Singer 31 Model Variations

[Anne Bonnys Locker]

What a bloody annoying company Singer was!

I am rebuilding a batch of 31's at the moment and for the most part they work with generic parts. However:

31k18 (roller foot/roller feed) I rebuilt a while back uses a different needle bar, fortunately I had two, and a special needle clamp - nothing a standard clamp and a grinder cannot cope with.

31KSV7. Looks standard but is in fact a rotary shuttle machine. Everything else is standard and fortunately one of my modern Hirose shuttles slotted straight in.

31K47 "walking Foot". For some obscure reason the foot set is still in production so YAY!

31k20. I have not got to this beast yet but for some reason it takes a different @#$?ing bobbin case, according to the parts list, to almost every other 31! What were they thinking.

Another version (31-29) uses the long beak shuttle found in the 15-1, 17, 18 and some 42 models.

I have worked as a design engineer and one of the factors in our process was to use parts 'off the shelf' wherever possible and not reinvent the wheel.

The 31 could have used the same shuttle and bobbin case as the model 15 and 16 but they chose to come up with new ones.

At the moment I do not have an original 31-20 bobbin case so would any of the experts mind telling me what the difference is?

[CowboyBob]

Darren,

If you change the shuttle driver the standard 31-15 parts will fit,the differnce is it's larger but thinner so I doubt if it even holds anymore thread but alot of times Singer would make these certain sub-classes like this to sew certain things a certain way.The bobbincase costs more than the 31-15 one.

Here's one example,a Singer 98-3 made to sew (re-cap) tires,made in 1915 & before I owned it I never heard of it.But in 1915 they didn't make good tires & Singer says the result" is a tire equal to or better than the original & you can also reuse one w/a small blow out that have been vulcanized"

But back then there was alot of different things that were made,that required sewing that we don't use today or are made a different way or different material that made the machine obsolete.Some of them can be adapted to other uses.

[Anne Bonnys Locker]

The -15 and -20 use the same bobbin even though the old parts list use different part numbers - a typical Singer ploy to sell more parts.

I have some new -15 shuttles and shuttle drivers so I will do some experimenting. A grinder and file may be required - no parts out of China/Taiwan till mid February at the earliest.

Thanks for the info Bob.