Manual Leather Skiver Peeler Splitter Thinning Skiving Machine Leathercraft Edging Machine for DIY Project

Rebinders Beware. I am a pretty handy guy. I work on machines and can typically get things to work. I decided to buy this for Bible rebinds thinking that I could work around any tolerance issues and make this my go to skiving device. I was wrong... This product is broken and I'm outside of my return window. I will happily change this review and work with the machine if the company will send replacement parts or replace the item. This product has been a huge let down and is not worth buying. I wish I would have went with the green device that does straight cuts only or just had stuck to something else. Now I'm out $70 and flustrated. You cannot get this to cut straight or keep your desired angle. It literally changes angle on you every time you use it.

This CAN be a good purchase. It's, price wise, cheap. The machine itself, yeah, it's made pretty cheaply to. ONLY BUY OF YOU'RE WILLING TO SPEND ABOUT AN HOUR TUNING IT! For tuning the goal is to get rid of all the extra wobbles, wiggles, and jimmying by "correcting" for horrible tolerances. 1)Start with removing the pins that are clipped on. (Attach a small magnet next to the clip so that it doesn't go across the room or you lose it some other way. ) 2) Remove the adjuster knob. 3) Remove the screwed in inserts that holds the pin and the adjuster knob. 4) Wrap the threads of inserts with thread tape. 5) Tighten the lower insert until right and aligned so that the forks on the adjuster align properly. (Put a small screwdriver through the insert. Don't He-Man it into place, the main body of the machine is pot metal and will strip out.) 6) Place a thin washer between the top insert and the body. (This gives it a further range of motion for tilting the blade. ) Then attach the insert just like you did for the lower one. 7) Sqeeze the forks on the adjuster so that it slides onto the insert tightly. (No He-Man, remember cheap easily broken parts. And one is right hand thread and one is left. Finding a left handed threaded anything is horrible.) Align the hole of the fork with the insert. 8) Wrap the pins in a couple layers of aluminum foil. (Your shiming the pins to fit tighter.) Twist the pin on the same way the foil is wrapped, don't push it straight in. That will bunch the foil and remove it from where you need it. 9) Once the pins are in check for wobble. It you have ANY try again with the above steps. 10) Remove the horizontal Allen head bolt that is above the razor blade. Thread tape it and reinstall. Ensure no wobble at that point. 11) Remove the 2 pivot screws (horizontal allen head bolts below the spring with a stop nut on them). Thread tape and reinstall. Both pivot screws have a point and they must align with the dimple inside or out won't adjust correctly/ evenly. Do not over tighten the pivot screw or set nut. (Common theme here right....) 12) Remove the vertically mounted turn screw and add a set nut. (This isn't mandatory, however, when you use it and the adjustment slips you'll hate yourself for not having done it.) 13) If you have a bench vise use that to secure the machine into place during use vs the janky table mount bolt. 14) Don't think you need a huge angle to skive with. The small roller pin, a tight angle, and holding the material that is not being trimmed lower than the roller pin. The full roller pin is only used for skiving the piece flat instead of giving it a bevel. I've got mine tuned so that I can reliably Skive down to half a mm. Once you get it right, it's a simple machine so it shouldn't need much if any maintenence.

A lot of these machines get a bad rap. That being said, the machine I received is more or less good to go out of the box. There are famous you tubers who paid high end prices for similar machines and had to do a lot of "adjusting" to make their's work. Mine has tight tolerances and only needed the blade angle adjuster tightened. I tested it out on some very soft temper pull up leather and it worked exactly as it should, after I decided on the angle I wanted it to skive. I would have no issues buying another one of these for my shop, but I doubt I will ever need to.

My unit became very difficult to use and then the metal failed and it was unusable. My experience was that it is not durable nor easy to use.

I had been curious about this type of leather skiver for quite a while. When I received it I started setting it up by clamping it to my bench. While getting ready to test it out the lever arm used to raise and lower the blade came off. There wasn't that much force required to move the lever arm and I assumed that the level arm screwed in and had just backed out in shipping. I picked it up and realized that it wasn't threaded and instead it was just a press fitted rod that went into a hole on the skiver. The only problem was the hole was only maybe and 1/8th of an inch deep and the rod was rounded on both ends so there was even less material for rod to hold on to. As there was no way for me to fix this easily I returned it for a refund. I don't know how well it would actually work because I never got a chance to use it. I seemed solid, but there seems to a lack of quality control.

I did all the little tweaks suggested by another reviewer and that seemed very helpful however while trying to put the leather strip (thinner chrome tanned calf skin) in place using the lever release, the lever actually broke off and I was unable to put it back in. If this hadn’t happened I would have been content but without this lever using the skiver is impossible. This is definitely getting returned.

Works much better for veg tan leather. Really need to work with this tool to get it to do what you want it to. Definitely practice on scrap leather to get the feel for how deep it will skive. For the money it's not bad, but hand skiving still better for me, personally.

Although good / strong / quality material, it failed / broke within a month (30days) of use.

Der Versand war wirklich unglaublich schnell. Angekommen macht das Gerät auch erst mal einen guten Eindruck. Der Anbau an die Arbeitsplatte erfolgt erst mal mit Schrauben aus der eigenen Werkstatt. Die erste Rasierklinge ist schon verbaut.....weitere liegen nicht dabei. Die Klingen für etwas dickeres Leder sind sehr stabil und auch scharf. Beim Austausch der ersten Klinge ist das Gewinde für die Klingenaufnahme schon sehr seltsam abgenutzt oder verkehrt geschnitten...nicht sehr vertrauenserweckend. Der Hebel für die Höhenverstellung liegt beim dritten Einstellen schon in der Hand.....ich habe das ganze Teil wieder verpackt und zurückgeschickt. Schade um die ganze Zeit von der Bestellung bis zum Eintreffen. Aber das ist Schrott in Kartonage verpackt. Ich bleibe beim Skiven per Hand.

Works grate once you get how it works

Out of the box there is a lot of play on the connections and adjustment screws, which makes it very difficult to use. After tightening all of these down, and adding some PTFE tape to the threads it works perfectly even on soft leather which I've always had trouble skiving.

This tool work's some what, The biggest issue I find is where the cuttings of the leather that comes up from the Blade BADLY hit's the Allen screw head that holds it in, and makes it stop as you pull on it, it needs to be redone as this is not good as you cut in too deep where it locks up, I've had to redo too many pieces because of it, Now here's where you need to go (TEMU) they have a Plain that will do this, a Heck of a lot better, I now have both of what they sell, and they work GREAT.

beats those pricey $5000 BUCK finicky machines any day!