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!