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.

I can understand making an extension to the clutch lever, but I'm not sure what you're describing for the foot pedal. After adding the speed reducer, the connecting rods would have been so short that it seemed better to bend a piece of metal and make a link rather than permanently shortening the rods until I saw how this was going to work. Do you have a photo of yours illustrating a modification to the foot pedal?

Post pictures when you have it done. It was through pictures of other's speed reducers that I got my concept for how to make my own. Pictures of what people do or make are helpful.

For those contemplating building their own speed reducer. I used 1-1/4" x 1-1/4" angle iron from a bed frame since I had it available. Old bed rails are frequently given away, so it's a good source of material. There's no reason that you couldn't make one with a wooden frame though. I had a selection of pulleys ranging from about 1.5" to 8" that I'd saved over the years. I also had three pairs of pillow blocks accumulated over the years. All were sleeve bushing ones. If I were buying, I'd probably choose one with ball bearings. I don't know if they make non-aligning pillow blocks, but if you have a choice, choose the self aligning pillow blocks otherwise you'll spend lots of time getting the alignment just so. I chose to use the pair of pillow blocks taking a 1/2" shaft since I had some 1/2" steel around and I only had to put a reducer bushing in the large 8" pulley. The speed reduction is calculated from the ratio of the pulley diameters, so the first reduction was from a roughly 2" pulley to an 8" pulley or a 1/4 reduction of the 1725 rpm motor. I turned the table upside down for convenience in working and laid out the frame around the existing holes for the bolts from the clutch motor, measured the size pieces I needed and cut them on the chop saw. I welded those pieces together next. Clamping the frame to the table kept the frame from warping when the weld cooled. Next was a mock up of the frame with shaft and pulleys attached to see what height to make the upright pieces. Note that I had the pillow blocks elevated enough to allow some room between the large pulley and table top to permit sliding the belt in. I chose to make mine 9" in height so it exceeded the size of the pulley. In retrospect, there was enough space between the center of the motor shaft and the large pulley that I could have reduced this size to 6 or 7 inches. I cut out the uprights and bolted the whole frame together, then sat the motor on top to be sure this was all going to fit. As anticipated, the clearance to the horizontal piece of the table frame was tight. I had to keep the motor more toward the front of the table than it had originally been mounted because of this support. I inset the top piece / motor side piece of plywood into the reducer frame and added the angle iron shelf for the pillow blocks and bolted everything together, discovering that the large pulley was now going to extend farther from the frame of the speed reducer than I had expected. This was caused by the location of the pillow block. I thought about welding a piece onto the shelf for the front pillow block, but decided it was easier to just move the whole frame back a little. In order to accomplish this, I reduced the length of the plywood base (the part against the table) and decided to use lag screws rather than the original bolts and bolt holes from the motor. This allowed the frame to slide back and forth under the plywood "clamp". When making the uprights I drilled three sets of holes for the pillow block shelf. This will - at least in theory - allow for some tension adjustment of the belt from the speed reducer to the machine's handwheel pulley. The tension from the motor to the large pulley is adjusted with the tension adjustment screw on the motor mount that's part of the clutch motor. I paid minimal attention to the lengths of belts required and this could have been a fatal flaw if I couldn't have found the right length belt from the reducer to the machine since there is very little adjustment built into my frame for that. I put the newly painted frame on the table, moved it to an appropriate position and tightened the lag screws. Next it was time to mount the motor. There had been some trial fittings for the location of the motor on the frame before I drilled the holes and mounted it. The motor was moved back and forth a little so that the two pulleys were in relatively close alignment by eyeball. With the motor securely in place it was time to flip the table right side up and see how it all looked. Then put the machine head into the table opening and aligned the small pulley of the speed reducer with the one on the handwheel. At this point I took a piece of rope and measured the lengths of belt required. Both belts needed to be about 36" in length. As luck would have it, I had found an 8 ft length of leather belt at a yard sale the week before so I made my own belts in order to be sure these sizes would work. An advantage of the leather belt is that as it stretches I can just remove the staple and shorten the belt to a new length. I made my own staples. 16 Ga wire worked better than 14 Ga wire for the staples. There is play in the speed reducer shaft causing it to be noisy - but I can control the speed of the sewing now. It is not as slow as I've seen in some videos of machines with servo motors. I cannot stop the needle in the up or down position as I've seen people do in videos of slow servo motors, but that might come with practice. Despite the 1/4 reduction from the motor to the 8" pulley and an uncalculated reduction from the small pulley to the machine's handwheel pulley, I'm getting 424 rpm on the sewing machine shaft, i.e. 424 stitches per minute. I would have thought it would have been lower than that. Regardless, it's a major improvement.

I installed the speed reducer and made belts today. I tried using the skived method and contact cement for the one belt. I used the band saw to create the bevel, belt sanded it to make it even, and used Weldwood contact cement to glue it together. It held up until I put some real tension on it on the speed reducer. After that I spliced it with wire like normal leather belts. I started with 14 Ga wire. I made the staple / hog ring ok with that, but it was too hard to work with. I switched to 16 Ga wire and that was easier to work with and did the job just as well.

I've been taking photos as I built it and will post them as a tutorial since this forum has become the internet's de facto place for information on industrial sewing machines regardless of whether or not the intent is to sew leather.

A legitimate question. Because the leather belting is what I had around and the machine isn't something I'm going to make a living with. The spare rubber belts I had laying around the shop didn't fit. I'm making a speed reducer so belt sizes were not calculated. It will be trial and error. I just happened to run across what looked like leather sewing machine belting at a yard sale last weekend for 25 cents so I bought it as a flyer. Since I'd never seen a leather belt before I wasn't sure what it looked like, but for 25 cents I couldn't go wrong. At a minimum it's worked to give me the length measurement I need for the belt from the clutch motor pulley to the 8" reducer pulley. If it doesn't perform like it should, I will replace it with a rubber belt - but by then I'll have had an adjustable leather belt to confirm the dimensions I need. I will probably have to buy one belt to go from the speed reducer to the handwheel pulley. When I get the speed reducer installed (hopefully today now that the paint's dry) my next task is to find a pair of inexpensive 1.5" diameter hinge plates so I don't have to fabricate them. The machine came with the hinge pins. Cascabel - thanks for the information about the staples / hog rings being common at automotive upholstery shops.

We've got a pretty good old school sewing machine shop (Sunbury Sewing Center) near us and I stopped in there this morning because he said he had clips for leather belts. 65 cents. I showed him the belting and he felt his clips (which were for 3/8" belting) were too big for the belt I had. He also found the belt curious because it was a flattened oval rather than round. He reinforced what a couple of you have said about the clips being a good system because if you need to shorten a belt that has stretched, it's pretty easy to do. He advised just getting some heavy wire and making my own now that I've seen what they look like. I have some 16 or 18 Ga steel wire in the shop, so I'll try that. I would have liked to have talked to him more but time is money for a solo shop, so I didn't linger too long. He mentioned that he's getting people from several hours away coming to the shop to get their old Singers rebuilt. Other than tinkerers like those of us who populate this forum, there aren't too many people who work on sewing machines.

Thanks to both of you. I'm surprised by the things I turn up at yard sales. I got a Consew 226 in July, a sewing machine table in August and the belt for a speed reducer I've built in September. The roll of belting cost me 25 cents. What glue did you use to attach the belt ends to each other? I have some Sil-Bond RTV-4500 (primarily used for boats I think) that seems to bond anything to anything. OK to use a belt sander to skive 2" of belt? How much does leather belting stretch, if any? There's a certain amount of adjustment built into the clutch motor, but if the belt stretched, I'd have to cut the belt and rejoin it, which I'd like to avoid. I'll be using this on a Consew 226, mostly doing things in canvas and denim, but might move into leather at some point. Will a leather belt do the job or should I just go with a standard rubber belt from the beginning?

Is this Leather Belting for a sewing machine? It's about 7/16" wide by about 1/4" thick. I picked it up at a yard sale. If it is belting, what can I substitute for a link to join the two ends. I picked it up at a yard sale thinking it might be belting and I'm in the process of making a speed reducer for my machine.

I worked on it this afternoon. I had looked for eccentricity in the hole for the needle as suggested above by CowboyBob and hadn't noticed it the first time, but when I went to take the needle out and reinsert it this afternoon it was more noticeable. Tightening the needle clamp screw moves the needle to the left. It's usable as is. At least it's not striking the feed dog, so I'll let things alone for the time being.