RWL2

I don't know if it was all the way in or not when I started since I began by backing it out. ....and kept going till the brake shoe fell off the bolt. Doh!! I had difficulty detecting much difference except at the two extremes. When too loose the machine would coast a stitch or two beyond where I wanted it to stop. Too tight and I had trouble being able to feather the clutch, plus the clutch lever started to move down toward engagement with each turn of the bolt. I backed it out until I could control it again and then backed it out slightly more. A servo no doubt is the way to go. I just don't want to spend the money at this point.

I'm assuming you mean the greasing of the cork rather than whether the steel wool took off the rust. The grease made a minimal difference. There's no discernable slack between the clutch beginning to engage and the brake holding back the machine. I think a bigger gap there would help but I haven't explored how to make those settings wider.

It was just surface rust. I hit it with a little steel wool and it came right off. I think the previous owner had the table in her garage. Now it's in my cellar which is relatively climate controlled and dry.

I greased the cork clutch pad today. I wish they'd build these things with fasters with a hex head rather than a phillips head. I got the three retaining screws out, but they were tight and I worried about stripping the heads. Photos of the clutch for anyone who's never seen the insides. The first shows two of the three screws that holds the clutch on. The second shows a thin layer of rust on the steel clutch plate. The third is a closeup of the cork clutch pad and the fourth photo shows the greased pad next to the SuperLube that I used.

1750 RPM Singe phase. Speed reducer with 2" to 8" pulley and the drive pulley to handwheel pulley is about 2" to 3". I didn't put my tachometer on it recently to see what the speed of the machine is, but It was somewhere around 400 RPM. The maximum speed isn't a problem. It's getting the slow speed when coming to the end of a seam when you want to place the needle just so. I may eventually get a servo motor, but it's not in the immediate future.

Thanks Pintodeluxe. I haven't looked carefully yet at how the clutch is removed from the end of the motor. I suspect it won't be hard to remove since they were intended to be used in production facilities where time is money, but I've never taken one apart before.

The momentum in the motor would be a real negative. It's something I hadn't considered, not that I have a spare treadmill motor lying around. It's not just going slow that matters. It's the ability to stop with the needle up or down near the end of a seam. I've at least got some control of that now with the speed reducer and extension of the clutch arm.

I didn't do a search here at leatherworker to check, but I wonder if anyone has used an old treadmill motor and controller as a poor man's servo.

I'll be interested in anything you turn up. Wiz has already shared his knowledge, but I couldn't find anything on line dealing with this. Thanks.

Aha. I noticed after I'd installed a working set screw for the thread control discs that the thread made a snapping sound as it went around the bobbin case. This was noticed when cranking the machine by hand and sewing through two pieces of denim; the motor noise would have obscured the sound. I don't know how the discs were adjusted when I noticed the sound and looked underneath to see what was occurring. I had chalked it up to something that I just hadn't noticed before. Something more to play with. Thanks for that knowledge.

Yes, the speed reducer lowers the clutch motor by about 9" if I'm remembering the dimension correctly. Was there any downside to greasing the cork friction plate? Did it slip when sewing through tough material after being greased? How greasy did you make it? Is it worth greasing the brake to make it easier to turn the handwheel?

Before and after photos of the modification I made to the foot control for the clutch motor on my sewing machine. By extending the control bar of the clutch you have to move the foot pedal more to get the same effect. It is slightly easier to come to the end of a seam and stop where I want to. The suggestion came from another member of the forum a couple of months ago.

The thread control discs are the lower silver colored disks and have a set screw at the top and an arc of adjustment. My question deals with where on the arc to set them and why. It's sewing as pictured above, but inquiring minds want to know. Actually, because the original screw was stripped, I had no screw there and despite the discs rotating back and forth somewhat with the needle stroke, it still continued to sew. This is a machine I had to completely disassemble and reassemble because of rust and varnished oil locking virtually all moving parts together. There are several posts on this machine in the forum, leaving behind a trail of informational bread crumbs for anyone else who has to completely rebuild a machine.

Is there a procedure for adjusting the rotation of the thread controller discs on the Consew 225/226 (similar to Singer class 111 machines). I've rotated mine pretty far counterclockwise just for convenience in getting the thread past the fork in the control discs when threading the machine. A related question - what's the purpose of providing a rotation adjustment of the thread control discs? I can't find this mentioned in any of the manuals I've gathered on this type of machine. Setting the check spring I understand - the spring touches the stop when the eye of the needle gets to the material being sewn - but what about the thread controller discs? An aside - the adjustment screw for the controller discs is a special size 3/32" x 80 threads per inch. Mine was stripped. The diameter of a #3 machine screw is just slightly larger than this. I retapped the hole in mine for a 3-48 screw, which works just fine. This size machine screw is readily available at a hardware store if I should ever lose the one I installed. I chose 3-48 rather than 3-56 because I had screws of that size and a tap available.

A picture is worth 1000 words. That does look like a good method to increase the sensitivity of the clutch to foot pedal position.