Ye Newe Olde Sewinge Machyne of Far Cathay

 

I bought this machine a couple of years ago, and have only just got around to setting it up into a usable condition. I love its bare mechanical aesthetic, free of any sort pandering to convenience or fashion or manufacturing quality.

It tends to be labelled on Youtube and AliExpress and the like as "Chinese Shoe Patcher", and the same basic machine is marketed by a whole bunch of vendors, with variations in colour and quality of finish. I don't recall exactly who sold me this one; I got it via AliExpress, and it cost me a couple of hundred Kiwibucks including postage.

It came with three spindly little pipe-legs that are supposed to screw into its base, but frankly I don't see how it would be possible to use it on them. They'd be wobbling all over the place, and the pressure on the hand-crank is sufficient to move the whole shebang around even with the solid block of macrocarpa I've got it screwed to. It really needs to be clamped solidly to the bench or table I'm working at.

As well as a decent base, I also had to make a bobbin stand because the little rod sticking out of the frame provided for the task is entirely inadequate.

It came with a few spare bottom bobbins and a spare bobbin-shuttle; the bobbins are a non-standard size, but spares are available on Amazon and elsewhere if you know where to look — I don't, but various Youtube dudes do, and have provided appropriate links. There is no way that I can find to wind the bobbins automatically, as I could do on my Pfaff sewing machine, but my usage is light enough that winding them by hand isn't overly onerous. It only takes five minutes or so, and would be quicker still if I rigged up something less intrusive than my sausage-fingers to hold the bobbin while I'm winding. (There's a mysterious sprung rubber wheel on the back of the machine that doesn't seem to do anything, and maybe it's part of a bobbin-winding system? If so, I can't see how it would work.)

The instruction pamphlet that came with it is laughably bad. Even taking into account the problems of translating from Chinese to English, the content is both irrelevant and obscure. It doesn't even include a threading diagram or guide. Fortunately, the machine is popular enough with American leatherworkers that there's a decent amount of instructional content about it available on Youtube.

It creates a decent seam through three or four layers of fairly soft furnishing leather; I haven't tried it yet on anything more resistant than that, but it should be okay I think. It is a bit difficult to control, as one hand is always engaged in turning the crank, while the other has to manipulate the work piece under the presser foot. However, that should be just a matter of practice. I won't be using it on anything that needs neat, straight seams just yet, though there's no reason why it couldn't produce them if I knew more about what I was doing.

It's certainly a lot faster (though as yet, less precise) than hand-stitching, though not as fast as an electrical machine. I have seen modifications to this machine that add an electric motor and foot control, and they seem to work well, though at the price of portability.

Apparently it will handle fairly heavy thread, though the nylon thread provided with it is quite light. It's adequate to my needs for the moment; I don't foresee having to sew draught-horse harness or anything any time soon.

School Bag

This is, fundamentally, an old leather school bag, such as was commonly used by school children in New Zealand back in days of yore before Hello Kitty backpacks and the like became de rigueur. I've been using it as a utility bag (i.e. a handbag, only I can't call it a handbag owing to being a Manly Male Man) for quite a few years, but recently I've been tinkering with it to make it more convenient in use.

I had to re-stitch it completely, the old stitching being completely rotten. I added new, much longer straps, so that I can get a jacket or something in there. I added the handle, probably the single most useful addition. I added a little strap on each side to hang things off, and I also added a central strap that latches very quickly and easily on to a little push-knob thingy (I don't know the name of it) so that I don't always have to have the main straps buckled when I'm carrying it by the handle rather than the shoulder-strap. And, of course, I put my monogram on the flap, though that was done pretty much as soon as I got it, many years ago.

I don't know how old the bag is, but they had pretty much disappeared by the time I was out of primary school, in the early '70s. There's no reason why it shouldn't last another hundred years or longer, as long as it isn't left in a ditch out in the weather.

The Long-Awaited Handbag

Quite some time ago, I said that I would make Annette a good sturdy leather bag to replace all her store-bought bags that had a distressing tendency to fall to bits after a year or two of use.

After literally years of procrastination, this is that bag.

It may have taken a while to get here, but it should last longer than either of us, and it's of a size that will make a useful work bag as well as a lollygagging-about bag.

It has a simple two-part buckled shoulder strap, not shown in this photo because it just gets in the way of the viewer's appropriately awed appreciation of its majesty. At the moment it's just a single gaping cavity, but I'll probably do something about making some modular removable pockets for its innards, for phones and what-not. However, as of this moment it's a usable bag, for the carrying of Needful Things.

Stitching Pony

After many, many years of swearing and complaining about saddle-stitching, I finally got my arse into gear and made myself a stitching pony.

It is clamped by means of a simple bolt, with the head anchored inside a big wooden knob at one end, and the nut in a socket in the opposing arm. The jaws are faced with leather (flesh side out), both for added grip, and to make sure that the piece I'm stitching isn't marked. The pony itself is made out of a kwila fence slat, and the base is just a bit of plywood I had lying around.