dikman

Not really, it's the nature of the printing process. The surface can be sanded smooth and using wet and dry paper (wet) it will come out very smooth. However, if you sand too heavily you can go through layers and cause delaminating, particularly on edges. I've made one or two models and have used a combination of sanding and car body filler/surface filler prior to painting. It works well but is a lot of effort.

Or if you like tinkering you could build a stand-alone bobbin winder.

Looks good, Michiel. For the type of sewing a lot of us probably do a big table isn't necessary, all they do is provide extra space to put junk on!

My Pfaff 335 was on a "standard" table and I chopped the ends off so it is only as wide as the frame legs (like your photo). I replaced the 335 head with my new CB4500 and I figure it should be quite adequate for my needs.

If you want to wind a bobbin without sewing just unthread the needle, otherwise you will have one almighty mess around the bobbin (under the feet)! I just wound 3 bobbins and pulled the bobbin out of the machine as well.

Or......you could sew forward 3 stitches, lift the feet/needle, pull the material back to the starting stitch and sew forward again. If your stitch length isn't too long then it shouldn't look obvious. I reckon for $130 inc. table you've done well, they're a good solid machine.

I agree with Chuck, cap and ball revolvers can be very accurate, the limiting factor usually being the user. Hickok used .36 cal Colt Navy pistols and was considered deadly with them.

Roger, no need to be frightened of the machine - now, if you had a clutch motor then I could understand you being frightened!! Scary things to a novice. Once you get over the initial trepidation you'll be fine.

Good job. The holes in the back of my machine are M6x1 which is nice. Meanwhile, my unit left China on 30/12 and according to the tracking is still in the air 5 days later!

Beautiful work, Uwe!

Holsters in the Old West were intended primarily as a means to carry a revolver and give it some protection from the elements. That is why you'll see the revolvers "buried" in the holster, often with not much more than the handle protruding. Towards the end of the 19th. century they seemed to change slightly, becoming a bit more open. The "Hollywood fast draw gunfights" didn't seem to happen much in real life back then.

Good to hear that you're all sorted out, Carrie (although I find the last paragraph slightly perplexing).

It's amazing how often "budget creep" comes into decision-making. I suffered the same problem myself, spending 50% more than I intended. I think you made the right choice, it should last you out.

My new CB4500 was like that, it took a lot of force to pull the bobbin thread, I had to back off the tension a bit.

If you already have machines capable of handling the "lighter" work - up to #138 thread? - then it makes sense to get the machine that can handle the heaviest work. At least it won't leave you thinking that you should have bought it further down the track.

Wiz, thank you very much for your thoughts. Constab, a contingent of firefighters from the US has just flown in, but I've never heard of any water bombers being made available from anywhere else. Each fire season there are a few of those big Sikorsky helicopter water bombers sent down here (we hire them for the season) but under conditions like we're experiencing now there's never enough.

Nice!! I nearly bought one, but in my case it wasn't much more for its bigger brother so naturally I took that. The 3200 strikes me as being close to an "all-round" machine. I'm sure you'll enjoy using it.

That's ok Brian, I'm a serial offender when it comes to hijacking threads! I actually have one of those fire extinguishers, which I'd forgotten all about. Better dig it out, I think. As for clearing your land, the Greenies have a lot to answer for. We are reaping the results of a few years of minimal, if any, backburning and clearing. This is what happens if we don't keep clearing the undergrowth!!!! Glad you're ok. Back on subject, you were right about the needle bar, when the feet are at max lift with the foot lifter the needle bar just clears the feet. I wound a few bobbins this morning and gave it a quick try on some scrap leather before it started getting too warm. #277 and #25 needle, just under 3/4" of old leather belts, went through like it wasn't there. Impressive. I then tried 1/4" of leather, with no other adjustments, and it sewed beautifully. Can't ask for more than that, I reckon. The thread takeup spring was making some funny noises (hitting the backstop when it was released) so might need a bit of tweaking. Other than that it's looking good. Me happy.

kgg, Summer has only just started so unfortunately it's going to get hotter. Given that half of Australia appears to be on fire at the moment it's not a good start. I have spoken to the dealer, although not about the out-of-adjustment issue because I only just became aware of that. They are aware of this forum as RockyAussie (Brian) suggested it to them as a valuable source of information and they have seen my posts. They face a steep learning curve and I guess this has demonstrated that not completely checking a machine first, before shipping, could be a problem because not every buyer will be capable of resolving such issues. Bert, you're probably right (even my cheap Chinese shoe patcher came threaded with a test sewn piece ) and I dare say that's what they'll do in future. At the end of the day this has been a minor inconvenience and I still have a very nice (working) machine. Taking over a business like this in Australia would have been a pretty daunting decision and I admire them for doing it (I think we'll all agree that industrial sewing machines is a pretty specialised area to work in!).

That makes sense, it just strikes me as odd that Juki, what you might call an A-grade designer/manufacturer, wouldn't allow for this but a clone manufacturer does? A bit odd. I'll have a look at it again from that perspective.

It's finally cooled off enough to spend time in my sewing machine shed (it was getting up to 47*C at one stage, not good for me!). As some will be aware I had issues with the incorrect assembly of the lifting rod which caused it to jam when using the foot lifter. Today, while checking it over I realised I only had 10mm under the foot with a manual lift and 15mm with the foot lifter, not the 13/20 I should have. After going over all the linkages and finding no adjustments I released the presser spring and using a 13mm drill bit for a gauge under the feet I released the clamp screws on the presser bar and with the manual lift engaged readjusted the linkage position on the bar. It took a couple of tries to get it aligned correctly but now I have the correct lifting clearances. I realise now that my problem is that being a Cowboy, and supposedly being a better quality build, I had assumed that the basic adjustments would have been set before leaving the factory, but in the case of this machine because it was incorrectly assembled no-one bothered to check it and it was adjusted according to the faulty assembly. A little disappointing, I wonder if their quality control is slipping. And yes, I know a dealer would have caught this IF it was assembled as a package on a table but that's not how I bought it so I'm not blaming the dealer. Fortunately, thanks to this great site and my subsequent experience with other machines this was an easy fix once I accepted that the quality control was suspect. An interesting difference, compared to a Juki, is the foot lifting system. The way this is designed it is impossible to get more than 20mm lift using the foot lifter, even though the feet have enough travel to clear 25mm - I assume all clones are probably the same. The parts around the lifting crank are different to the Juki and have a built-in stop which prevents any lifting past 20mm. I'm just a bit perplexed why anyone would bother to re-design this, given that it's supposed to be a clone? Never mind, it's all good fun.

It's taken me a while to figure out what ljk was talking about but now I see.Very clever.

That's good, because one of the joys of metric threads is the vast number of pitches they use!! Can be very frustrating.

Yep, the big question is - what is the thread size of those bolts?

Have you read this post? This story pretty much mimics my attempt at importing a 441 clone to Australia. At the end of the day there was nothing to be gained and much to lose. Yes, on Alibaba they can look attractive, but that is only the starting point. The prices I got varied from about US$643 to $1200 - head only. By all means bring one in, but all you're likely to save is maybe $3-400 at the most by buying the cheapest, and you've got absolutely no idea what the quality of the machine will be.