How to set your 8116 hand cranked leather splitting machine

The 8116 series hand crank leather splitting machine is the utimate bench mounted splitting solution for doing level splits on very heavy and thick leathers.

The gear driven bottom feeder and long crank handle affords the user the highest degree of mechanical advantage when splitting thick and tough leather hides, belts, and soles of shoes. The machine can split leather, rubber, crepe, and other natural and man made leather products with ease.

The leathercraft tool features a fully adjustable thickness gauge allowing the user to efficiently control the depth of the split on each and every piece. This affords a high degree of precision when splitting mutiple pieces.

a. adjust bottom roller so that the top roller comes down on the blade and when the top roller comes down on the blade the adjustment setting on the gauge scale on the top of the machine is set to slightly below zero.

b. next set the blade about .5 mm above the bottom roller and so that it almost touches the roller. Space the blade close to the roller.

c. adjust the tension on the bottom nuts so that they are pretty tight. There needs to be a lot of tension for the machine to work properly.

d. check to see that when you bottom the top roller against the blade that the depth stop adjustment gauge is set to zero.

Please see the correct adjustments when we set them up here:

1. We set blade to be about 2- 3 mm above the roller, and almost touching against roller when adjusted front to back.

2. We normally tension top nut on spring set down a lot so the rollers have a lot of tension on them.

3. The bottom nuts are used to adjust the left and right balance of roller. Please check to make sure blade is set right on machine (dead level) and then adjust the roller using bottom nuts on spring until it is level with the leveled blade.

4. When the adjuster on the machine for thickness of skive is set right, it will go all the way and touch the last score on the scale. At this point the top roller will be resting firmly on the blade. You can adjust blade and rollers according so this happens.

5. The key to this machine operating correctly is a lot of tension on the top nuts on spring set as well as making sure blade is level and also making sure the roller is set level with blade once blade is set level.

Regarding your sharpening of the blade:

1. We normally do not "hollow grind" the blades on these machines to a great degree. The blades are wedge shaped and so we try to keep the same geometry by sharpening both top and bottom of blades evenly.

2. Most blades for splitting machine are beveled on one side and flat on other. In this case you grind top and do not grind bottom. As I recall these blades are beveled equally on both sides. It is therefore best to sharpen both sides equally during the sharpening process. A hollow ground blade will have a curve to it and we advise against doing this with the blade for this machine.