Another 31-15 Beginner

[jfhspike]

I went and looked at things, and couldn't see how that pin would work...until I looked at the parts book and found that the disks were assembled in the wrong order. The correct order is

machine, disk1, disk2, spring-holding-disk, spring, knurled nut

On my machine, the order was

machine, disk1, disk2, spring, spring-holding-disk, knurled nut

It gave the same net pressure on the disks, but it meant that the spring-holding disk never got pressed by that little pin.

Thanks for prompting me to go look carefully. You never know what you'll get with a used machine...

--John

And just in case someone reads this in the future...when you get the disks in the right order, there's still a question of whether the spring-holding disk is cupped towards the SPRING and knurled nut, or towards the two disks and the machine. Answer? Towards the disks and machine.

BTW, in a fit of cleanliness (and a desire to better see what I was doing when I was timing the needlebar), I decided to remove the needle plate. First screw...popped right out. Second screw...appeared to have been put in by a gorilla. PB Blaster, heat...nothing worked. I finally managed to drill out the top of the screw and get the needle plate off, and then come in from below to drill out what remained...which pretty much worked, except that there was still some old-screw stuck in the threads. So I tried to chase it with a 4-40 tap (it appears to be a 40-thread-per-inch screw, of some non-standard diameter a little larger than 4), which mostly worked...until the tap broke off. A bunch of pounding with a drift-punch and then a center punch broke up the tap (yay!), and drilling with a slightly larger drill managed to drive out the remaining bits of screw...leaving behind enough thread to get a good grip on the screw. SOMEtimes things actually go right!

--John