Uwe

There are very few true Juki LS-1341 clones out there, actually. Most clones are based on the older Juki LS-341 design, the predecessor to the 1341. The info on the Kobe House brand's Japan Sewing Machine & Supply Co. website is a bit sparse. Do you have any pictures of your Kobe 1341 clone?

The clones sometimes need considerable setup and tweaking out of the box to make them cooperate. Usually the dealer does that. If you're doing it yourself, here's the engineering manual for the Juki 134x series to help with that task: http://semsi.com.mx/Manuales/JUKI/LS-1340&42-7EM01_e.pdf

Those Pfaffs are very nice machines. I have a Pfaff 545 H4 N10 version that I'm working on. I just ordered a new hook for it, but it hasn't arrived yet. I usually go on a manual hunt whenever I start working on a machine. I came across a 1979 edition of the Pfaff 145/545 manual in english and with nice quality pictures. It has some inconsistent page sizes, but overall the quality is quite nice. I ran OCR on it to enable text searching and uploaded it here: http://docs.uwe.net/Pfaff-145-545.pdf The 118-page parts manual for the Pfaff 145/545 hints at the complexity of this class and many subclasses of this machine: http://docs.uwe.net/Pfaff-145-545-Parts.pdf By the way, the administrators of this site can attach files to posts that exceed the normal upload limits. The Pfaff 545 needle bar (part# 91-710650-92) is available aftermarket for around $18: http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEEDLE-BAR-PART-91-710650-92-fits-PFAFF-335-WALKING-FOOT-/290918359686 Not sure how well they work, but it may be worth a try.

I installed a similar type guide (KG-867 by Kwok Hing) on my Consew 225 a while ago. Your installation with the offset bracket definitely has more range to the right. Mine also needs mounting screws with lower profile heads. The straight guide that comes with your set is really a zipper guide, but I'm sure it'll work fine for other applications. I sell the updated Kwok Hing version of the guide (KG-867) for $70 on my Ebay store. I recently ordered a few things from Kunpeng to check out their quality. I also cobbled together a straight edge guide mounted to the right slide plate from Kwok Hing parts I had lying around. This approach is handy if you have multiple slide plates that you can quickly swap out.

Beautiful work on restoring that machine and table! Very interesting and informative blog post on the restoration project!

One other possibility is that your foot pressure is a little too light. Your sample shows no foot pressure marks at the top at all - very pretty and usually what people want. Alas, the material must be held down by the presser feet while the knot gets pulled up into the material. Any small variation in leather density may cause trouble if the foot pressure is too light. The material may lift up as the thread take-up lever is trying to pull the knot up into the material and the knot stays at the bottom. The bobbin thread also goes slack a little bit as the material comes down again. The next stitch will have loose bobbin thread, causing the next knot to get pulled to the top on that stitch. At least that's how the sewing machine in my head works Your stitch samples shows this kind of knot pattern like ---v^v---- (where "-" means middle, "v" means bottom, "^" means top). Watch the material as you sew to see if lifts up occasionally.

All the other stitches look really nice though! I'd check the basics first, like proper threading and timing. Thread needs to come off the spool vertically, no at an angle to avoid snags. Make sure you can manually pull top and bottom thread very smoothly, without any snags. A poorly wound bobbin may cause uneven knots. Perhaps the thread comes off the spool in jerky fashion for some reason. Some spools are sticky or wound weirdly and cause snags. On a test piece with fingers far away from the needle, sew a stretch watching the thread path instead of needle area. Try some pre-wound bobbins if you can get your hands on some, just to compare to your self-wound bobbins. Listen for any weird noises when the offending knots happen. If something interferes occasionally with the smooth movements of the machine, odd things start happening. Does this happen when you stop/start the machine?

Perhaps Seiko needs to be mentioned in that conversation. Seiko manufactured the Consew 206RB1/2/3/4/5 machines for Consew. Consew does not actually manufacture anything of their own to my knowledge, they just sell things others make with their label on it. Consew started sourcing the RB-5 from a manufacturer in China at some point. When exactly that was may only be known by people who signed a non-disclosure agreement. If you want to make sure you get a Consew 206RB-5 machine made by Seiko in Japan, buy a Seiko STH-8BLD-3 instead (But I'm not even sure that statement is 100% accurate). The Seiko STH-8BLD-3 I have definitely states "Made in Japan" on the sticker. If you want to make sure you get a Consew 206RB-5 machine made in China, buy one that was made within the last five years or so, to be on the safe side.

Most people do correlate origin with quality, especially if China is involved. It's unlikely that Plasmaguy wants to make sure he's buying a machine made in China and avoid the ones made in Japan. Look at the tags and stickers, if it's made in Japan it will likely say so. If it's may in China it may also say so, or more likely not say anything about country of manufacture.

The Tacsew T111-155 has an oil sump and an oil pumping system. There should be some way to regulate how much oil is being pumped to the top. Perhaps you can dial back the oil flow until things are lubricated properly but not spewing oil. I'm still puzzled why Tacsew would name a machine 111-155, as if to purposely confuse scores of people and make them think the machine has anything in common with the Singer 111W155. Even Cory got tripped up on his Tacsew 111-155 blog post with nice pictures of the oil pump system.

The best way to find out for sure is to just try it out. I do have the KG-867 guides and KB-205 brackets on hand, in case you want to try that one first. I can mail you a set for testing today, just PM me your mailing address (I'm leaving for a road trip at noon). If you can wait a few weeks, I can add a KG-967 guide to my next Kwok Hing order and let you borrow it for testing. You'll probably have a hard time finding the KG-967 guide at retailers in the wild, and establishing a direct order line with KH is not always simple.

The KB205 bracket might work then. It comes with standard M6 screws. PM me if you want try one out, I have a few KB205 brackets on hand and can send you a sample for testing. The Cowboy brand 441 machines (CB4500) don't have a flat surface where the mounting holes need to be (it's a curved recess instead), complicating things a bit. Kwok Hing also makes a long version of the swing down guide called KG967. It has a 20mm longer arm than the KG867.

The leather type knife-edged needles will generally cut thread or fabric just as well as leather. I'd just finish the seam off by hand. You have to do something by hand anyway to pull the top thread ends to the bottom and secure them. It probably takes less time to finish the seam by hand, than to redo the entire stitch line because it cut a previously stitched thread every so often. Then you can claim "hand finished seams" and charge more money .

The KB205 adapter bracket for Kwok Hing guides may actually work on a Cobra, or at least be a good starting point for a custom bracket. While the Adler 205 is a totally different design, the general dimensions are not that far off from a 441. I had contemplated drilling holes and installing a swing down edge guide on my 441, but never got around to it. If the vertically aligned holes are already there, it may be worth a shot.

My crystal ball is all foggy this morning. I need pictures!

Open the bobbin cover and turn it over by hand very slowly and just observe what's going on. Most of the time it'll be obvious what is causing the thread to fray, either rubbing against something or running over a sharp edge or whatever. Does the thread get frayed before it ever gets to the eye of the needle? Running and snapping the feet dry like you did will surely cause some sharp metal edges somewhere. Sending the head back for repair on the dealer's dime seems excessive at this point and risk more damage than it may fix. Figure out how to take a close-up video of the hook movement with thread and leather like the one posted above, except focus on the hook instead of the thread stand in the background (usually done by touching and holding the area on your smart phone screen that you want to be in focus until the focus locks.) Get a $10 phone holder (a scotch tape dispenser works nicely in a pinch) and put the phone on a stable surface. Horizontal video rocks.

Can you post a close-up picture of the machine's back side showing the hole locations? You may need an adapter bracket (hopefully it would be included). Either way, the manual foot lift lever tends to get in the way of the swing-down guide on the 441 class machines. If you do what Al Bane did in his video (remove the ball on the lever), you're losing the gravity-operated foot lift release because the weight of manual lever no longer pulls down enough. Swing-down edge guides on a 441 class machine are a compromise, not an elegant solution.

Don't run it under motor power until you figure this out. Chances are, that some part is touching something it shouldn't touch during the stitch cycle. If the part that is supposed to move stops moving, oftentimes something else start moving (or breaking) to compensate. Take the belt off the hand wheel, remove the thread, lift the presser feet and slowly turn it over by hand towards you. Take note of any tightness or increased resistance - then check moving parts at the point in the cycle. Double check your feed dog movement to make sure it doesn't touch the front or back of the throat plate (or underneath). Also check the foot lift linkage where it goes from outside to inside on the back of the head - sometimes that linkage arm touches the casting/housing after an adjustment, causing a bind.

I'm thankful that Juki (and Durkopp Adler, Pfaff etc.) care enough to actually produce manuals in multiple languages. I translated technical (car) manuals to finance college in the U.S. and it's HARD work. Ignoring a language you don't know is super easy by comparison.

Tech specs, needles and thread range, availability of manuals are important details most people ask about before they buy a machine. Bob's your guy.

Leather armor just needs to look convincing at a renaissance fair, it doesn't need to be functional - nobody's going around whacking people with sharp swords or axes like in Game Of Thrones. You don't really need to sew shoe sole leather to make convincing looking leather armour. A used medium duty cylinder arm walking foot machine is still your best bet for coming even close to $1K, I think. A $2K budget would open of the field of candidates considerably and include some post bed and heavy duty cylinder arm candidates.

So that's what it was - I thought I had felt a disturbance in the Force.

Any dealer who's going to that length to accommodate your decision making process is worth serious consideration. I'm not aware of Juki making a table attachment for the LS-341. You can always build your own. I make table attachments for Pfaff 335, Durkopp Adler 69 and Durkopp Adler 205. Juki TSC-441 and Juki LS-341 are next on my to-do list for table attachments.

Many of the usual suspects like Juki LU-562 or LU-563, Adler 67, Singer 111W155, Consew 225/226, etc. can often be found for under a grand and they're a BIG step up from the Sailrites. If you need to sew three-dimensional things like bags, armor, codpieces. a cylinder arm machine is desirable, but those usually run more than a grand for the nice walking foot ones.

Last comments from me on the video topic, I promise. Most people have no clue what Flash and HTML5 even is, let alone have a sense of the effort and Infrastructure involved to make systems like Siri/Cortana/Alexa work at all. The average mobile phone has likely 100 times the compute power it took to get us to the moon. I film most of my HD videos on my iPhone and it's just plain amazing what it can do. Expecting the average leatherworker to set up up their own site for video hosting is unrealistic. Heck, most people in the industrial sewing machine business struggle with basic email! Watching Youtube videos on a mobile device or a Mac is seriously low risk.