dikman

Very clever, Chakotay.

Be careful with ebay's return policy, it is 30 days. PayPal is 180 days BUT to claim a refund they require you to return the goods first, at your expense. I recently bought a mini metal lathe off ebay, sold and shipped from within Australia. It was not what was advertised but even though it shipped from here the return address given by PayPal was the UK!!!! It took me three months of fighting and it wasn't until I involved the Financial Services Ombudsman that they grudgingly gave me a refund. The Juki sounds like the better machine, plus you're dealing directly with the seller. Me, I'd be very wary spending that sort of money on ebay.

I decided to have a closer look at the stamps. The geometric ones are all Porter and Co. stamps, a couple are Leathercraft NZ and the rest Craftool. I have a few Craftool that I bought recently and compared them to the old ones - there's a world of difference! The old ones have better definition and just look better. I also found a .pdf chart from Tandy that lists the old and the new stamps and it's obvious that Craftool have severely reduced the number of stamps that they make. Many of mine are no longer made.

They look nicer than mine - but the plastic one will be fine, it cost me almost nothing to make and I can easily make another if I need to.

Done. Looks much neater than the original (well, my original, at least).

Good that you got it working. The needle position when the light is on is most likely the answer (which is why I referred to section 3 in my instructions). That light indicates where it will stop. As for the belt tension, it goes without saying that you don't want a slack belt when sewing.

And received. Ta very much.

These are the instructions from my motor. Note section 3 about setting it up.

You've got a nice collection of stamps there - and you didn't even use them on the holsters! That small maul looks interesting, could you post the dimensions of the head?

Very nice indeed! I really like the border stamping, it's very uniform and neat.

Mate, you never cease to amaze me! I wouldn't mind the Pfaff 335 version as my cap has been modified slightly so a spare would be nice.

There are also quite a few videos on youtube that may help.

Instructions.I would think you would have to set it up in the menu as it's likely that it would be turned off by default.

If there's no reducer setup, i.e. belt is going directly from the motor to the handwheel and it has been set up correctly then it has to be the settings in the menu system (unless it's faulty, of course). Can you post a photo of the setup pages?

GRod, I turned this piece on the lathe to see what it was like, it's ok but could be better. There are obvious small areas, mostly on the bottom, where the mass hasn't fused properly. I think what probably happened is that because I was slowly building up the "layers" in the tin the bottom area was slowly losing heat as I got closer to the top. By using an oven the tin is constantly returned to the heat source so the mass retains the heat better. My method using the oven was to place an enamelled tray in with the tin on it, put some pieces of plastic in the tin and also put some on the tray to melt, when I removed the tray I squashed down the plastic in the tin and used a paint scraper to lift the stuff off the tray and put it in the tin then squashed that down. Then repeat the process, and repeat and repeat......Don't put too much in at a time or it can take a while to melt.

rchaven, nice job, yet another variation on building a speed reducer. There is no doubt that using a speed reducer will give slower speeds than just replacing the handwheel with a larger pulley but it just depends on what a person wants and which is the easiest (cheapest?) method to use. One of mine is down to 1 stitch every 2.5 seconds, a bit extreme perhaps, but.......... Oh, and because you're new here you obviously won't be aware but there have been a few posts about speed reducers and needle positioners and basically they don't work well together!

GRod, sometimes you can find old pewter drinking vessels at thrift shops which might be suitable (not too big and often have a conical-type shape). We once had a set of aluminium drinking cups that were a similar shape. You can use a gas torch to melt the HDPE but you have to be careful as it can scorch the stuff, and while it will still work it looks a bit unsightly. The trick with molding this is to keep pressing it down to force it together and work out any air bubbles. Another chap on youtube uses a sandwich toaster thingy, one that is flat inside, and uses non-stick cooking sheets to stop it sticking. Great for flat sheets, but I guess you could roll the sheet into a cylinder and then force it into a mold? I've started looking at he bottom of plastic containers now, checking for the #2 (or 4) code! Bit of a worry.......

For anyone else wanting to try melting plastic to make anything, my latest "test" results. I tried making another maul head and used the fine turnings from my previous one. Now, this "should" have melted easier and fused better according to my reasoning. Unfortunately it tended to be somewhat spongy and took a lot of pressure to squeeze it together, so while it worked I'm not overly happy with the result (plus the plastic appeared to scorch so looks brown). The best results came from using the milk bottles cut up into approx. 3/4" squares. I tried another smaller one, in half a tin, but rather than use the oven I placed a few pieces in the bottom of the tin and used an electric heat gun to heat the plastic until it was transparent, then added more pieces, heated again and so on until the tin was full. Every few layers I used a piece of wood to ram the molten mass down. I then clamped the resultant mass to squeeze it together and left to cool. This was quicker than using the oven and the lump at the end looked pretty good with a fairly uniform white colour and minimal flaws. Like many things, the process looks easy.........until you try it!

Simple answer is you don't need one. Don't forget that most machines that people are fitting reducers to only have a 4" handwheel, NOT the 13"/10" that you have. "fabricobble" - good one, a word that is very applicable to my various efforts. Along with the classic "fettle".

And going around that pin would certainly cause an increase in thread tension!!

I'm curious when you say it's the correct threading. I've checked my manuals for Singer 111 and 211 series, my Seiko and Pfaff 335 (both old and new castings) and none of them show the thread going around that pin.

Catskin, I figured it's probably a later subclass (not a 2) because of the points you mentioned but the lack of information on these things makes it difficult to know. If I could have checked the foot clearance it might have helped. As my wife said he obviously isn't in a hurry to sell it (she always maintains that when selling something your first offer is often the best).

Had another look at it. It wouldn't quite turn over a complete cycle, there seems to be a lot of pressure on the foot. The second foot has been welded together and the hand lever to lift the foot is broken off (!) so I couldn't lift the foot to see how much clearance there is. There's rust around the shuttle area although the thread hanging out seemed to pull out ok. Surface rust over all the shafts underneath. I suspect it might work ok although not being able to lift the foot makes it a bit hard to use! He said he's only had it about 5 weeks and won't budge on price so I told him what I'd found out about it (not being made for many years and no spares etc) and wished him luck selling it. I just had a nagging feeling that there could be problems I can't see and over the years I've learned not to ignore these little voices. I'll keep looking, something else will turn up eventually.

I've replaced the handwheels with larger pulleys on a couple of my machines and it works fine, it's a pretty simple way of slowing a machine down. Some don't like it because of the aesthetics , they think it looks "funny", but that is the only negative to doing it. As Bob said you may have to widen the belt slot. I've also fitted a speed reducer AND a larger pulley and it goes pretty slow with that setup!!

Looks the same as mine. Like SilverForge I spent a lot of time grinding and cleaning parts but for what they are they're not bad little machines, pretty simple and somewhat bulletproof!