HENDREFORGAN Report post Posted January 20, 2023 (edited) Whilst this unique sewing machine is no longer in my ownership, I sold it to a budding shoe maker in 2020, I thought it might be good for posterity if I uploaded photo's of the item, the "clarified" Owners Manual I uploaded as PDF's and gave readers some background on this machine. I answered a "local ad" in a paper for a "patching sewing machine" being sold by a local cobbler who was retiring, that turned out to be a Singer 29K on OE treadle base and I bought that and enjoyed the years I had using it before I then sold it also in 2020. The cobbler asked if I would be interested in a "side sole stitcher" that he had been unable to use for some years, the long and the short of it was he gave me the "Frobana" for free! I remember the effort it took getting it home in our Citroen 2CV! The reason why the cobbler had stopped using it was years before when his "shop" was inspected by the local building inspector he condemned the machine as "far too dangerous to use", he didn't appreciate the open drive belts and jury-rigged motor! It sat in the corner unloved. What I didn't appreciate then was just how rare one of these machines was fitted to their OE pedestal base, I joked after moving it into my workshop that the metal was so thick and so unnecessarily heavy that, given the likely manufacturing date was in 1950's Germany, they must have had so much scrap metal hanging about in destroyed tank's, etc that they didn't care on the weight! I never got around to re-fixing the electric motor and instead, courtesy of that pedestal base, we found we could easily use it by hand with the side wheel. We never used it for shoe-making, no, our business was bespoke "Adult Toys" and the way this machine could easily sew together two pieces of heavy hide we used it's very limited "throat" to stitch alone the edges of the blanks . . . we even did an alternative range where, of the two blanks, one side was heavy veg-tanned hide and the other rubber sheeting from old conveyor belts. I constructed and added a plywood table and jig to the face of the sewing head to make accurate sewing easier. When it came time to move on from the Light Industrial unit we used this machine, as well as other heavy kit, needed to be sold. It was only then when I researched the "Frobana" on-line that I realised what a rare example I had been using, by then it had become very hard to buy the unique needles. One example I found on YouTube was a guy in Poland who had jury rigged his sewing head to a metal frame with a giant electric motor underneath . . it had belts thrashing away everywhere and I wondered what that "local building inspector" would say about that example! I only ever saw old photo's of maybe three other "sewing heads" mounted correctly on their "pedestal base", most examples the head was sat on a purpose made wooden box to use by hand. (*) One very useful, indeed highly valuable asset, that came with the machine was an original, though very used, Owners Manual. This was so vital in setting the sewing head up so, before it went, I scanned it for posterity. Naturally the file then became lost in the depths of my multiple HDD's and it was only at the end of 2022 that I found the file and used my knowledge of image editing to "clean up" the digital pages so that the instructions could be read. My thanks here to Northmount (MOD) for uploading those pages and, I hope, adding that link here. Thus anyone who buys one of these rarities can now figure out how they work! I do believe I can honestly say that, if you were making "hand made" shoes, this side sole stitcher would be the Master! Owners Manual https://leatherworker.net/forum/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=192129 Edited January 21, 2023 by Northmount Added link to the Instruction book Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HENDREFORGAN Report post Posted February 8, 2023 GOOD NEWS! YouTube Video's! Before I sold this machine I had passed forward to the new owner a small list of video clips on YouTube I had found to help them with their purchase? An issue a little later with my browser meant losing a lot of my Bookmarks and these were gone . . . . . . but when clearing out the archived "Sent Box" of my email client recently I found the copy of the email I sent! Listing them here and, on the 8th of February 2023, I have checked to see if they are still working . . . they are ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la7ghRj-NU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjpxotjdglw&t=244s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5B1cppRWzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN3cE99GGrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4qvKufHkD8 These video's from I believe two Polish users show is that A) if motorised then wear ear defenders you can see why my machine had been previously deemed a danger to safety, anyone adding a motor to this machine MUST construct some guards and C) the last video shows how we used it for strap making. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jimi Report post Posted February 14, 2023 (edited) Thanks for sharing Hendreforgan, was just wondering why the owner did not just take off the belts and use the hand crank?? you don´t have both hands holding the work but at least you can still use your machine?? They are very nice machines and a gr8 solution for a small workshop, the small knob was probably for changing over with the large handle for when being used with the motor as it would be pretty dangerous that big handle sticking out and flying around. I have one here in the corner, hand crank and without pedestal, it is the slightly older model. I also have a PDF somewhere of the manual if anyone is interested by Gritzner in English and Frobana in German. Frobana.pdf Gritzner-Manual.pdf Edited February 14, 2023 by Northmount PDFs added Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
