Darren Brosowski

You and me both Gregg. If the price is right I cannot walk away and I have fallen in love with the 1950's to 1960's Japanese central bobbin machines. The only thing not in my collection - yet - is a Japanese vibrating shuttle zig-zag machine......

As a dealer it pisses me off no end when someone buys a machine direct from China and then they bring it to me to get it to work. Half the time it is shipped incomplete with a three phase motor, a stand that does not fit properly and no accessories. When I quote them what they need to get the machine up the standard that I would have sold them they are going to have to shell out another $1000 or more on top of a landed price that is already higher than my price because they did not realise that landing costs, import agent, taxes, transport from the wharf were all on top of the shipped price. Being an importer I know these costs and I know exactly what to order from the supplier and even then I can make mistakes BUT they are my mistakes and the buyer does not wear them

The Cowboy equivalent is the CB7205 which is based on the GB6-182.

Look at the clearance between the needle and hook, making sure you push the hook away from the needle. The shuttle can wear the spacer ring behind it and allow too much clearance so try cutting a thin cardboard ring to sit behind the spacer. I have seen this fix dozens of times on old 45k25's

On the topic of lovely old cup seamers - one of my customers has this baby on the shelf.

I am working on a 1910 Singer 45k25 for a customer and it is not a bad machine - a new feed dog and shuttle backing ring fixed up the bottom end issues - but both tensions had the wrong springs. Changed out the springs and top tension plates and noticed that someone had done some polishing on the bottom tension post. Set the tensions to what felt about right and off we went - first few stitches were ok then we started looping on the bottom. I noticed that the second tension was loose so did it up and had the same thing happen. The post had been polished so much that the nut would not bind to the thread properly so I fixed it by using a second thumb nut as a lock nut. I see this sort of thing a lot on machines and the moral of the story is that cleaning is great and polishing is ok but when there are fine tolerances involved be gentle. At most I use fine steel wool to polish any contact parts. Many a good 29k has bee destroyed by the over enthusiastic collector

The base Chinese machine is a GB6-182 which is a simple walking foot machine using the same shuttle as the Singer 7-5.

Before the major work I would just add that the needle clamp (the bottom of the needle bar) can be moved so make sure the needle is as close to the hook as possible without touching. If the thread is jamming up that could cause the feed issues so work on one thing at a time. Above all patience..........

Just to be clear that Steve owns and operates the Australian Cowboy business in his own right but we do work closely on product development and promotion @Trevor Bartlett

ABLE Sewing on Facebook at the moment. The machines are $250 + shipping email me darren@ablesewing.com.au

Certainly does Wiz.

That will have other applications too

Not sure if Cowboy USA is selling these yet but we have these on order in Australia. As well as burnishing edges it comes with leather discs for honing tools

Singermainia (Steve) you need to start paying me royalties on that photograph LOL