Leather skiver

[churchjw]

Just finished my leather skiver. I modeled this after an antique one a friend loaned me. I made it narrower 5" since I am mostly doing belts. The blade is made out of a section of an old planer blade.




It cut a piece of leather down to .030" thick with no problem. Will be interested to see how long the blade stays sharp. It has done 5 belts so far and its still sharp.

Jeff

 

[Hawkeye]

Nice bit of work, Jeff.

I'm a tad curious ... If you pull the belt through at an angle (ie rotated as seen from above), will it cut with a slicing action? Maybe an adjustable fence that can change the angle and be moved right or left to use a fresh part of the blade?

 

[sophijo]

Nice!

 

[8ntsane]

Nice work Jeff

Your new skiver should make easy work on your belts now that its finished.:thumbzup:
Do you also do leathe engraving, and stamping? In the last few months, I have been looking at many you tube vids of leather crafting, and find it a most interesting craft. Watched countless Tandy vids now. Im thinking of getting there starter kit, and giving it a go. Anyway, great looking job on the new skiver.
:high5:

 

[Alan Douglas]

Interesting. How wide was the original, and was the thickness fixed or could it be varied during the cut?

I've occasionally needed to skive leather for bookbinding, but never could get the hang of using a paring knife. The leather always seemed too stretchy.

 

[churchjw]

Never tried to cut one of the belts at an angle. They cut easy straight on. Not sure how that would interact with the roller and the blade. The edge of the blade has the be at the tangent of the roller on its center line. If not it stops cutting. The machine has an adjustment that moves the roller forward and back so that as you change the roller height you can move its tangent pointy. I will try to move the belt to different parts of the blade.
I just do belts with a buckle. LOL I don't have any machines with power belts. Wish I did they are supper cool.
I did some leather work long ago. I am just now getting back into doing it. I ordered all new tooling from Tandy. I got their starter level tooling and so far I have not been impressed. The stitching punch came apart midway through my first project. I think I am just going to make my own tools from now on. The leather I got from them was also not great. I ordered belt blanks and both of them had belly sections. Belts should be made from the back area never from the belly which stretches to much.

Jeff