amuckart

What an interesting machine! Any chance you could email me bigger pictures of it? It's an obvious earlier version of the SD.28 and it's interesting to see what's been refined. I'm quite interested in Junker & Ruh machines from a historical persepective. What you should pay for it depends on what you want it for. If it's being offered as a collector piece, be prepared to fork out big, the 22s are less common than the 28s. If you want it as a using sewing machine, consider what it does compared to what you want to make, local availability of needles, how it fits into your workshop, how well it sews, etc and go from there. Their advantages are that they're small, and hand operated. Their disadvantages are a very short throat depth, needles that make quite a big hole for the thread size, and lack of availability of needles and parts. If you want it for outsoling shoes, there are better hand-cranked options, but none quite as small as the Junker & Ruh. I have a Frobana Gritzner outsoler that makes a better stitch than the Junker, and uses the same shuttle as the 45k. The needles for it make a huge hole though. I still want to get my hands on a Rafflenbeul MS200 - they're a hand-cranked needle & awl machine. IMO, used SD.28s go for far more than they're worth. They're good machines, but the reality is they're just not EU600 good, considering what else 600 Euros will buy you. When you consider that Henry Veenhoven sells refurbished ones for US$600 and that unless you luck into a really good second-hand one they can take a lot of work to get going well, they aren't rare enough as collector pieces to warrant that kind of price. I have two, I paid NZ$120 for one, and NZ$400 for the other and a 6" crank splitter. The only reason I bought the second one was for the harness plate. Both of them have been fiddly to get going properly and needles for them cost me as much as one of the machines.

From everything I've read on here, I have no doubt they will, but what I have discovered is the case with at least one of the popular vendors on here is that when you buy a machine from their guy in the USA you get a known-good well adjusted machine that's had a lot of work put into it to make it work the way their customers need it to, and you get legendary after-sales support. If you buy the same brand machine when you're in another country though, what you get is a machine shipped direct from their factory in China, with none of that value-add, none of the expectations of reliability that US buyers can rightly expect, and in the experience of at least one saddler I know, none of the aftermarket support when it doesn't work out of the box. That discovery is the reason I started this thread, to find out if the ex-factory quality is up to a standard to make buying a machine shipped straight from China a safe bet for brands other than Highlead which has a good out-of-the-box reputation than other Chinese brands, but is several hundred US$/head more expensive. I'll do that, thanks. I'm reasonably handy, I've completely stripped and reassembled machines before. I've got no problem with buying accessory sets from a US dealer and bolting them to a different brand machine if they'll fit (and this is an option I've explored). So long as it's fairly simple easy stuff that isn't going to add hundreds of dollars to the price of the machine. This one has got to Just Work, unlike my Pearson #6, which sits in the corner and gets worked on intermittently as and when I have time and enthusiasm (it'll be great when it's done though! Whenever that is ) Thanks Steve, I appreciate your reply here - and to my email inquiries also.

Just to stave off the inevitable torrent of responses from people telling me to buy an Artisan or Cobra or Cowboy: I get it, I've read this forum extensively, and I've seen all the arguments for buying from the dealers time and time again and I think they're perfectly valid but there's one important point to consider: I'm not "here in the US" I'm in New Zealand, 8,000 miles and 17 time zones away from the US. I'm not asking who I should buy from, I'm asking whether the situation frequently mentioned in the archives where vendors are overhauling machines before shipping them out is still happening, or whether they've worked with the QA folk at the factories to get them up to spec at that end of the process so that when I get a quote and it's for a machine drop-shipped direct from the factory in China, with different branding on it, am I in fact getting the same thing as someone in America buying from the vendor after they've overhauled and checked out the machine? The service that is so big a part of these dealer's value proposition is not accessible to people in my time zone the way it is to people maybe one or two hour's difference from the vendor, nor are parts so easily available. On top of that, shipping something of that size/weight and value is horrifically expensive, not to mention the customs charges and taxes that land on it (and the shipping costs) before customs will release it, so the pricing changes drastically. I'm still interested in the answer to my original question about the ex-factory quality of the machines various people are re-branding and selling, because that's something I need to be able to take into account.

Sadly, in this day and age, one of these things is common, and the other is not. Much as I wish it were different!

TwinOaks, 9pm on a Saturday here is 5am in Toledo and Toronto. This is the issue, by dint of the timezones alone I'm not going to be able to leverage the services of the vendors in the USA and Canada the same way people more locally can, and shipping something back to them to get worked on is right out, so the whole set of considerations is different than for someone in the USA or Canada.

Setup isn't a problem, I can take care of that easily. I'm talking about whether the machines need actual remedial engineering work these days before they're sent to end customers, or whether they're good straight from the factory. If the value proposition of buying a machine from one of the member vendors here is a re-engineered machine then it's something I'll think about, but If I order through them and get something drop-shipped direct from the factory in China, then it's a far less compelling proposition. I'm asking the questions here, in a public forum, so that the information goes into the archives and other people outside of the USA can get the information too.

Something I've read in a few posts in the archives of this forum is that the big advantage of the machines sold by the likes of Artisan, Cobra and CowBoy compared to other Chinese import machines is that a lot checking and tuning gets done on them before they get sent to the end customer. Is that still the case? I ask because I've got a friend with a machine received direct from the factory that builds machines sold by one of the popular retailers on here. I don't know who they purchased it through and I won't mention the brand, but my friend was quite unhappy with it as-received and said it needed an almost total rebuild before it performed well. I have no doubt that the quality of the tuned and tested machines from the US vendors is great, but given the additional costs of getting a machine from the USA to NZ compared to getting it shipped direct from China, and the distance from the vendors if I do need service/parts, I'm curious as to whether things have changed in the last couple or three years with the factory quality of the machines or whether I'd be better off going for something like a Highlead which is a lot more expensive but seems to have a good direct-from-factory reputation. Having hit the cost/benefit wall trying to get my 45k rebuilt, I'm saving my pennies for a big cylinder-arm machine, but I'm also interested in how this applies to lighter-duty machines as well. Given a decent service manual I'm able to work on machines just fine, but when it comes to things like this I want to start out with something that will Just Work. Cheers.

To what extent have you looked at the workings of crank splitters in person? I suspect that you'll put more than a few hundred buck's worth of work into modifying this thing before you even try making and heat treating a blade for it, only to end up with something that won't work as well as a purpose-designed splitter would. There's a lot more to them than the rollers, and there's a reason they cost what they do. I was lucky enough to get two 6" crank splitters cheap, but they needed work and just setting them up again post-assembly was hard, let alone building one from scratch. Given the initial cost, and the work it took to get them going I wouldn't let either of them go for less than several hundred dollars. If I were going to make a crank splitter this big I'd start by working out where to get single-bevel blade made in high-quality tool steel so that it comes out completely flat and true. For something with a finished size of 300x40x5mm, that's a non-trivial task in itself. Next you need to find somewhere that can mill lengthwise grooves into the bottom roller close enough together to give you the good sharp ridges to feed the leather. Unless you own, and can program, a CNC milling machine, those two operations alone will set you back the price of a second hand splitter. If you do own a CNC milling machine, then you're in a good position to make the rest of a splitter too.

This drove me nuts with my 45k. There were a couple of grub screws with damaged threads that held tight enough under hand pressure but slippped when sewing. I ended up stripping the whole machine right down and still haven't put it back together again.

What's your budget? If you've got the funds for it D.W. Frommer's books and DVDs are about the best information you can buy on making western boots. They ain't cheap though, but I've never heard anyone say they weren't worth every cent. http://bootmaker.com/mybooks.htm

If Neoprene gives the effect you want, but you want a leather surface, have you tried stitching a layer of garment leather over a layer of neoprene?

Do you have a picture of the watch band? A 111W is a pretty big machine for doing this kind of work. What size and point style of needle are you using? My guess would be that the leather is getting pushed down the hole in the needle plate as you try and sew right close to the edge. You'd probably be better off with a lighter wheel-foot machine for things like watch straps with a needle plate that has the smallest feasable hole in it.

I've been looking at various options for motors, and one of the things I'm curious about is just how much torque you need to drive a heavy stitcher like a 441 clone or an Adler 205. Does anyone have torque/rpm graphs for the various servos people are selling, or even ballpark figures? Am I looking in the 1.5Nm range or in the 10-20Nm range? Thanks.

Glad to hear it's working better for you. If you want to get that blade *really* sharp, pick up a few sheets of 3M microfinishing abrasive and use them stuck to a sheet of thick glass. build a jig to hold the angle and you'll have something that'll split like a dream.

If you don't want to lube the whole thread, put some neatsfoot oil in the wax pot on top of the machine and lash a thick chunk of felt on the front edge using the two holes provided to strip the excess oil off. The oil will just dissappear into the leather when you're done sewing and won't permanently gum up the works of the machine. If you also use it for things that absolutely positively can't have oil anywhere near them, either get a second machine or wipe out the thread path with alcohol between jobs.

Nice. What are the hex-key screws you've used to attach the belt loop?

Have a read of http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/ It's about plane blades, but it's just as applicable to splitter blades.

Have you tried a crank splitter?

I don't know where to get 'em but my experience of bags with fittings like that is that the proper name for them is 'useless junk'. On all of the bags I've seen with that style of handle fitting it's been a nasty flimsy bit of metal on the inside trying to make up for the fact that there isnt' enough substance in the actual lid of the bag for the handle to hold on to.

Do you have any pictures of the offending parts?

Thanks Kevin. I'm fairly sure I've got the right bobbins for this one, but I'll check. They certainly fit the bobbin case perfectly and the bobbin case fits the hook just fine. What was the clue you had the wrong bobbins in your Singers?

Hi all, I've got a couple of Pfaff model 34 wheel foot machines for closing shoe uppers. Both of them are missing the occasional stitch when running at speed, and one of them is pulling the bottom thread up in a big loop so there's an inch or so of it above the material I'm sewing. The two machines are slightly different, one has a standard drop feed and reverse, and the other has a wheel feed with no reverse but other than that they're the same. The machines are pretty old, but are still tight and the timing doesn't seem to be slipping. I am wondering if the hook/hook race is worn; the one with the drop feed there's a little more 'rattle' in the hook than I was expecting, but I don't know what it should be like when it's right. The points of the hooks on both machines seem to be in good condition. I can time a machine, but I've never been good at figuring out intermittent dropped stitches and I'm at a total loss as to what's causing the loops of lower thread on top of the work. Can anyone help me out with pointers as to what might be causing this? Unfortunately I didn't have my camera around when it was doing it and I had to cut the thread to keep working on the machine, but I'll get it to do it again and post pictures. Thanks.

Couple more points on these. Good luck finding needles. They're getting like hen's teeth these days. The good thing is you don't need many, you can resharpen 'em if you're careful and they just don't break unless something goes horribly horribly wrong. You need a good sharp point on the shuttle or it won't pick up the top thread, this can be a bit of a pain if the shuttle is worn. My two don't cycle right without tension on the top thread. I don't know if this is normal, but they both do it. The tension on the top thread pulls the takeup lever into the right position for the roller to move it. Without the thread tension the spring pulls it into a position where the roller sticks in the wrong part of the 'loop' bit of the takeup lever.

I've never made a shaving bag, but if I were going to do one like this my instinct would be to make the zip go all the way down to the ends to let it open more easily.

+1 to what Wiz said. Henry's da man for these. They're good machines, but can be a little fiddly to get going. Needles are a pain to find, so grab all the ones you come across and be real careful how you store them. Parts haven't been made for years, so the only way to get them is to get another machine, but not all Junkers are the same and the Pedersen's are different again. I have 2, and the plate from one won't fit the other, and there are other minor thread/part differences.