Uwe

US 220V is compatible with the machine/motor you have. You have to either run a 220V circuit to your work area or get a $37 converter that turns 110V into 220V and handles more than 600W of power (the easy choice) . If you're good with electrical stuff you can run the 220V circuit yourself. If you have to pay an electrician to do it, it'll likely be more expensive than what you paid for the machine. Most normal residential and office space electric utility service in the US has two powered wires (usually black) run into the house's circuit breaker box - one on the left side, the other on the right side inside the circuit breaker box. Each powered wire will have 110V against the white neutral wire, but there will be 220V between the two black powered wires. So, for a normal 110V circuit, you need to run just ONE of the black power wires and the white neutral to the outlet. For 220V, you will need to run BOTH black power wires to the box (white/green will be there for safety, but not really required to power the appliance). Personally, I'm running a 220V extension cord (with special plugs) from my electric dryer circuit in my laundry to my workshop area until get around to running a dedicated 220V circuit into my workshop area. At 600W, you're using considerably less power than a typical hair dryer, so nothing to get really freaked out about. The 600W are peak power, too. For normal sewing, you probably use less than 100 Watts of power - and a 220V servo motor should be no different. Your air compressor will use more power than the sewing motor when it kicks in. For an air compressor, you can try something simple and small for around $70. Get it someplace that has a good return policy or rent one to check what size you need. Bigger compressors will have to turn on less frequently. Get a quiet one that doesn't make you jump out of your seat when it turns on. The machine you got is indeed very nice and desirable - good for you! Making it work for you will be worth the effort.

That's not a clutch motor. It's actually a very fancy servo motor with needle positioning and all probably all kinds of programmable features - potentially too fancy for a beginner. It needs 220V, same as a typical electric dryer or stove top in the U.S. I'm running my 220V servo motor off the circuit that my clothes dryer is on ( I don't do laundry and sew at the same time :-) All the hook-ups and air cylinders on the back allow the controller to lift the presser foot and perhaps do automatic back-tack (reverse). It'll need compressed air to actually move levers with enough force via air cylinder that push or pull. It's all very nice stuff to have for high volume production work or in a factory, but only if it works and you have the right hook-ups for electric power and compressed air. For the novice leather sewing hobbyist it may be more of a setup and maintenance headache. Sometimes it's easier to remove all that fancy stuff and put it back to simple mode with a normal servo motor. The problem with that is that it's still a lot of work, you're removing stuff you may miss a year down the road, and the machine may no longer have the normal manual levers and connectors since it is all setup for pneumatic operation. If you can post a couple of pictures of the rest of the machine it may help us figure out what approach might be best.

And right you are, Glenn! I just checked and simply flipping open the bobbin give access to that screw. D'oh, it' so obvious once you know! I learn something new every day. Of course if you drop that screw you'll still be taking the hook out to retrieve said screw again. Here I was just getting good at taking out that hook assembly! I guess I'll be revising my videos a bit. Thanks for the tip!

Puritans apparently come in two shank sizes (.086" and .115"), depending on configuration. The big shank awl is indeed a Puritan, just the wrong shank size. I'm contemplating whether I should bother getting a single awl replaced, but for $8.30 per awl, they really ought to send you the right one in the first place.

Reverse alone is not worth $750 in my book, other things being equal-ish. For that money you can buy a nice vintage 111 class flatbed to keep this one company.

Just wanted to share what $173.30 worth of Puritan needles and awls look like. Extra points if you find the odd one in the bunch.

Sewing machine manufacturers happily mix fractional, metric, and specialty threads on the same machine. There are also a few places where the metric and fractional systems line up confusingly close. In my threading adventures I've noticed that, depending on tolerances and material, an M5-0.8 is interchangeable with a #10-32 bolt/nut. The #10 bolt diameter is just under 5mm, as are my M5 bolts; and fractional 32/inch thread pitch is 25.4mm/32=.7935mm. A #10-32 bolt often fits nicely into M5-0.8 nut, but a M5-0.8 bolt does not necessarily fit onto a #10-32 threaded hole. I found this out some time ago taking my (assumed made-in-germany metric) mystery bolt to the hardware store to get more, test fitting it nicely into the M5 thread on the test board - yay! So I happily buy a bunch of M5 bolts and when I got home it wouldn't fit into the threaded hole the mystery bolt came from - ugh. Your shouldn't-really-exist M5-1.0 thread looks suspiciously close to a #10-24 on the spec sheet (just under 5mm diameter and 24/inch fractional thread pitch is 25.4mm/24=1.05mm) A short nut with five or so threads is more forgiving than a deeply threaded hole in a machine.

The promotional brochure for the Durkopp Adler 205 series shows the original smooth parts on page six, in case you want to look up and price some OEM part numbers.

For needle plates this HighTex Throat/Needle Plate page pretty much shows the available options for a Durkopp Adler 205-370 class machine. Hightex is the same as CowBoy, so vendors like Toledo Bob or other banner vendors should be able to get them for you. Some throat plates with the thin slot turn the machine into a needle feed machine (feed dog is removed), which may be just fine for what you're trying to do. For presser feet, a lot of folks on here simply take an existing toothed foot and grind/file off the teeth and then polish it up good to make it as smooth as a baby's bottom.

I've not seen a parts manuals for the old casting Pfaff 335's. However, the head portion should be mostly identical to the Pfaff 545 for which there are parts manuals available , but they use multiple foot pressure schemes. If you can see the bolt part, you can always go old school and simply measure the diameter with a caliper and count out threads/distance to figure out pitch and find a suitable match. Most tap/die sets also have little thread pitch gauges that are useful to determine pitch. If that fails, a photo with an arrow will go a long way towards mobilizing the resident detectives.

It's only a matter of time before I'll own one of these machines. Looks like a nice setup with LOTS of parts. Let me know if you're selling this because you desperately need to get your hands on a Puritan stitcher :-)

Perhaps this chart helps: Specifications of historical Thread Standards for sewing machines. I found the chart referenced on an external discussion forum for the practical machinist. A part number is always useful when trying to figure out particulars - can you find the screw you're talking about in a parts diagram for the Pfaff 335? I've used AAASEW.com in the past to research and occasionally order oddball parts and screws. They have a "screws page" that I've used to find things by part number using my browser's find function. Some screws have sizes listed and the 9/64-40 and 11/64-40 sizes seem to pop up more than others.

I spent most of today making a how-to video about installing a Kwok Hing binder kit on my Durkopp Adler 205-370 machine. This was partially to test out new lighting equipment I had made recently for doing shadow-free macro video.

It's quite possible that your binder is set up perfectly fine and it's your tape that's not the right size for the folder. It needs to be pretty much EXACTLY 26mm wide for this folder. You cannot use a 26mm folder with 20mm tape, for example. They make folders in very small increments to fit a specific tape size: It looks like a huge folder attachment - are you sure it's intended for a Pfaff 335? If the tape size is right and the folder is right, perhaps it is supposed to be further to the left, lining up with the inside edge of the outer presser foot and stay in front of the feed dog: Maybe Joe from HockeyMender can chime in - he's the resident expert of Pfaff 335 binding operations. I'm just making slightly educated guesses.

You should be able to move the binder attachment to the left to adjust the relative stitch line position. Consider the needle position fixed. You need to move the other stuff. The folder part usually has slots to allow left/right movement of the folded tape. Do you have a close-up picture of your setup?

One of my original plans was to glue some white melamine (formica) sheet to marine plywood before carving it. Turns out finding just the melamine (not a ready-made particleboard countertop) turns out to be even harder than finding phenolic plywood. Oddly enough, there's a Toledo Plywood specialty store practically next door to the Kencraft store and it had a big stack of white melamine sheets. But in the end the phenolic plywood was the better choice for me because it involves considerably less labor (less glueing, clamping, waiting) and the phenolic is a better, ready-made surface in my mind.

I don't know exactly what kind of harness feet you are using now so it's hard to judge. A close-up picture of your harness feet would be useful. In general, all the harness feet I've used had tiny footprints (compared to standard feet) which is much more likely to leave impressions on leather (just like high heels on a wood floor.) It's mostly about pounds per square inch, and a tiny footprint is definitely is not your friend if your goal is not to leave an impression. My harness feet had about one-tenth the footprint of regular presser foot and therefore about ten times the pressure per square inch compared to a regular presser foot. Unless you're actually making a horse harness from tough bridle leather or really need to get super close to a buckle or sew along a sliver of an edge, a bigger/wider presser foot combined with a smooth throat plate and feed dog might be a better choice. But you won't know for sure until you try it out. The KH-205M throat plate and feed dog are the smoothest setup I've seen for the Adler 205-370 by a good margin. My standard throat plate has fairly strong serrations and fairly sharp edges (and a few battle scars from the previous owner.) The KH-205M throat plate and feed dog setup is not exactly cheap, but it's really well made and you can return it if it doesn't offer a significantly improvement over your current setup. The KP205LN/RN (or even the standard double-toe) presser feet have big and smooth feet bottoms (compared to harness feet) which again is good for minimizing pressure per square inch and potential markings.

The wood supply store in Toledo where I got the phenolic plywood is called Kencraft Company . They ship wood boards in various sizes as well. The helping opportunities pretty much boil down to granting access to the machine for measuring and a couple prototype fittings. The rest happens with me brooding over a computer in CAD programs and beating the various CNC machines into submission to give me what I want. The pictures should tell much of the story regarding engineering concepts and which of several possible attachment options I chose. Finishing the parts and assembly happens in my home workshop. I've considered making kits available with just the parts as they come out of the CNC machines for folks to finish and assemble it themselves, but I'd likely spend more time answering questions and walking folks through the details remotely than doing it myself. Perhaps I'll create a little "making of" video some time to show the steps involved in making these table attachments. The apparent simplicity of the final product may be deceiving. It all seems very obvious and simple when you see the finished product, but the process of getting there often is anything but obvious or simple.

That would be perfect, Joe - thanks for offering! I'll count you in.

The 441 version of the flatbed table attachment is next (and probably last) on my list of table attachment projects. I'll do it in January/February - if I get access to an actual 441 class machine, that is. Anybody in the Detroit area have a Juki 441 or clone for me to take some measurements on and do a couple fit & function tests? (you get to keep one of the prototypes!)

Congratulations on your new arrival - you got yourself a great machine for a bargain price! The bobbin spin direction is like this (from manual): Here's a quick little video on how to release the bobbin in a Durkopp Adler 204/205 sewing machine: I'll be working on a series of videos for this machine over the next week or so. A nice threading diagram is in the manual:

No smell at all from the phenolic resin. It's all cured by the time I get my hands on it and carving it is fine, too. The material is hard to find, actually. Normally it's used to make router tables, jigs, and table saw tops, where you need something very hard and slippery to withstand material being dragged across it all day. I discovered it by chance at my local WoodCraft shop, where it's rather expensive. For my actual production work stock, I ended up driving an hour one way to Toledo where a specialty wood supply store carries this stuff at a more reasonable price and in the sizes I need, albeit in only one color.

A few more shots for the LW archives:

I just had to try it, I'm like a little boy who can't resist a dare! I carefully turned the wheel by hand and my Consew 225 (twin to a Singer 111) actually sewed 1/8" (3mm) plywood wrapped in 5oz (2mm) oil tan leather without skipping stitch. Who'da thunk? This was sewn with a size 207 bonded polyester using a size 140/22 regular point needle:

After searching for "sewing plywood" on youtube, there's a guy sewing plywood on his Pfaff 545, which is essentially identical to the Singer 111. So, depending on how precious your Singer 111 is to you, go for it!