Singer 95K40

[Beadweaver]

Hi,

I've been watching eBay for a few years and every now and then a 95k40 will pop up for sale. Usually it's just the head. And the sellers will say its in good working order.

Is it worth taking a risk on, to buy this machine? These are old machines and I just wonder if there are any foreseeable issues. I know that no one can predict what might go wrong but I was wondering if it's wise to invest the time and money in one? The machines are usually not that expensive, its the shipping....

Thank you

Susan

[cdthayer]

What are you planning to sew?

I’ve recently been setting my Singer 95-40 up as a dedicated denim jeans hemming machine. It was designed for sewing light and medium weight fabrics, so it’s not really designed for heavy work or leather.

I was even concerned about how it would handle the cotton-covered polyester Tex80 thread that we use for jeans hemming, and while I’ve only done a few test-sew trials hand cranking it, it looks like it might handle it alright, but Tex80 is probably close to the largest thread that it will like. I’m using a size 18 needle for woven fabric, sewing through 3 to 6 layers of new blue denim fabric (six layers when I cross the fake flat-felled side seams). I’m going to have to run it more to find out how the bobbin case gets along with the jeans thread.

To achieve the tension that I wanted for setting the stitch in the denim fabric, I swapped out the light-weight bee-hive spring in the upper tension with one out of a Singer 31-15 to avoid having the spring nearly mashed flat. So, if it was the original spring, which I’m guessing it was, that told me that my thread size may be above the intended limit for the machine.

CD in Oklahoma