I've seen videos of it buzzing through bits of 1/8" masonite" the experienced forumites there might say "maybe 3/4" of real wood with a struggle. Get a contractor saw at minimum to cut anything heavier, here's a few options.". That's what has happened in this thread but with leather.
 

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The talk of a 1" thick leather project sounds as crazy to me as a 1' thick wood project.  I'm coming to realize that I found my way into the lumberjack corner of the leatherworking universe so I understand that my target projects are a bit out of sync with the normal stuff around here 

It is, admittedly, towards the top end of what is commonly done. Many of the active participants of this forum tend towards the heavier side of things. Mostly the "hard" leather trades like holsters and saddles rather than the "soft" ones like shoemaking or bag making. As you say -- cabin building or shipbuilding type stuff.

[Spyros]

3 hours ago, CrankAddict said:

But isn't "leather" interchangeable for "wood" in this regard?  I can build nice furniture all day long with the tools I have accumulated.  The wood is all going to be 2" thick or less and depending on the type of cut I pick from an array of saws to fit the task.  But as soon as you show up with 6" x 6" timber beams looking to build a cabin I'm completely stuck.  I don't have anything in the shop that can do even a simple crosscut on those monsters.  You wouldn't refer to a furniture maker or cabinet maker as "the average man on the street" as if to imply he knows nothing about wood.  His projects just utilize a different scale of material.  In your examples the first half of the list is of no interest to me whatsoever, whereas wallets, watch straps, European style bags, thin belts are exactly what I'm wanting to do.  The talk of a 1" thick leather project sounds as crazy to me as a 1' thick wood project.  I'm coming to realize that I found my way into the lumberjack corner of the leatherworking universe so I understand that my target projects are a bit out of sync with the normal stuff around here 

I guess you'd have to actually see a leather sewing machine up close, and then you'd understand immediately.  It was definitely not what I expected when I saw mine for the first time, they are total monsters, they look like some component out of a nuclear submarine.  Mine came on a pallet that barely fit inside a van and it weighed 130kg all up with the motor and the stand.  130!  Solid steel everywhere.  I questioned it a lot as it seemed total overkill, but it is like that for a reason, it's required not only for the longevity of the machine and its ability to pierce the leather, but also the absorption of vibrations and the quality and consistency of the stitching itself.  Now, quality and presentation of stitching is probably not something you're thinking about right now, but it is a big deal in leatherworking as the threads tend to be a lot thicker and much more visible.  The "heavy duty" domestics will not even accept the thickness of thread thread that is commonly required for leather, and some of them are even allergic to bonded nylon/polyester thread (which is the bread & butter of machine stitching leather) because they're just simply tuned for other common types of thread used for fabrics. I guess you can use thin thread for everything, but a lot of your leather projects will come apart, leather is physically heavier than fabric and it applies a lot more pressure to the seams. The other thing you're probably not considering is that leather doesn't fold like fabric, you cant just iron it down flat.  You bend it.  You'll be surprised how easily flat & thin leather becomes 3 dimensional.  The thin bags belts you want to make have joinery where the leather overlaps or rolls over itself (plus reinforcing materials underneath so they don't stretch), and that gets very thick very quickly. And that's where the ability of the machine to "climb" is hugely important in leatherworking.  In fact you might not even be able to fit that section under the presser foot in a domestic.  I am also interested in that Singer "heavy duty" you linked above and there's another review video of someone reviewing it and using it.  You should see what he had to do to convince it to climb over the hem of a pair of jeans.  He did it in the end, but man, watching that completely erased any thought of using it on a leather project.

I know what you're thinking.  We've all been there: "surely there must be something one grade above my wife's domestic that can stitch leather, before I get to that >100kg monster".  No, there isn't, you need the monster.  Unless you're happy to go to a non-motorised machine, those are much more elegant, and some people hate them, some people love them.  I think what those people at the shops mean when they recommend the "heavy duty" plastic ones, is that the machine is able to stich a leather label on a pair of jeans.  But really, it's a machine for building fabric pants.

Edited February 6, 2022 by Spyros

[Spyros]

So now that you got some advice, why don't you buy it anyway and report back?  Get the $200 thing and try a few projects with thin leather.

[CrankAddict]

14 hours ago, Matt S said:

Out of interest, is your friend's wife a dealer in industrial or domestic/hobby Jukis? I believe that Juki keeps those two things very separate.
 

No, I'd refer to the man on the street as "the average man on the street". Compared with a furniture maker or cabinet maker he would know very little about wood. He might think of wood as the flat things Ikea furniture is made from. Nobody on this site looks down on people who use thin leather for watch straps, wallets or bags. However if you went on a woodworking forum and asked "what can a Proxxon FET actually do? I've seen videos of it buzzing through bits of 1/8" masonite" the experienced forumites there might say "maybe 3/4" of real wood with a struggle. Get a contractor saw at minimum to cut anything heavier, here's a few options.". That's what has happened in this thread but with leather.

Her store sells both.  They literally have a 2010q sitting next to a 1541 on the showroom floor.  She personally has a 1541 and a 555 at home along with a Janome domestic machine.  I went over and talked with her for nearly 2 hours yesterday and I am going to buy her 555 (which their Juki tech converted to a servo motor) for a couple hundred bucks.  It's an "I've got nothing to lose" price in my mind so I might as well try it.  Surely it can do more than the little Brother PS1000 I have.  And I'm fully aware the 555 is a "garment machine" not designed for heavy materials, doesn't have a walking foot, etc.  I'll see how far it can take me and if the need arises get a Cobra 26 EPS w/the flatbed add-on and be done with it.

The thing I'd push back on regarding your hobby store analogy is that leatherworker.net regularly showcases wallets and watch straps.  So discussing a sewing machine to accomplish such things on this forum seems "on brand".  If I were looking to marry two pieces of 0.05mm leather to create my own custom line of condoms then I could see the comparison to doll houses.  A cabinet maker is nowhere near the "miniature scale" end of the woodworking spectrum.  Nor is he able to deal with 6" thick beams.

In any case, I'm absolutely not "angry" and have enjoyed the input and conversation from you all.  Thank you.

Edited February 6, 2022 by CrankAddict

[Spyros]

58 minutes ago, CrankAddict said:

Her store sells both.  They literally have a 2010q sitting next to a 1541 on the showroom floor.  She personally has a 1541 and a 555 at home along with a Janome domestic machine.  I went over and talked with her for nearly 2 hours yesterday and I am going to buy her 555 (which their Juki tech converted to a servo motor) for a couple hundred bucks.  It's an "I've got nothing to lose" price in my mind so I might as well try it.  Surely it can do more than the little Brother PS1000 I have.  And I'm fully aware the 555 is a "garment machine" not designed for heavy materials, doesn't have a walking foot, etc.  I'll see how far it can take me and if the need arises get a Cobra 26 EPS w/the flatbed add-on and be done with it.

The thing I'd push back on regarding your hobby store analogy is that leatherworker.net regularly showcases wallets and watch straps.  So discussing a sewing machine to accomplish such things on this forum seems "on brand".  If I were looking to marry two pieces of 0.05mm leather to create my own custom line of condoms then I could see the comparison to doll houses.  A cabinet maker is nowhere near the "miniature scale" end of the woodworking spectrum.  Nor is he able to deal with 6" thick beams.

In any case, I'm absolutely not "angry" and have enjoyed the input and conversation from you all.  Thank you.

Report back please, I'm curious

[DrmCa]

DDL-555? It's high-speed textile machine.

[Matt S]

9 hours ago, CrankAddict said:

Her store sells both.  They literally have a 2010q sitting next to a 1541 on the showroom floor.  She personally has a 1541 and a 555 at home along with a Janome domestic machine.  I went over and talked with her for nearly 2 hours yesterday and I am going to buy her 555 (which their Juki tech converted to a servo motor) for a couple hundred bucks.  It's an "I've got nothing to lose" price in my mind so I might as well try it.  Surely it can do more than the little Brother PS1000 I have.  And I'm fully aware the 555 is a "garment machine" not designed for heavy materials, doesn't have a walking foot, etc.  I'll see how far it can take me and if the need arises get a Cobra 26 EPS w/the flatbed add-on and be done with it.

A 555 or other similar garment-weight industrial will probably do better than a domestic/hobby machine on leather, though I expect it to be still rather limited regarding feed positivity, material thickness, thread size and climbing ability. As you say $200 is "try it and see" money. The servo will certainly help with controllability, but you may have issues with the oil pump because you won't be running at full speed 99% of the time (what garment machines are optimised for). I'm not familiar enough with the 555 to say for certain.

 

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The thing I'd push back on regarding your hobby store analogy is that leatherworker.net regularly showcases wallets and watch straps.  So discussing a sewing machine to accomplish such things on this forum seems "on brand".  If I were looking to marry two pieces of 0.05mm leather to create my own custom line of condoms then I could see the comparison to doll houses.  A cabinet maker is nowhere near the "miniature scale" end of the woodworking spectrum.  Nor is he able to deal with 6" thick beams.

Wallets and watch straps (well, certainly not the good ones showcased on this forum) aren't typically made from garment leather -- which is not only very thin but has a soft handle and relatively loose fibre -- but a variety of thicker, stiffer and tighter fibre leathers. A domestic/hobby machine will not work very well with these sorts of leathers. That's why I was analogising to dolls houses and model boats, garment leather is the light extreme of leather work, just as thin strips of balsa and bass/lime wood is at the light extreme of woodwork. And you probably won't be happy with a watch strap or a wallet made from garment leather.

Wallets, watch straps, belts and thin belts live squarely in the "furniture and cabinet making" region of our woodworking analogy. Upholstery too. Bread and butter stuff for most leather workshops.

Leather condoms, now that's a market I never considered! You can get them made from sheepgut still. Invented by the Scots centuries ago but it took an Englishman to cotton onto the idea of removing them from the sheep before use... 

[DrmCa]

We got our DDL-553, which is a heavy fabric version of 555, for free. We would have never considered paying US$200 for a used single needle lockstitch machine. When we tried it with leather it wouldn't feed nor would it climb onto and off the thicker seams. We tried a roller foot but it was a royal pain and did not make things any better.

Oiling is not a problem when running at low speed because once a month we would floor it for a minute and that would pass enough oil through the wicks. It really only is a problem over many years of slow use.

[CrankAddict]

1 hour ago, DrmCa said:

We got our DDL-553, which is a heavy fabric version of 555, for free. We would have never considered paying US$200 for a used single needle lockstitch machine. When we tried it with leather it wouldn't feed nor would it climb onto and off the thicker seams. We tried a roller foot but it was a royal pain and did not make things any better.

I feel like your insistence that I'm so angry is a bit of projection.  With a servo motor upgrade I believe a 555 is quite similar to an 8700 so it would seem to be worth something.  Obviously not to you, but I have non-leather projects planned as well.  Surely you won't argue with me that we all need multiple sewing machines, so worst case this 555 will check one of the other boxes and go unused for leather.  Your sig lists your 553 for sale, out of curiosity, how much are you asking?