Shoe machines

[john_ralston]

I talked with a mutual friend, and he basically told me that the wheel was used to even up the edge of the belt after the two pieces were glued together and stitched.

Would the burnishing type wheels, as pictured above with the grooves, remove any materail?

I am no longer planning to use the trimmer anyway, so I am just thinking about other uses for that part.

Thanks,

John

[dearbone]

John, first i want to mention that there is no ill intention here,but to give you our tips and suggestions as we know them and you take what is sound to you,after taking a closer look,the machine does appear to be a trimmer and i don't doubt that one can master the technique of trimming belts on it,but i hope you agree that the machine was intended for trimming soles of shoes while the lasts in them which are firmer than belts and more room to hold and therefore a little safer.
The burnishing wheels above do have grooves,but i think they are for removing access wax on the edge and not taking leather,if i may say this,if you use a fine sander and than burnish your edges and than use the burnishing wheel to get a good shine,that may work,i guess the wheel works like our hand edge irons.
Sorry to hear about the passing away of your friend.

Nasser

[john_ralston]

Nasser,

Thanks for all the input, and I hope I am not being too much of a bother with these obviously novice questions.

The trimmer will just have to wait for the next soul that gets this finisher! I like my fingers too much to risk any foolishness.

I am going to see about getting an edge iron, as I believe the main shaft is set up for a bayonet mount on the left hand side. I will sand the edges and then burnish and use the edge iron to get the final product.

My mentor may have been using a trimmer, but he did this for some 30 years, so he had a few decades more experience than I.

John

[dearbone]

John,

Your questions were good ones and no bother at all,we all learn from each other here,the safety of our fingers is the concern,knowing what this beast can do.

Nasser

(Message edited by dearbone on May 06, 2009)

[courtney]

I guess this is the best place to post this. There is a fortuna skiving machine on ebay right now for buy it now $300 plus shipping. I dont know if thats a good deal or not but there you go.

Courtney

[1947redhed]

Well, I'll point out the obvious. This is for the head only. You'd still need to put a table and motor on it. Several additional hundreds of bucks. And you don't know if this guy knows anything about shipping machinery. There's an art form to packing cast iron equipment and having it arrive in one piece much less operational.(I learned this the hard way.) You live in Petaluma, close enough to San Francisco where there is still some apparel industry. I'd either find a used equipment dealer there or order a skiver from Melanie. That way you could pick it up yourself or pay only shipping within California instead of from Chicago. Of course if you like "projects" and "gambling" this could fill up a lot of hours. Just my 2 cents.

Regards,
Georgene

[dw]

Without a link or an auction number, it's hard to comment whether it's a good deal or not.

Georgene is spot on about all the hassles involved with shipping cast iron and tables for skivers tend to be a little more complicated than for sewing machines. So it's a little harder to create your own from an old solid core door, for example.

But I will say this, even without the table and so forth, anything less than $1k would make me suspicious. A good "knife" and the feed wheels could set you back a couple of hundred and that's not saying anything about the parts that might be missing....or were replaced with something close but not exactly right.

I bought a rebuilt Fortuna skiver ($1800.00) that had had the feed wheel armature replaced and it never did work quite right. Fortunately, I had a Fortuna knock-off (a Pederson) that had an armature that worked perfectly on the Fortuna and, surprisingly, the armature on the Fortuna worked perfectly on the Pederson. I dodged a bullet there but it could have been bad.

Tight Stitches
DWFII--HCC Member

[jesselee]

All,

Does anyone know about the Canadian Shoe Manufacturing company, Montreal Quebec? Is it still around?

Cheers,

JesseLee

[jon_g]

Jesse Lee,

No, I can't say as I've heard of them. If it's shoe machines you are looking for there are a couple in that general area. Landis Letendre comes to mind they're in Quebec, also Batawa Shoe Machinery, in Ontario. Both companies have web sites.

Jon

[jesselee]

Jon

Thanks, I'll get right to that. Seems the treadle and drive wheel to my Civil War era McKay stitcher got lost along the way and I need them replaced. Hopefully they are just buried under 200 years of shoe equipment in the shed..

Cheers,

JesseLee

[jon_g]

Hopefully. I don't think Landis will be able to help you with that. I'm on the look out for a treadle sewing machine for closing uppers and they barely seemed to know what I was talking about.

Good Luck

Jon

[jesselee]

Jon

Most old dressmaking Singer treadle machines can do that, and in fact did in the late 1800's and early 1900's. If you use a nylon thread it will be super strong. You can get all sizes of leather needles for them. I personally prefer the 1870's-80's Wheeler and Wilson. They were used for cloth and leather and had a cast iron drive arm. I like a machine that you can see all the moving parts. Purely an esthetic visual thang.

Cheers,

JesseLee

[big_larry]

FYI

I recently purchased a wonderful old singer zig zag machine from, John Guarde & Company Limited in Canada. This is the third machine Ihave purchased from him and many bobbins, needles and tables. I really like doing business with these folks! The freight is paid by the shipper and all went well. As usual he supplied me with a monster machine in perfect condition.

However,

UPS just sent me a bill for a heretofore unheard of Entry prep fee, Disbursement fee, and merchandise Processing fee. The due date is the same day I received the billing.

OK,

I am paying the fee's, however, this business practice has me steamin' in that they never charged these fees before. There was no warning to the Garde Company nor to myself before or during the shipping process. You see, the asking fee was prepaid from Canada and now the UPS folks are adding "DING FEES" seemingly at their leisure.

Fellow boot and shoe makers, Even a rattlesnake will give a warning before striking. I think I am angry! Thank you for tolerating me.

Larry Peterson HCC Member

[tmattimore]

Why pay it? Unless the company in Canada will get stuck with it ignore it. The shipping was pre- paid by them they should have put it on up front like their fuel and rural delivery charges.

[jask]

I think that as the agreement was freight paid by shipper and you were not informed nor agreed to these charges they should contact the shipper. The shipper may have a commercial account that waives these charges or have some influence they can apply.
We use UPS on several large accounts at work and they are very competitive and helpful but I have seen them treat non-account or small account customers very poorly, especially if the shipment was not properly prepped and papered to go through customs.

[dw]

During the recent brouhaha over insole shoulders, I ordered a couple of shoulders from Warkov-Safeer in Winnipeg (?). I specifically asked about shipping costs and import duties, etc.. Since Canada and the US have a free trade agreement...what is it called??!...both W-S and I were near sure that there would be no additional charges. No custom fees, at any rate.

But shortly after it came in, I got a bill from UPS, asking for additional monies. Like you, I was pretty upset as well. I called W-S first...no help there. Then I called UPS.

Turns out the fees were import fees and brokerage fees at customs, that sort of thing. At first, I was told that a certain portion of the fees would be waived...my argument was, if there was no duty why should there be brokerage?

However, I got a call back, from someone higher up the chain, several days later who told me all the fees were legit. Turns out even though this trade agreement (Nafta!) is in place, the Canadian firm must file a statement and fill out a bunch of forms for every product it ships across the border in order to obtain a waiver for that product. These waivers are called "naftas" and they must be on file.

So...the upshot is that it's probably a legitimate fee that you owe for bringing "foreign" product across the border. If you look more deeply into it, I suspect you will find that it's almost entirely associated with customs and customs brokerage, etc.. UPS is just getting its act together (finally) when it comes to these kinds of charges. Anyone who brought stuff into the country in the last ten years may or may not have gotten lucky but in the last two years there is no "lucky" about it--you're gonna get charged.

Tight Stitches
DWFII--HCC Member

(Message edited by dw on July 26, 2009)

[kieran_ionescu]

I have recently been on the hunt for a finisher, but to no avail. They are not within my current budget.

My question is this-

Is there a way to make one with a bench mounted motor? It seems like if you had the right shaft on it you could just change out the wheels. I am aware that there would be no dust management and the process would be inefficient(but hey, so it making shoes by hand). If one were to do this what kind of motor would they need, etc.? Essentially, I am looking for a cost friendly alternative to a finisher.

As always, thanks in advance.

Kieran

[johnl]

Kieran
I believe that there should be many ways to do this. You can mount a wheel directly onto a motor, or use a shaft with pillow block bearings, a fan belt, and a pulley to mount a wheel on both ends of the shaft. Old washing machines are a favorite source of motors. Other than that, I think that a 1/3 or 1/2 horsepower motor should be fine. You can control the speed of the wheels with your choice of pully size. A shop vac can be rigged up for dust control

[romango]

I rigged up my own finisher and spent an enormous amount of time trying to get it to do the job. It really never worked very well.

I ended up wishing I had just saved the money toward a real finisher.

The biggest issue was dust management, which is built into a finisher. But there were also many problems configuring a usable sanding wheel.

Sorry to be a wet rag, but maybe you can save yourself some anguish.

You should be able to pick up a used finisher for around $1,000. Money well spent IMHO

- Rick

[kieran_ionescu]

You're the man! Let you know how it goes.

[dw]

I'm with Rick on this one.

If you look carefully you might be able to pick up an old 400 line finisher for under $500.00. Check with your finders in your area...you'd be surprised how many of those outfits buy out shoe repairs that are going out of business and then store the equipment in the basement.

If nothing else they will know who is getting ready to retire or has extra machines.

Tight Stitches
DWFII--HCC Member

[kieran_ionescu]

Again. Thanks for all the input. I'll take it all into consideration.

[johnl]

Well I am learning and working away. Learned that a line finisher is not as easy to make as I thought it would be. Thanks to Kieran"s question and all of the replies, If and when it comes time, I will look for one instead of thinking I can rig it.
Got 2 awl handles made, and a third on the lathe. How many of these should a fellow have???? I will post a picture in a couple of days when they are all finished.
Found a singer 31-15 for sale. About 600 miles away from me, but the fellow is going to ship the head to me. I think I will be able to use my consew motor, clutch and table, and just figure a way to mount either one as needed.
Nice older guy, sent me pictures of the machine as well as his wife of 59 years, and his 1925 ford (mint condition) that he has had for 52 years. Boy, he keeps things hanging around.
John Lewis

[dw]

How many should you have? Well, you need one for your sewing awl, one for your inseaming awl, one for your square awl, one for your German awl...and then a back up for each of these in case one breaks in the middle of the job.

I think I have close to twenty awls stuck in a brass pot of beeswax. Of course some of those are pegging awls--three I think.

Tight Stitches
DWFII--HCC Member

[johnl]

Looks like I am not as far along as I thought I was on the awl handles. 2 1/2 down, 5 1/2 to go. Is Mr. Anderson a good source for all of these awl blades?
Thanks DW
John Lewis