amuckart

As far as I know there isn't one readily available but these machines are pretty simple so the basics of operation are the same as most any other non-reversing drop-feed machine. There's a parts list on the singer site, and there was a 3rd party service manual kicking around on the 'net some time ago, but I don't think it was a legal copy. What is it you need to know? I've got a bunch of photos of my one being taken to pieces if there's a specific area that would help.

Hi Dominic, I had a very quick look and nothing jumped out at me. My advice would be to send them photographs of the kind of work you do and see what they have that would suit. I think you would be best with a machine with a wheel foot rather than a walking foot machine because you can see what you are doing much better with the wheel foot. Wheel foot machines will feed garment leathers just fine.

Hi Dominic, You could, straight-stitch machines for garment-weight leather do not take a lot of energy to drive, but it would need to be a custom solution and it would be unlikely to work very well. If you want to have a hand-cranked machine you could use a good quality patcher. Your best bet for extreme control may be a good servo motor that is properly programmed to allow very low-speed work. A more important factor is relentless practice with the machine. It depends on the needles. Industrial sewing needles come in a huge number of different standards. The 100/16 is the metric/singer size, the 134-35 system needles the Pfaff 335 takes are available in sizes that will match the high end of domestic machine needles. According to the 335 brochure on Pfaff's site it takes size 80-100 needles. The Seiko TE-6 takes DBx1 needles that are available in metric sizes from 65 up to 160, so you've got no problem with the range there. I don't know what the range of sizes the machine will use is but I doubt you'd have problems with needles in the 80-110 range.

Hi Ross, Don't forget my local currency is worth less than the USD, and I'm having to pay taxes on arrival. A Cobra machine is US$2495 + US$650 shipping + around US$400 for the additional feet and plates I got in addition to the stock ones. That's over US$3500 before I've even paid the 15% tax and local shipping costs. After tax and exchange rates that adds up to over NZ$4800. The machine I bought was just under NZ$3000, at my door with all the tax and shipping paid. That NZ$1800 buys lot of my time to set up the machine and tune it. Even if I had to buy, say, a new hook and pay for a local professional to help me if I got really stuck, I'm still coming out ahead. I'm reasonably handy with machines so provided the machine is basically sound and absent any really serious manufacturing defects I figured I would be able to get it going even if that meant taking it all apart and reassembling it clean as my friends had to do with theirs. Yes, this was a minor gamble, given the variable nature of ex-factory QA, but I knew that in the event of serious defects (which I haven't found) I could call on the warranty through the NZ-based vendor and get them fixed. That was a not-insignificant factor in the decision. If I'd been buying a machine for full-time professional use I'd have spent the extra money and bought a Highlead from the local importer/mechanic here and gotten a higher-quality machine fully set up and with local support, but that option was getting on for twice what I ended up paying and I'm a hobbyist so that wasn't justifiable.

If you're using LR point needles, try rotating it just a tiny bit so the edges are a little more in-line.

After my thread inquiring about the quality of drop-shipped machines from China I did a lot of asking around and checked the prices of a whole lot of options, including buying from Steve at Cobra or Bob at Toledo Industrial. I priced out buying a Highlead head from a local mechanic/importer (an old school chap who wears a tie and waistcoat in the workshop). I looked at a Seiko CH-8 that I talked to Dan at Campbell-Randall about feet for, and I costed out buying just a head and building a stand v.s. buying both. I even thought about just saving up for a Campbell high lift, but that fell into the Wife Acceptance category of "you can buy it, but you'll be sleeping in the garage with it". One day though... While I was working through these options people on this board, and all the dealers I pestered with questions were incredibly helpful so this is a public thank you to you Art, Wiz, Bob, Steve, Dan, Donna, and everyone who took the time to help educate me. A while ago I met someone in NZ who'd bought a Hightex (the brand Cowboy machines are badged with outside the US). Their initial impression of the machine was, to put it politely, that it showed no evidence of quality control. They also had trouble getting support from the seller, who wasn't based in NZ. That put me off the brand, but since then I found an NZ-based Cowboy reseller, and the owners of that machine stripped, cleaned, rebuilt and adjusted it and said it works well now. After covering and costing out a lot of options, I bit the bullet and ordered a 441-AE knowing it was going to come to me straight from the factory in China and need at least a jolly good tune up. I wasn't in for the same unbox-and-go experience someone buying a Cowboy from Bob would get but cost, and buying from an NZ-based reseller (which meant as a private individual I get the benefits of New Zealand's good consumer protection laws if it was a total lemon) were the deciding factors. The reseller I dealt with here is a manufacturer of skydiving equipment who uses a lot of Hightex machines. He was responsive and helpful, and barring the shipping being quite a bit over what he quoted, I found the whole process good. In the end the shipping was a small fraction of the cost and not a major issue. A hair under NZ$3000, tax and shipping included, got me the machine, stand, motor & speed reducer, all the optional feet and needle plates, sewing guide, and even a spare set of blanket feet to modify into an inline foot set. The only bit I didn't get was the table attachment. The next best option I priced out was over half again as expensive, and for that money I was prepared to sink the time into getting the machine working and paying for professional help if required. Delivery and Unboxing A couple of weeks ago I heard from the seller that the machine was in the country so I paid the shipping and taxes and started waiting for it to show up. Unfortunately the freight forwarders with the machine were muppets, but after ten days of "It'll be there before 4pm tomorrow, honest" it finally arrived earlier this week. That's when I hit the second snag, rather than reading the labels on the boxes and the instructions with the shipment, the freighters just put three random boxes on a pallet and sent them to me. I got my 441 head fine, but found two clutch motors and a Sailmaster zigzag machine in the boxes I was expecting the stand in. Annoying, but no fault of Hightex or the chap I bought the machine from. The machines arrived on a pallet in cardboard boxes. The boxes had taken a bit of rough handling but the internal polystyrene liners were undamaged. In the main box was the head, manual and parts, and a smaller box with the wheel and thread stand. Most bits were in plastic bags. The machine was greased for shipping and wrapped in plastic. They could have done a better job greasing and wrapping the hand wheel, it had some rust on it when I unboxed it. After checking everything looked to be there I stripped all the minor parts off, removed the shuttle race, bobbin winder and covers, and took it all out the back with a couple of cans of brake cleaner and some good synthetic oil (I use CRC Syntex on everything from featherweights to my Pearson, it's great stuff) (sorry about the recycling in the background) Before going after the bobbin winder with brake cleaner I took the rubber tyre off, but other than that I just saturated the machine and flushed everything thoroughly with the cleaner. It did the trick, the runoff was yellow-brown and had bits in. Two cans was just about enough but three would have been better. After that I carefully but thoroughly oiled the whole thing with Syntex, put the hand wheel on and it all turned over perfectly smoothly with no clunking or binding. Next, reassembly tuning and threading for the first time.

That's an old machine which lacks reverse and is probably going to be very difficult to find parts for. I don't know what second-hand machines cost in Italy but EU1060 seems like a lot for it unless it's had a complete mechanical rebuild rather than a basic refurbish and even then it seems like a lot for a machine that old. I think you'd be better off looking at the price of the Seiko and seeing if you can find one second hand, and if it fits in your budget I'd get one of those over the older Adler. The newer machines will last you longer, and the lack of reverse on the old machines just gets annoying unless you pretty much grew up with it. If a newer machine is out of your budget, check over the Adler very carefully. Hold the wheel and check for any play in the needle bar and shuttle carrier. Unless the're good and tight the machine won't sew consistently.

I meant to add, a trick I heard about from Al Saguto for modifying patcher feet to not mark the leather is to dip them in the plastic dip hardware stores sell for tool handles. Tool-dip is one brand name. I haven't tried it myself, but it makes perfect sense. It would leave a smooth, but slightly tacky foot that would feed without marking.

Hi Dominic, Leather points come in a variety of styles, you might want to look at fine tri-points for garment leather. Regular round points can be used in leather, but unless it's really old it was probably sewn with tri or lr points in the first place. If you haven't seen them already both Groz-Beckert and Schmetz have really good informational PDFs on their websites about the different styles of needle points for leather. The type of machine I would go for for this kind of work would be something like the Seiko TE-6B with the optional roller foot. This is a modern clone of the old Singer 17-class machine. I'm not sure if Dürkopp make one, I've only ever seen them done by Seiko. It is a cylinder arm machine with quite a small diameter arm for doing cuffs and the like. It is a drop-feed machine so you need to carefully adjust the feed dog height and foot pressure to reduce marking, but the roller feet will feed garment leather just fine and a well adjusted roller will often mark less than a regular foot. The machine has a 10mm foot lift by knee, and you can get a flat-bed attachment for it. There is a spec sheet here: http://www.seiko-sew...e-tf_series.pdf The other thing I would look seriously at getting is an Adler or Claes patcher in good condition. There is nothing like them for patching clothes and the little arms on them will get into places that no other kind of machine will. In good condition, with tight gears they will build a perfectly nice stitch. You might be able to do all your work with one if all you're doing is modifications and fixes, but it would be a great compliment to the Seiko. Your English is a darn sight better than my Italian, so don't worry about that!

How old is the servo driver your'e using? Modern ones should configurable to stop at almost any position you want. I don't know if commercial ones can do this, but I've seen a home-built servo controller that had a mode where the needle followed the pedal directly, so pushing the pedal down dropped the needle and lifting the pedal raised the needle. I don't know at what point it decided it had to transition through bottom dead centre though.

Hi Anthony, what is the thing under the cover.? It is a place where you put cams to do fancy zigzag patterns. Can I get a new tensioner.? Probably, but you'll want to look at domestic machine repair forums to find a source what about the bobbin area? If its as badly chewed up as the picture makes it look it probably needs a new hook at least, and likely a new shuttle race as well. Is it worth fixing? Only if you have a real attachment to it for some reason. It's not a rare or valuable machine, it'll never sew leather well, and if you want a machine of this model you can probably find one in much better condition for less than you'll spend on parts time and materials to get this into a state where it's useful.

I've done this a bit. I used a big baking dish over a bbq grill. The warning sign is smoke. The smoke point of beeswax is very close to its flashpoint, so if it's smoking, turn the fryer off and leave it for a bit. It sounds like you've got the right kit to extinguish a fire. Treat it just the same as a deep fat fryer fire. The most useful learning I got from hardening veg tanned leather in beeswax was to put it in a 50 degree C oven for an hour or two before hand to make sure it is completely dry. If there's any moisture in the leather it'll shrink and buckle as soon as it hits the hot wax.

Chrome's a very different look to nickel. My machine is painted too, not that any of the pinstriping survives except on the hand wheel. There are bare metal parts - notably the rim of the hand wheel and the shuttle race, and it's those parts I'm thinking of. I wouldn't plate a whole machine

Does anyone know whether there were nickel-plated parts on first-quarter 1900s vintage (Serial #7536) Pearson HM6? My one is heavily patinated all over but there are bits of the hand wheel that look a lot like they were nickel plated and I'm wondering if this was likely, or whether they would have been bare metal. If I can find out enough about what the machine looked like in its original livery, I'd like to restore it to that, but I'm finding it very difficult of locate any information on what the original. Failing that I want to make it look good, but plausibly 19-teens. Auckland, where I live, is incredibly humid, and exposed metal will rust badly without near constant attention so I'm thinking of getting things like the hand wheel, shuttle race, and foot pressure spring electroless nickel plated when I restore the machine. Thoughts? Ideas? Pictures of machines in original condition? Thanks.

Hi L.G. Technically, a servo motor is any electronically controlled motor that incorporates a feedback from the motor to the controller to control the speed. The Quick Rotan you picture is also a servo, but is a far more expensive (and capable) proposition than the type discussed here. It used to be that servos like Quick Rotan and Efka were the only ones available for sewing machines, but now there are simple cheap motors available that lack the power, needle positioning, and configurability but still offer big advantages over clutch motors. In my limited experience the cheaper motors lack the low-end torque of the expensive ones but for 1/8th the price that's an acceptable compromise for most people not doing production work. Personally, on a machine as simple as most heavy stitchers I'd go for an SCR or PWM controlled high-current low-voltage DC motor. Current is what gets you torque in a DC motor, and there are 1HP 36V motors out there that'd drive the biggest machine through any material the needle is physically capable of penetrating and, controller included, still cost much less than a full-featured multi-input motor like your Quick Rotan. I'm slightly surprised nobody but Sailrite have gone down this track to be honest. They've gone for US-made, and the price reflects that but for the Chinese clone market you can get the same thing for a third of what they're asking.

It's a domestic machine. Looks like a clone - probably Japanese - of the Singer model 15.

I was going to ask how you set up a machine/needle to get so little distortion of the leather around the exit holes of the needle, then I noticed the thread tails. I think in the second pic you've got the top-side of the work.

It's worth noting that these machines have a completely different feed system to the 3500 etc. The 2500 is based on a long line of machines that hearken back to the Singer 45k. They are what are called drop-feed machines. The feed is just like a regular domestic sewing machine. The only feeding action is from a feed dog underneath the material being sewn, which is pushed onto the feed dog by a presser foot (flat or roller). There needs to be a certain amount of pressure between the feed dogs and the foot for the material to feed. The 3500, 4500, and 5500 are all compound-feed machines in which the feed dog, presser foot and needle all move together to feed the material. Because of this the feed dogs can be completely smooth (or even omitted for some operations) and the material will still feed fine. Unfortunately my 45k is out of action or I'd post pictures of the bottom stitching.

I don't, yet, but it's very high on the list of tools to get made seeing as I have medieval style awls already. I've seen photos of a couple of reproductions but I've never handled one. I've seen photos of the one in the Museum of London too, but I'm not a fan of the shape of that one. I only got a regular style round knife recently but other than the handle geometry and the spike, I don't see the blade geometry of the medieval ones being much different from a modern round knife. They might be a touch thicker in the spine on account of being made of wrought iron with a welded steel edge, but until I get one made I won't know how well that holds up. Nobody's quite sure what the spike out front is for. There's a few plausible theories but as far as I know no medieval examples exist in good enough condition to know its geometry or whether it had sharp edges.

Bluntly, the seller is lying about the capabilities of the machine in an attempt to boost the price. eBay is rife with that scam.

Have a look at pergamena.net's goatskins I got a sample from them a little while ago that included some good thick goat. It's pit tanned though, so it acts a bit differently to modern veg tan. The calfskin samples I got from them were the nicest leathers I've ever handled, by a long long way.

I wouldn't know how to do this if my life depended on it, but I happened to be reading Jeff Mosby's site just now and saw a tutorial on roped borders linked from his tutorials page it uses one of Bob Beard's rope tool which you can find on this page.

Thanks for the extra pictures. Now to find out who else has those or if they're a weaver exclusive.

Thanks, I look forward to the feedback. Variable. The stuff I'm working with is 70 or so years old so it's a little brittle occasionally. Overall though, I like it. Making threads is a little time consuming, and a bit of an art unto itself but I think it's absolutely worth it in terms of the longevity of the final product and the ability to make threads to almost any thickness from a single spool. It does rely on good hand wax though, and making that is another skill again, but worth learning.

If the uppers are basically sound, I'd just take these in and get whole new soles put on them.