amuckart

I don't see why it need necessarily be a boat anchor. if it uses needles different to the other 45ks then that might be an issue. Do you have any pictures of it? If it were me I'd buy it for the treadle table alone!

Hi Biggun Dr. Thanks for your ongoing help. I don't know for sure that it's a taper pin in the 'k58, but it is in the UFA and the 'k13s. I don't have my caliper to hand to tell you the end diameters, but laying it on the table and putting a steel rule on it it's obviously not a straight cylinder. As far as this particular pin is concerned, it's tight on the beam and rotates in the frame on the 'k58. Looking at the wear on the one I've knocked out of the 'k13 it's the same there too; there's longitudinal scratch marks on the centre third of the pin and the outer thirds are smooth. That's a good idea about the shim stock, I hadn't thought of that. The last thing I want to do is break the cast-iron frame of the machine. If I'm visualising things right with the C-clamp idea you're suggesting using it like a whackable bearing-puller, yes? If it helps scale your replies, I'd class myself as not stupid and basically mechanically competent, but I'm certainly not a machinist. I've stripped things like domestic treadle machines, a Pearson A1 add a couple of Junker & Ruh Sd.28s right back to individual screws and reassembled and timed them so they sew again, and I've taken my #6 Pearson down to minor sub-assemblies and reassembled it without a manual or leftover bits. I have basically no power tools beyond a dremel, a drill and a poxy little belt grinder I've adapted for sharpening. I have a hand-cranked drill press kicking around in the garage someplace but I've yet to set up a bench to put it on. I can forge things on the scale of small knives, but I'm not trained or practiced in fine work and I have no formal mechanical or engineering training, and the last time I touched a metal lathe was getting on for 20 years ago. I'm mostly clever enough to ask for help before I break things, and I know enough to have worked out that I need a much wider range of screwdriver bits than I currently have I'm also not bothered by replies suggesting things I've already thought of, if it's not immediately useful to me, then it might be to someone reading the archived thread later. All that said, I've a friend who's a volunteer steam engineer and tram driver at MOTAT who can put me in touch with real engineers who might be able to turn up small things in exchange for a case of beer if it's an interesting project.

Since getting a commercially made stand shipped to New Zealand is prohibitively expensive, and I can drive a welder, I've been contemplating making a stand for my 45k (once I've got the damn thing back together again, that is) An idea that's been stuck in my head for a while is building in the gas prop mechanism from an office chair to let me adjust the height easily. I figure if a gas prop can deal with my fat 110kg butt sitting on it it'll deal with pretty much any sewing machine out there, and they come in all sorts of heights.

I'd buy one! If I had the money that is. Unfortunately I spent it all on swords so I don't have an iPad I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'not fluent enough'. I can't comment on the technical quality, but to me it looks very clean and the design is detailed and leads the eye on an interesting path over the piece. My only suggestion would be to work out a way to make the cover work to prop the ipad up on a slight slope in landscape mode. This is by far the most common way I see people use them and is built into the standard Apple cases as well as most after-market ones. Unfortunately I can't for the life of me think how you'd do that without compromising the look of what you've made, which is quite beautiful.

Gordon, who has much more luck finding stuff on the 'net than I do found the exploded diagram of a model 29k and a parts chart for the 29U - the last version that Singer made, but it's fundamentally the same beast as all of the later model 29ks. This isn't the one I was thinking of, but it's close enough. 29U Parts Chart Page five of this pdf, part #8586 is the one that's giving me grief. 29K exploded Diagram Cheers.

I'm familiar with it from domestic sewing machine lists I'm on. I've found one place that sells it in New Zealand, but they wanted darn near as much for a little bottle as I paid for this machine. An 8oz bottle is, what, ten bucks in the US? This place wanted forty-something NZ for one. According to testing carried out by someone on one of the domestic SM lists, a 1:1 mix of power steering fluid and acetone is actually a better penetrant/release agent than Kroil. Not sure I'd use it as a bore cleaner though. Thanks for all the information and assistance. I'll probably wait until the weekend when I can dig my length of rail track out of the garage. That's the closest thing I've got to a bench block. I'm pretty sure I've peened the big pin at least a little bit so I'll have to hunt out my safe-edge file too and take the rim off

Hi Darren, Alas, the one holding the top rocker arm is one of the ones giving me real trouble. I finally managed to get the balance wheel off the front of the machine by deploying a Bigger Wrench which let me lay it down and I managed to get the one holding the thread take-up lever out after following Bob and Biggun Dr's advice. The three remaining ones that are stubbornly stuck are the one holding the rack assembly in, the one holding the rocker arm on the top and the one holding the drive wheel on the main shaft. None of them are shifting so much as a millimetre, even when backed up by a solid thing with a hole for the pin. Of those, the only one I don't really have to shift is the one holding the drive wheel on, but I need to get the other two out to get this machine working properly. It would make life much easier if I could get the drive wheel off too.

Gordon: That's one of the ones I need to shift. I'm also completely failing to get others to move, vis: "Balance wheel shaft pin" Plate 161 part 11663. "Needle Bar Driving Lever Joint Pin" Plate 161 part 8586 (at least I'm assuming the "needle bar driving lever" is the rocker arm thingy on the top of the machine) Biggun Dr: Thanks for your help. I'll take pictures tonight and add them here. I'm sure I've seen an exploded diagram of a 29k clone but I'm darned if I can find one now. I'll poke around on my hard drive when I get home though. It's not mentioned in that parts list but on the k58 there's also a taper pin that's part of what holds the rack assembly onto the arm of the machine and that's refusing to shift either, and that's the one pin I can (albeit awkwardly) back up with a bit of wood wi' a hole in. There's all sorts of frozen stuff on this machine. I had to resort to an impact driver to get the rack assembly screws to move. I couldn't even get them to turn with the impact bit in a socket wrench. It's difficult to get the needle bar driving lever joint pin backed up with anything because I can't get the @$!#$!@!! balance wheel off the side of the machine. All the grub screws shift really easily but there's a big ol' screw in the middle of it that I simply cannot get to shift either. I'm not real keen on going after that one with an impact driver. Cheers. Thanks Bob, that makes sense, even if it does sound like an operation that requires about five arms :-) I'll give it a go.

http://parts.singerc...%20TO%20K33.pdf Right, that one worked in preview, if it don't work after posting I don't know what will. Click it, don't copy and paste, the forum software obfuscates it in the posting.

Thanks Bob, that makes sense. I'll give that a go tonight.

Gah! For some reason the board software obfuscates hyperlink text. The correct link is here If I do get to the point of having to drill it out I don't mind doing that, I'll just have to order another one since I'm no machinist, but if the hole needs to be bored out, presumably that needs to be done with a special bit/reamer that matches the taper on the pin? I'm pretty sure they don't go a different way in NZ, they're all made in Scotland

I'm pretty sure they're taper pins, and I'm fairly sure I'm trying to tap 'em out in the right direction. Singer seems to be pretty consistent about that sort of thing and the other ones on that axis came out back-to-front. I don't have a parts chart for the k58 specifically, but I've got two k13s and a parts chart for that from http://parts.singerco.com/IPpartCharts/29K1_4_10_12_18_23_30 TO K33.pdf The taper pins on the k13s come out back-to-front and shift with a sharp tap, I'm not seeing anything materially different in the construction of the k58, except that the damn things won't shift, even after soaking in penetrant. There's no set screws holding them in, I've cleaned off the gunk around them to check. I'm reluctant to apply heat because the finish on the machine is still pretty good (under the accumulated gunk of 20 years in a shed). Thanks.

Hi all, I'm disassembling a 29k58 to overhaul it and there are a couple of taper pins giving me grief. The first is the one holding the thread take-up lever into the arm on the top of the machine, and the second is the one holding that arm onto the head. As near as I can tell, both should be driven out from the rear of the machine towards the operator, but neither will shift. Both are a little flattened on the small end, but not mushroomed, which makes me wonder if a tool steel pin punch is the right tool to remove them or if I should be using a brass rod or something. Can anyone offer advice on shifting stubborn taper pins like these? Cheers.

I suspect you mean UFA, they only become UFOs when the owners get really frustrated with them As far as I know, yes, they take the same needles as other 29-class machines.

I'm almost certainly wrong about this, but there are aspects of that, like the way the base fits the table, and the shape of the flywheel that are quite reminiscent of an A1. I wonder if it's a Pearson or BUSM machine. I'm almost certainly wrong about this, but there are aspects of that, like the way the base fits the table, and the shape of the flywheel that are quite reminiscent of an A1. I wonder if it's a Pearson or BUSM machine.

Hi Mike, The thread shouldn't intersect with the channel knife at all. Did you re-thread it? I've emailed you a URL for the instruction manual.

It looks like it'll work Ok in the condition it's in. If you wanted to clean off the rust you're looking at something like evaporust - most other things will blow all the rest of the nickel off. As well as the red marked oiling points there are several covered oil holes that go down into axles etc, they have little flip-top covers on them. I'd go after the cogs with a decent oil as well. What I did with my Gritzner was liberally oiled every moving surface I could see with CRC Syntex, but I don't know if you can get that in the UK. I think you do have it threaded wrong. Take the thread out of the wax pot, through the channel in the post, around the tension wheel, up through the eye in the wire arm and straight into the takeup lever instead of going through the bits on the side like you have it. The holes in those are probably spannering points rather than thread path. If it keeps breaking thread after that, take a little tension off the thread spool - that's the main point the upper tension gets set in these machines. You should also either use prewaxed thread or have some oil in the wax pot, I put pure neatsfoot oil in mine for now until I can get some sellari's liquid wax. The other thing to do is polish the heck out of every point in the thread path. Hope that helps.

Hi Mike, This might be something for a new topic altogether. That's entirely recognisable as what turned into the Frobana Gritzner stitcher. Interesting to see what's the same and what's changed. It could probably be treadle driven with a big enough flywheel. I've got a manual for the Gritzner, just haven't had time to get it online sorry. I'll try and do that this weekend. It doesn't look all that bad really. My Gritzner looked terrible when I got my hands on it. I went after it with a spray bottle of undiluted industrial citrus cleaner and a waterblaster and now it looks great. Still drops the occasional stitch though :/ If that were mine I'd remove it from the wood and thoroughly clean it then scrub the lightly rusted bits with oil and grey scotch brite. The nickel plating is probably compromised where rust has gotten under it but that shouldn't affect the mechanics of the machine. When it comes to old stitchers the up side of this machine is that you can still get needles for it. The down side is that they cost about 8-euro each but when they work they work very nicely.

G'day HS, I think the technical term for that machine in this part of the world is "rooted". I wouldn't bother if I were you. I've got 29k13's in better condition than that. That color of rust usually indicates serious neglect that has completely stuffed the internals as well as just the internals.

I just went and looked at the website and saw that the adjustment on these is via eccentricity in the roller which means it'll be a bit harder to get back to a "zero" point each time. What you need are two marks, one on the top edges of the uprights for the edge of the blade - which will get slightly shorter every time you sharpen it; and one inside the uprights for the height of the roller, which could get trickier to see. There would be better ways of doing it but they'd require high-precision markings and a slight rework of the way the roller is mounted.

Go here: http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/ If what' you've got is like the pictures above it's basically a small plane blade and can be sharpened in exactly the same way. With a little practice, the system Brent lays out there will produce edges better than anything else out there. They are terrifyingly sharp. It takes a bit of investment in the setup, and some practice to get right but once you've done that it's quick, simple and it works, very very well. Scribe a set of lines in the top of the sides using a machinists square. That way you can get back to the same thickness again by putting the edge up to the line you used last time.

Did you heat-treat the steel? Drill rod should be plenty hard for awl blades.

Thanks Tony, I'll let you know what I work out.

Anyone? I'm trying to get the thing apart and am stuck trying to get the bell off. I'd really like to work out if the feet and drive stones are interchangeable with available parts so I can set it up to do veg tan with. Cheers.

I'm wondering if 45k clones like the Techsew GA-5 are close enough to the original 45ks they're clones of that I could use parts like the main shaft out of one in a 45k. Anyone know, or should I look for someone who's got a parted-out 45k? Cheers.