I recently acquired a techsew bell skiver. I have been trying to make a beveled skive but have not been able to. I've watched 'techniques of the bell skiver' but just come up short.
So as best as i can describe my setup, i have the tension lever on the very first notch and the presser foot rocked back like in Philips video. When I skive the leather, i can still feel a step in the transition rather than a slope to the edge. I can still kind of see the step. I'm also using a 20mm wide foot and the leather I'm trying on is coming in at about 1mm thick. My machine came with a 50, 30 and 20.
One thing I noticed, in your video, your tensioner doesn't seem to have much tension on the first or even second notch. On my machine, there seems to be a lot more tension even just on my first notch. Now, my machine is new so the spring may need to be broken in. But does spring tension have that significant of an impact on a bevel skive from a step skive? Maybe more angle in the foot?
Thanks for the responses fellas and to answer your questions
1)Alran goat skin
2)only used chrome tan so far
3)No negative outcome but was trying to learn how to skive a bevel. I was going to mess around with lining leather with a turned edge to see how well they lay together.
I also purchased some low friction ptfe tape to try avoid marking any leather. I see some people use it so I figured its worth a shot. I'll give your recommendations a try. Thanks!
I used to have the same issue. I solved it by doing what Phil suggested:
I always make sure that the toe of the presser foot is always higher than that the thickness of my leather, effectively starting the actual skive a few mm inside the presser foot (as opposed to at its toe).
It also helps a real lot to not leave a mark when skiving a leather that marks easily.
@Jaime Reyna Yes, high tension can have more of a compressing effect on the leather that may be leading to the step you are seeing.
1) What kind of leather is this?
2) Is this happening with both vegetable and chrome tanned leathers?
3) Does the mild step witnessed actually cause a negative outcome when used practically?
Indeed, no spring tension is going to be exactly the same, and I don't think the tension is calibrated to any degree of accuracy from the manufacturer.
More angle on the foot can help, just watch that the heel doesn't contact the feed roller, and the toe is further away from the roller than the leather is thick (i.e. leather = 1mm, toe to roller = 1.2mm).
It's the toe pushing the leather down into the blade that causes a step usually.