Uwe

Got your order @RockyAussie - thanks! It'll go in the mail on Tuesday (Monday is a postal Holiday her in the U.S.) @LeatherLegion thanks for sharing your custom work and pictures! I get the sense there's a need for throat plates with a slim opening and matching feed dogs, especially for use with those skinny harness feet. I'd want to make the feed dog slim enough to leave a very thin wall of material on either side of the needle hole. I'll add it to my list of projects to work on if/when I get my current in-way-over-my-head project machine, a Chiron 5-Axis CNC mill, retrofitted with new motors and controls.

I mentioned that feed rod alignment in my video as a workaround for machines where the opposing arrow plate is missing. If you have both arrows, use just them. I just checked five of my machines and on every single one of them the feed dog is in its front-most position when the take-up lever is at its highest point. I doubt that the correlation is a coincidence and have a strong feeling that the correlation is one of those general, if unwritten, rules that apply to many sewing machines. It's a quick sanity check, if nothing else. Your machine may well have multiple issues that need to be corrected. Following Eric's advice is your best bet.

My KH441RG set has been collecting virtual dust in my ebay store for over a year. I just put it on clearance for half price ($99) a week ago. I didn't notice the timing dial when I first looked the pictures . Glad you could use it! The stitch length matching is a balancing act and may indeed need some fussing with the cover plate to make both timing and reverse perfect.

@brmax the feet are smooth on the bottom. All four pieces are a matched set, you'd have to get them all together. But you can mix and match with other pieces, obviously.

That is a hard seam to stitch. There's no room on either side, really. In the short term to get the order out you'll have to use what you have on hand, no time for ordering stuff, really. I'd give the slotted plate (or perhaps raised stirrup plate) another shot and just ignore the reverse lever. Manually position the needle to back up a stitch or two (without turning the material) or finish the seam by hand. Youtube dude Chechaflo is a master of the manual backstitching technique - his machine has reverse, but he almost never uses it to lock a stitchline. I'd also tack the layers together with a few drops of superglue and binder clamps - do a bunch and let them sit for half an hour before stitching. No struggle to keep the edges aligned while stitching, allowing you to focus on the stitchline. The arm-mounted standard edge guided becomes a nuisance when the guide wheel is over the feed dog. Long-term, consider a drop-down guide that is height adjustable and floats above feed dog (or above the bottom layer when attaching that snap flap). I've never seen the narrow feed dog and throat plate parts referenced in that manual in pictures or real life - they may be hard to source. I did order a specialty KH441RG kit last year which is a dedicated 3mm right edge guiding 4-piece set with special feed dog, throat plate and presser feet. It might be an improvement, but you you won't know for sure until you try it. The feed dog on that set is about 6.5mm wide, compared to the standard 8mm wide feed dog.

I just made a correction in my previous comment. The Techsew 2800 is not really based on the Pfaff 335. I'm not what it's based on. Perhaps a Seiko, but I'm not sure. The Paff 355 and its various copies are very popular and capable binding machines. The Pfaff 335 comes in two versions - old casting and new casting. Prices range from $1,500 to $3,000 The Adler 205 is capable of the same type of synchronized binding (binder arm moves back and forth with the needle) as the smaller Pfaff 335 and Techsew 2800, but the cost of the Adler 205 binding setup is high. You're looking at around $500 just for binding parts kit. The Adler 205 class machines run well over $3,000 , whether it's a new clone or a workable original Durkopp Adler. But there are things the Adler 205 will bind (like in that video) that none of the smaller machine will do. It all depends on what type of materials, material thickness, and thread size you need to work with on your projects. There's no point in pretending a smaller machine will do when it won't - when you need a big machine, you need a big machine. I actually custom-built an Adler 205 binding workstation for one customer who needed to bind thick, tough, fireproof bag with a leather edge using Kevlar thread. That was several weeks of prototyping, testing, and development. That is the same machine from the video, by the way. Binding, in general, is an art and science and it has frustrated many people for years. I'm not really an expert in binding (aside from that one custom workstation project). People like @Hockeymender have been doing binding on Pfaff 335 and other machines for years, and may be able to offer suggestions. Oftentimes when a binding machine finally does what it is supposed to do, and well, people dedicate them as binding workstations and never use them for anything else.

@Techsew Ron is your main resource for TechSew machines. The Techsew 2750 and the Techsew 2800 are actually very different machine designs - it's much more than just an added binder. The Techsew 2750 is based on the Juki LS-341 design, the Techsew 2800 is based on the vintage casting Pfaff 335 some mystery machine, perhaps a Seiko. Both are nice and capable designs, but they have little in common beyond being cylinder arm machines. Between the two, the Techsew 2800 design is better suited for binding operations, but also more of a narrow-range specialist. The 2800 also has a very slim cylinder arm, which is great if you need it, but it also requires a few engineering compromises like a feed dog that only moves back and forth but not up and down. The Techsew 2750 on the other hand is less suited for binding (binding parts are hard to find, actually), but it has other advantages like bigger bobbin, vertical axis hook (and thus a thicker cylinder arm) which accommodates a larger material and needle range, and a full feed dog motion.

Edge guiding feet are popular for making seams very close along a straight edge with good precision and repeatability. Slim feet are a good option when you don't have much room on either side of the seam. The come in left, right, double toe versions. College Sewing probably carries these, too.

There's your next step -find out what causes that. Tilt the machine back and hand-turn a few stitches with material under the foot while carefully observing how the thread wraps around the hook. Perhaps your bobbin case opener arm is not doing its job. The thread apparently snags somewhere and that is very likely the cause for your thread shredding business.

Make sure you take removable parts like throat plate or feed dog off the machine before smoothing them with a dremel tool, diamond file, or abrasive cord. You don't want the abrasive grit falling into your machine or hook.

I've had good results searching for feet by compatible, more popular machine names. Since the (bottom+needle feed) Singer 153W100 apparently shares feet with the more common (also bottom+needle feed) Singer 111W151, doing a search on Ebay for "Singer 111W151 feet" yields a small collection of useful looking feet that should all work on your Singer 153W100:

A Landis (some call it a "Landis 1") comes to mind: This Landis 3 has an interesting pedal drive mechanism: You can also retrofit many machines with a custom-engineered pedal drive solution: There was another thread discussing off-grid sewing options:

One suggestion would be to show us a picture of your current foot and a link to what you found online, and elaborate on what you learned. It's obvious to you what you're looking at but nobody here has a crystal ball. It's much more economical that you make the effort once upfront, rather than dozens of people reading this all spending time individually looking up part numbers and parts lists. You'll have a better shot at meaningful replies if you show us your homework so that others can learn from it as well.

My Cowboy CB-4500 also had some adjustment issues which caused the top thread to occasionally be pulled into the hook's race and snagged enough to cause hang-ups and loops at the bottom in reverse. You troubles may have a different cause, but it may be worth checking hook timing movements. There was a detailed thread a few weeks ago about this and it prompted me to make an adjustment video for the Cowboy CB-4500. On my machine it was a few very subtle adjustments that made the machine cooperate again. Here's the thread: Here's the video that shows the problem on my machine (at the 2:17 mark): Here's the adjustment video I ended up making:

Atlas is Atlas Levi's house brand. A double needle post bed sounds like a good candidate for making bags with french seams. The Atlas AT20T53 is only $1,200 almost too cheap even for a clone - you'll be hard pressed to find anything cheaper in that configuration that still makes a stitch. The ATlas may work just fine, though - I have no first -hand experience with them. Just for reference, I have a nice used Durkopp Adler 268 double needle post bed that I won't let go for under $2,000. My general rule is that a good used original is worth as much as a decent new clone. The Atlas machines are NOT clones of Durkopp Adler machines, just to make that clear.

Well hello there, former almost neighbor! Feet and other common parts are readily available on Ebay and from various vendors. Adler 67, 167, and 267 share the same feet, throat plates and feed dogs, which is nice. I have a few Adler x67 parts in my Ebay store (see link in signature below) made by Kwok Hing, including feet, throat plates, and feed dogs. As for upgrading the hook, it's not quite as simple as swapping out the hook, I'm afraid. There are a few other parts that need to change (e.g. take-up lever) and the larger hook may also be taller, which means you may have to lower the hook carrier frame, which is not an easy thing to do. Compare the parts diagrams and find all the parts that have different part numbers - I'm guessing at least a dozen parts are different. I have a feeling most folks decide against an upgrade because of the complexity involved.

Please post some pictures of your machine. I want to see what the 144WSV37 looks like. Is it a long arm machine? Take some pictures with the face cover at left end of the head removed, too. Your needle bar may have two lines marked on it. Those are used to set the needle bar to the correct height. If the lines are present on a normal, well adjusted machine, the upper of the two lines should be just barely visible at the bottom end of the needle bar bushing when the needle bar is at its lowest position during the cycle. Then, if you keep turning the hand wheel until the lower line is just barely visible, that's your hook timing position. If your upper line moves well below the needle bar bushing, that's an indication that the needle bar was lowered to accommodate a needle that is too short. The problem with a too-low needle bar is that it may touch the feet during the cycle and bind or rub, especially when the feet are raised (e.g. for bobbin winding.) Adjusting the needle bar height is not hard to do. Usually there's just one screw (maybe two) to loosen and then you can slide the needle bar up and down. This is an important step during hook timing. You'll want to know how to do that unless you enjoy schlepping that monster to a technician a lot. The Singer 144W103 Manual may be useful, too: 144W103_W203_W303.pdf

Sometimes the "wick" is not a wick at all, but a protective "filter" pad that keeps dirt and grit out, but lets oil through. Once you remove the pad, any little piece of dirt or grit gets directly to the gears or bearing.

There really are no repair manuals for most vintage machines, as far as I know. They just assume that's what you learn in your apprenticeship when you become a sewing machine technician. Once you've taken apart a few dozen machines, things will start to look very familiar in other machines. The closest thing to an actual repair manual with removal and re-installation instructions is this Military training manual: TM10-3530-202-24.pdf . It covers repair instructions for variety of machines, including the Singer 111, which shares certain design elements. with your 153. Having a beater or parts machine to tinker with is really useful, so you know what's going on when you start working on a precious machine. Often you have to get a little creative. In the absence of a manual for a specific machine, documentation for a very close relative can be very useful. In your case of the Singer 153, the Consew 227 is that close relative. Check out the User Manual for the Consew 223/227 (223.pdf). Also, the Consew 227 Parts Manual shows parts in small groups as mini-exploded views where you can tell how things go together, or if something that looks like a screw really is a screw.

After cleaning I usually squeeze some grease directly onto the gears before installing the gear covers again. That way I know for sure that the grease is actually ON the gears rather than just inside the box. You can always add more grease through the access holes you mentioned. Tri-Flow grease is what I use on my machines and I like it. One thing to watch out for is that if you separate the gears during cleaning or to make adjustments, make sure they go back together meshing with the same teeth. Some gear sets are matched pairs that are intended to be meshed with specific teeth on both gears. There may be a factory mark on both gears to line them up. You can also add marks yourself with a sharpy pen before separating the gears. The gears should still work even if they're meshed in a different position, but they may be noisy.

There's a set screw on the bottom right that locks the post of the check spring unit in place (I was so focused on the check spring unit when I made the video a few months ago that I didn't notice that the tension discs weren't threaded)

It also looks like the incoming thread is BEHIND the two tension discs instead of BETWEEN the two tension disks. Unless the thread is between the tension disk you'll have no top thread tension at all which all but guarantees loops on the bottom.

Don't change things there. It may never be the same again. You may not yet be aware of Rule #1 of sewing machine maintenance: Never loosen a screw unless you know what it does. I'm also a little concerned that your Juki DNU-241H looks quite different in the head area from the one that Leif Labs describes in this blog post: Can you please post detailed pictures of your machine's name plate and other identifying marks? Also a few pictures that show the whole machine. Try not to have pictures backlit (strong light in the background) - it' makes it very hard to tell what's going on. Turn the machine around or shine a bright light at the front (or touch and hold the area on thor phone screen you want to be in focus and well exposed.). I know it's a pain to fuss with lighting, but it makes all the difference in the word.

All three machines you listed are garment/embroidery machines in the domestic range. The 191-20C appears to be the strongest of the three. The only thing heavy duty about the Singer Heavy Duty 441 is the marketing hype and the paint color. None of them are well suited for sewing leather beyond a layer or two of very thin, soft garment weight leather. Plan for two machines, one that does your light garment work (domestic is fine here), and a second machine to do the leather work properly. Check out this thread to get an idea on the type of sewing machine you need to sew leather:

My upload speeds were super slow tonight, so here's a second video I made earlier tonight about using that adjustment screw Bob mentioned to set stitch length.