amuckart

Hi Angelo, There are a few places still selling needles, but they're expensive. I just laid in at vast cost what I hope is a lifetime's supply of the sizes I could get my hands on (15 x #5 & #6, 5x #8) but I can't find an even vaguely affordable source of #7 needles, which seem to be the most commonly used, and therefore now hardest to find, size. When you get to working on your machine check that the point of the shuttle is good and sharp, even if everything else is right it won't sew if it isn't. If you need manuals let me know. If you need parts get in touch with Henry Veenhoven. He's rebuilt more of these machines that most of us'll see in a lifetime.

If anyone's looking for motors for this, the ones of old Singer 201k machines work pretty well, and those machines can be had cheap. The motors on them are just bolted on the outside and can be cleanly removed without damaging the machine at all. Don't stress bout wrecking a "valuable antique" by taking bits off, they made millions of 201s, but if the machine is in good nick still, consider donating it to charity.

Hi Ken, I was thinking of doing something very similar just today. Any chance you could post pictures of your one on here? Thanks.

Bayard, Are you trying to attach the scan to those posts you just made? If they're bouncing because it's too big, you can email it to me on silver at where dot else dot net dot nz and I'll stick it up on my website for people to download if you want.

Assuming you have a separate spool for the bobbin thread, would it work to put an empty bobbin on the winder as soon as you put a full one in the machine and just let it wind as you sew?

I too would love a scan of the manual for this machine. Thanks.

Well, there's a concidence for you! I just brought one of these home today, and was about to post something asking what it was, since it's clearly not a 29. Mine was manufactured around 1877 and is in startlingly good condition for a 130+ year-old machine. Given that the needlebar site has been effectively locked away from the rest of the world by its admin and is closed both to new registrations and locked out from non-registered members, I'd love to know anything about this type of machine. Mine appears to be complete. It has a shuttle, bobbin, table, and treadle stand. I plan on getting it sewing again, but I'm not sure I'll use it much given how old it is and the condition it's in.

Hi Susan, As has been said, if you want lots of identical ones of these, a clicker die is the way to go. You could also get a small die made so you could strike it with a hammer. If you only want a few though, and you're not cutting them out of very very heavy leather (say, 3mm or less) what I would do if possible is reduce the shape to straight lines and circular radii so you can cut it out with a knife for the straight lines and use drive punches for the inside curves. For the outside curves you can either modify an old punch or cut the curve with a knife. If I didn't explain that coherently (it's a bit late where I am) I'll draw a picture of what I mean. Cheers.

If you can that would be absolutely brilliant, thanks! It's a shame that didn't work out for you, Christchurch is a nice city to live in. I moved there from Edinburgh nearly 20 years ago and lived there for 16 years.

I can't speak to the foot lift problem, and I don't (yet) have a class 29 machine in front of me to check, but I'd bet its related to the feed problem. I have read about people gluing a bit of vibram soling to the bottom of the foot to reduce the marking on leather. As far as I know Bob Kovar is the man when it comes to parts for these things.

Greetings, I'm not an expert on machines by any stretch, and with luck one of the actual experts will be able to point out the problem, but in the meantime I'll offer what suggstions I can. In case you don't have them already: User manual: parts.singerco.com/IPinstManuals/16-133_CLASS_16.pdf Parts manual: parts.singerco.com/IPpartCharts/16-188.pdf Pictures of 16-class machines: http://www.industrialsewmachine.com/webdoc1/used/used-singers/16.htm From the little photograph it looks like the threading is correct. It also looks like you have basically no top tension at all. Even when you aren't getting 'big goofy loops' on the underside the top thread isn't drawing the bottom thread up into the material at all. Does the machine have an automatic tension release system that takes the top tension off the thread when you raise the presser foot? If it does, is it disengaging properly when you lower the presser foot? Have you taken the tension disks off and checked to make sure they're clean? I'd expect dirt in them to create more top tension, not less, but if there's schmutz in there stopping them from mating properly that could cause issues. If you crank the top tension knob all the way in does it make any difference? The other possibility is that the thread take up spring is all wonky. The instruction manual linked to above has instructions for setting it correctly on page 20. I hope that's of some help.

What model machine is it, and do you have any pictures of it and the tension problems?

Hi Fred, There's no evidence of damage on the machine. The casting on the inside of that cover is very rough though, and it's a thick chunk of metal. The manual is for the Landis, I've not found a specific manual for this machine but its so close to the Landis in operation that that's not a major problem. I think the nuts are half-thick ones too. They shouldn't be too hard to find, or just grind down from existing ones if the worst comes to the worst. Bevel up is right. Now that I've got it mostly all adjusted properly it's obvious that it won't go in bevel down. If I lower the rollers and the blade the gear grinds on the bottom of the cover. The problem seems to be that the adjustment range of the upper roller (to which the large gear is attached) is greater than the clearance inside the gear cover, rather than that the gear cover is in the wrong place, if that makes sense. I might just go after the inside of the cover with a die grinder. It's got more than enough metal on it. I'm just curious about it since it seems like a very odd thing to have wrong with a machine like this. There's no evidence of welding anywhere on the chassis, so if that's happened it's been done very tidily and painted over. Thanks.

Hi Kate, Thanks for that. Sounds like Needlebar is a goner and I should forget about it, which is a shame. I've had quite a few people recommend it. Are there any other good technical fora on restoring old sewing machines? In terms of sewing machines, right now I have two Junker & Ruh Sd.28s, a Singer 45K (which is pretty much under control, I just need to get a few parts for it) and a Pearson & Bennion A1 which needs to be completely restored. There are pictures of it in this thread on the History board. It used to be blue, which will be fun to see when its restored. I'm vaguely seriously considering japanning rather than painting it, but I don't know how I'd do the stand and get it to match because I don't have an oven big enough to get the stand parts in. In the pipeline I have: a Pearson/BUSM #6 which is going to need to be completely stripped, cleaned, repainted and rebuilt. a Singer 29k13 a Singer 29k58 with a broken bit in the head somewhere two Pfaff flat bed roller-foot machines two Singer post-bed machines On top of that there's a marshall bell skiver and the Sørensen splitter in my other thread. I have a very tolerant wife. She wants to get a pretty Singer 201 in a nice old cabinet now

Hi Chuck, Thanks for that. When you say "small amount" do you have a ratio you stick to, or do you just eyeball it? Cheers.

Lamb says this: Regarding Logwood: A few paragraphs further on: Any errors in there are mine, I transcribed those paragraphs by hand. At some point I will photograph and OCR the section on logwood and iron black.

I don't know who told you that, but veg tanned leather makes just fine shoes. Heck, it's all they used for over a thousand years before chrome tanning was invented less than 150 years ago. All the really high-end makers use vegetable tanned leather for insoles and soles and usually linings. Chrome tanned leather doesn't have the fibre structure or strength to make decent insoles and is way too spongy to make usable soling or heels. 12-13oz is not bad insole material, but unless it's a hard-rolled bend it isn't going to make great outsole because it'll be too soft. If you can roll it up and cut it with anything less than a bandsaw, it's probably too soft. Good hard-rolled soling is more like wood than leather in some ways. If you're making turnshoes though, 13oz veg tan makes great soles

So I've got my head around most of the adjustments now but I'm still really puzzled by the fact that the gear cover is interfering with the big drive gear and I'd really like to get it working with the cover in place because the gears are oily and dirty. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Nice to see someone else having this thought. I've used this stuff quite a lot making historical goods, but I've given up on it for now until I can find a decent source of strong tannins. I'm thinking logwood or oak galls here, tea doesn't cut it. NZ doesn't have gall wasps so we don't get oak galls. I could import logwood but it's hell expensive to get over here. The acid is the problem in oak gall ink. It's less of an issue here provided you neutralise the acid afterwards with a baking soda rinse but the big problem I've had is the dye destroying the grain surface of the leather because the iron / tannin reaction is stripping tannins out of the leather and leaving it brittle. It doesn't matter how well you oil or condition it afterwards, you've still bound up a bunch of the tannins in the leather and that's going to have an effect down the track. I've got a medieval belt I dyed with this and the grain is just peeling off the leather. I've got a copy of M. C. Lamb's early 20th century book Leather Finishing: Including Dyeing, Staining and Finishing which documents recipes for iron black and talks about the necessity for adding logwood extract to prevent the dye destroying the grain surface of the leather. I need to dig it out anyway to respond to a PM question about it so I'll drop the info on here too.

Hi Willy, I'm glad you find my blog useful, that's why I write it Sorry I haven't posted anything for ages, I've been moving it to it's own domain at http://wherearetheelves.net but it's almost ready (note that all content on there currently will get deleted and re-imported from blogger before I go live, so if you comment on that they'll get lost). I'll reply to your other post. I make most of my own stamps because I haven't been able to find good approximations of medieval ones. It's not that difficult to do the simple ones. Cheers.

That's very very nice work Willy. Those Dordrecht purses are as good as any I've seen. I too am curious as to where you get your mounts. Did you cast them up yourself? Looking at your picasa gallery I like your casework and scabbards. My only suggestion would be to get a much smaller tool to do the backgrounding. The extant examples all seem to have been done with a very fine tool that leaves quite a consistent stippled background. Where are you based?

If you want Stepping Through Time I recommend buying it from Oxbow Books, not Amazon. http://www.oxbowbooks.com/bookinfo.cfm/ID/32567 Oxbow do a lot of work to keep books like this available to specialists, and on a corporate level they're a lot less evil than Amazon. The best book for these shoes is Leather and Leatherworking in Anglo-Scandinavian and Medieval York which is part of the York Archaeological Trust 'small finds' series. Sadly it is out of print now so I'm not sure where to recommend getting a copy. This is my personal opinion only, but I disagree with a fair bit of the content in the Compleat Anachronist on turnshoes. I think the techniques are overcomplicated and a bit inaccurate.

Hi all, This is slightly off-topic, sorry. I couldn't think of anywhere better to ask. I'm working on restoring a number of machines at the moment and I'm trying to find people who are members of the needlebar.org forum who might be able to PM the admin on my behalf and see if he'll let me sign up. Currently the whole forum is locked down to members only and registrations are apparently closed. I've emailed admin@ but got no response. Thanks.

I'm coming to all this from a background of hand stitching with threads waxed with hand wax, which is sticky and contributes a lot to the lock of the stitch. If you machine sew with lubricated thread how does it affect the lock of the stitch in the long term? Thanks.

That's neat. How thick is the leather you used? Looking at the way it's gathering at the top I think if you could find some nice supple 0.8 or 0.9mm calfskin you'd get a much neater gather at the top and a better overall shape to the bag. Did you make the frame yourself? I like it a lot.