amuckart

Keeping Northmount’s point about cantilevering and balance in mind, the way I would do this is: - Take everything off the table and take the table top off the stand. - Remove the rubber edging. - Flip the table top so your marking etc. is on the underside and also so any tear out of the laminate is on the bottom. - Mark the line you want using a pencil. - Cut the end off the table using a track saw if you have access to one, or a circular saw and straight edge guide if not. Leave about 1/16th” extra. “Diablo” blades are good for cleanly cutting through the laminate but make sure you use a new, sharp, blade with a decently fine tooth pitch and only just enough blade extension to get through the material (assuming you can adjust that on your saw). - Take the sawn-off end and use it to mark out the rounded corners on your cut edge and saw most of the waste off leaving about 1/16th” clearance to the marked line - Get a straight 1/2” router bit that is long enough to cut the full thickness of the table top and has a guide bearing at the tip. - Clamp the off cut in place lined up with your marked out lines and use the router to trim the corners and cut lines straight and square. If you’ve never used a router before get someone else to do this. It’s not a great cut to be making for a total beginner. - If the edging is fit into a slot, use a slot cutting bit in the router to machine the slot and reinstall the edging. - Reassemble everything. If you’re borrowing a saw to do this it’s polite to buy a blade, IMO. Cutting laminates blunts blades quite fast. with that servo motor you can get rid of the speed reducer too and get some space back. Using that space for a needle position synchroniser would be a better quality of life improvement unless you have a particular need for _really_ slow stitch speeds.

Mine came with the toothed one for crepe soles. I made a knife one from a bit of old hacksaw blade, just guessing at the dimensions but it seems to work Ok.

Thank you so much, that information is greatly appreciated.

Watch how the thread is coming off the spool as you sew. If it’s not despooling cleanly and catches at certain positions that’ll cause a tension spike in the top thread. The solution if it’s just catching at a certain point is to make sure the thread guides are exactly centred over the spool and to make sure there’s enough distance between the top of the spool and the thread guides. if the thread is catching because the bottom of the spool has rolled or collapsed a bit I don’t know how to solve that.

They’re great machines, you can still get needles for them. At two cranks per stitch it does get tiring though. I need to put a motor on mine. I would love to see more pictures of the alcohol burner! Mine is missing that and I wasn’t aware it was even an option. What style of feed dog does yours have? There are two - a toothed one for crepe soles and a channeling one for leather.

G’day! Whereabouts are you? If you are on FB there’s a Pearson group on there that’s currently the best source of knowledge on the machines. I know a bit about the machines (I’m in Wellington) and gordond on here is probably the NZ expert. I re typeset the manual and redrew many of the pictures a few years ago. I see Tigweldor had linked it above.

What a cool machine! I have a Pearson & Bennion A1 but wasn’t aware there was an A2 as well! Exact dating isn’t possible but it’s Pearson & Bennion it is pre-1896 or thereabouts. Pearson & Bennion were acquired by British United in 1896, and after that machines were marked British United Sewing Machine Co. or BUSM. No idea what it’s worth, depends entirely on the collectors in your vicinity. If it were near me I’d pay a couple hundred NZD for it, just for the novelty value and interest.

If you’ve ever wondered what workplaces without OSHA and EPA would look like, here’s your answer. I feel sorry for that painter, and his family, and I don’t want to think about the poor sods working wherever those parts got chromed.

I think this is sound advice. If you have a dedicated binding machine, you have a dedicated binding machine; if you have a small cylinder arm machine with a synchronised binder attachment you have a flexible tool that can be adapted to multiple purposes.

I second Northmount’s advice to ditch the clutch motor and replace it with a servo if you can possibly afford it. If you’re going to go to all the work you’ll get a much better experience from a servo than a speed reduced clutch motor. You’ll also be able to add a needle position sensor, which is a big quality of life improvement. They aren’t terribly expensive really are worth saving up for. I will never go back to use a clutch motor on any machine I own now.

You may be setting yourself up for disappointment if you try and sew wallets on a 7-class machine unless you’re making extremely chunky wallets. They are not built for fine work. The needles and feet and holes in the feed dog are all huge and I’m not even sure it will tension wallet-appropriate thread without a whole lot of work.

I have a 30” arm 221 that came to me with a servo motor and synchroniser on it. I think the motor is a Ho Hsing but it’s not nearby to check. I don’t see any reason why any other kind of servo motor wouldn’t work so long as it had the required power. I also wouldn’t put anything less than a 750W on it, but where I live at least the price difference between a 550W and a 750W is trivial.

I reckon this bit should be made a pinned post on this forum. I’ve not seen such a succinct and useful explanation of check spring function and setting anywhere.

That was me If you don’t need the machine in a specific timeframe, and you’re comfortable with setting it up from scratch assuming it’s never been even vaguely adjusted, it might be worth it. I’m not a professional machinist or mechanic, but I’d stripped and rebuilt machines before I got mine. It still took me the thick end of 6 months to get it sewing properly. I value that as a learning experience now but it was a struggle at the time. Mine came from Hightex (CowBoy’s parent company) so I figured it wasn’t quite as much of a crapshoot as buying a random brand one. That said, someone else had done the same thing and had to completely dismantle the machine, flush machining debris out of the head and grind on a few parts before reassembling the whole thing from scratch before it would sew. With the resources available on here I could probably do that with a 441 today, but now that there’s a dealer in NZ who offer support etc. I’d be mad to and the next CowBoy machine I buy will be from the dealer. Not all machines are made equal, and not all factories making the same models do equally good jobs. I’ve got four Chinese clone machines from different factories and the Highlead is streets ahead of the others in terms of quality. The CowBoy/Hightex isn’t bad (except for the paint job which looks like they did zero surface prep beforehand). The Mercury is Ok but nothing to write home about and the rando brand one sews, but is not at all well finished and is kinda roughly cast. Fortunately it doesn’t get used much these days.

Thank you Uwe, that’s really useful!