Hey it's Nico from Atelier Grinda,

I wanted to say a few words about the skiving machine!

First of all, the skiving machine or bell skiver is one of the best investments for your workshop. You will never regret buying one because it will bring your leather creations to a whole new level!

It can be a little bit intimidating or even confusing to use a machine like this one and this i exactly why I filmed this tutorial, to help you master this machine in no time!

Before, this kind of technical knowledge was reserved for people working in leather workshops and the information for the general public was just extremely limited (it took me over a year on my own to figure everything out). That is now over!

Learn how to set up every part of it and start skiving and splitting leather like a professional leather crafter! From choosing the perfect feed roller, to adjusting and fine tuning the small parts of the machine, to performing different types of skives, I cover it all in this 135 minutes tutorial!

I also wanted to warm you about something! I had no idea about this to be honest, I learnt it from my students when a lot of them asked me if buying these alternatives was a good idea! So, there are many manufacturers online selling and marketing machines as "skivers" or "manual skivers" when in reality there are not skiving machines and will never perform as such. Please remember this: a skiving machine has an electric motor, and a bell knife (a circular knife). All the rest of machines that do not have that, can never do the same functions and are most probably a waste of money. I spent 25 minutes drawing the models on my ipad so you can have an idea of what I am talking about.

These "manual skivers" cost hundreds of euros (even thousands I kid you not!) online and have been promoted as a viable alternative to a traditional skiving machine. Pulling the leather with the strength of your arms will never get you accurate, uniform or fine results. The second biggest issue is that you can never stay sharp on these alternatives because the blades need to be changed after every second use and end up costing a fortune. On a traditional skiving machine, it takes less than 10 seconds to get your blade razor sharp again. I like to tell my students to think long term in terms of cost per use knowing that a traditional skiving machine will last you at least 20 years, and that is a low estimate.

Anyway, I wanted to write a few lines about this common misconception because several students from the Leather School have had doubts about this and I wanted to spread the word to all of you crafters out there.

If you'd like to learn the art of leather, click here to get started!

Cheers,

Nico🤠