Some of our customers have been asking about the Schärffix leather paring machine. How do you use it? Is it any good? Is it easy to use? Do you have a video of how to use it? So after quite a bit of persuading I have finally agreed to make a short video, you can watch it here.
I actually love my Schärffix, it makes my job so much easier. To be honest I’ve never been that good at paring leather. I do think the secret to good paring is always keeping your paring knives very sharp. Dominic Riley will be teaching a workshop on knife sharpening and paring in Canberra this year. I usually bevel the edge of my leather with a paring knife before running it through the paring machine, it just avoids catching on any uneven edge bits. I always begin with a new blade and I change the blades regularly, the minute I feel that rough, grating feeling or hear a grating sound. The Persona Double Sided Blades are very reliable, some blades are not, you put a new one in and it feels rough straight away. The good thing about the double sided blades is you can use both sides. I like to mark the used side with a marker pen when I flip it so that I know straight away if one side has been used or not.
The Schärffix comes with 4 different size rollers and some spare blades. The rollers make it easy if you want to par a channel of a certain width in the middle of your leather. It also comes with the screwdriver to loosen and tighten the bolt to release your blade. I usually just tighten it with my fingers because I think over tightening is unnecessary and can wear out the thread.
You can tilt the blade by turning the wheel above it so that you can par a bevelled angle. If you want to return the blade to a parallel position or check the angle, a good tip is to place a piece of white paper behind it and squat down to look directly through the gap.
Place your leather under the blade from back to front. Start slowly pulling gently and evenly. It’s always worth having a practice on an offcut before you begin on your cut piece. I like to go around taking a small amount off at a time and measure with my thickness gauge until I reach the correct thickness, rather than taking too much off and risk the leather tearing.
I hope this helps.