SheltathaLore

All right, sounds like sharpening it myself is a Big Nope. I'll probably go check out Shoe Systems, and possibly call a local sharpening service to see how they feel about sharpening it (although they mostly do knives, so it may be out of their wheelhouse.) Thanks for the advice, everyone!

It's two inches wide or so. I would rather not die...

That... actually didn't occur to me. I'll look into it. Thanks for the idea!

I've got a Landis 1 in 1 that I picked up off Craigslist; it's in pretty good shape, except that the blade is dull and a bit notched. How on earth do you sharpen one of these blades? I'd rather not replace it; too many sellers only sell to businesses, and replacements aren't cheap.

Oh nice, I really like those flip down workbench casters. Saves me the trouble of moving the pedal mount, for one. As for the table, I'm sure I can rig up *something* to get them to bolt on - I was more interested in the general specs to look for. Honestly though, since I doubt that a table with machine is likely to weigh more than 250 lbs, heavy duty industrial casters would be neat but probably aren't critical. A loaded workbench surely weighs that much or more. Any caster that isn't obviously dinky should surely be rated for at least 60 pounds, right? I do intend for the machines to live on a hard surface, but plans can always change, so I agree that it would be handy to have casters that can cope with carpet.

Aha, the "tubing" is rigid and provides an offset so that the pedal ends up in the right place. I was thinking it involved flexible tubing, which was clearly not going to be helpful.

I understand the problem you're describing, but I just can't visualize your solution. Do you happen to have a picture of how the blocks or tubing would solve it?

My floors aren't super smooth, but locking is a nice feature to have regardless.

For those of you who like to roll your machines around, do you have a favorite brand/style of casters? I'm really tired of not being able to rearrange my shop on my own, so it might be time to slap wheels on everything.

After remaking the dress, I won Best Craftsmanship at a tiny con over the summer, and more excitingly, at a medium-sized con in October. I am immensely proud of myself, and I'm definitely planning to show it off at some bigger cons next year!

Bill Shanor is absolutely wonderful, and I'm honored that I was able to sneak in a class right before he retired. Non-lasted shoes will certainly do the job with much less time investment, but they're really better suited to moccasins and flat boots - so I'm super happy about adding this to my toolkit. :D

I decided to buy a new clone from Gregg. I've been keeping an eye on ebay and craigslist and the forums here for quite a while now, hoping for one of the old Singers, but very few machines surfaced that would actually save me money over buying a new one, and of course I'd always be taking a risk on an ebay machine being completely worn out or getting broken in shipping. I can't wait for it to get here!

Interesting - the stiffness/springiness of bonded nylon has frustrated me a lot when I attempt to sew with it on some machines, so if bonded polyester is a solid alternative, I might have to stock up on some. The bonus is that Serafil has tons of colors, plus a color card that I intend to squirrel away in my swatchbook stash.

They don't have anything in stock, sadly.

Wiz: I specifically want a roller foot for this, but I will keep that model in mind if I find myself in need of a post bed. The original singers are pretty awesome, but unfortunately, it's hard to tell if a random machine on the internet is a boat anchor that was run 80 hours a week for 50 years in a factory - so I'm probably going to stick to the new clones.