Show & Tell: Building A Shipping Crate For An Adler 69

[Uwe]

Yup, it was kind of hard to let this one go.

[Constabulary]

And what will you buy as replacement? How is you Puritan machine doing?

[Uwe]

Now I have trouble falling asleep because I'm like a kid who just got his allowance

Options in no particular order:

1. Buy about 100 needles+awls and a set of cast-offs for the Puritan (and then one or two Starbucks drinks with the leftover money)

2. Buy a used Juki 1341, or a new clone thereof

3. Sell my Puritan too and buy a new Adler 869

4. Sell my Puritan and my Adler 205 and buy a new Adler 969

5. Fund my "No-Curb" rescue shelter for abandoned industrial sewing machines for another two years.

[Constabulary]

With the puritan you for you have a nice but special machine which is worth investing some coins I´d say. If I were you and had the money I´d look for a Singer 97-5 but our preferences are quite different I´d say.

[Wizcrafts]

Now I have trouble falling asleep because I'm like a kid who just got his allowance

Options in no particular order:

1. Buy about 100 needles+awls and a set of cast-offs for the Puritan (and then one or two Starbucks drinks with the leftover money)

2. Buy a used Juki 1341, or a new clone thereof

3. Sell my Puritan too and buy a new Adler 869

4. Sell my Puritan and my Adler 205 and buy a new Adler 969

5. Fund my "No-Curb" rescue shelter for abandoned industrial sewing machines for another two years.

I was in a similar situation in 2013 or 14; I can't remember which, I sewed at home part time and had a Union Lockstitch that I rebuilt over a 2 year period. I invested over $1000 in parts, thread, needles and awls, in addition to the cost of obtaining it in the first place. By the time I was finished modding the machine, it sewed up to 7/8 of an inch.

During the summer of 2012, I moved into a shared, one room - 280 square foot leather business with a fellow crafter. By that time I had also acquired a brand new Cowboy CB4500. There was only room for one of the big machines and the Cowboy won. So, I put the Union Lock up for sale and it went fairly quickly.

I used the money from that sale to fund a used Singer 139 long arm walking foot machine and a Fortuna skiver. I brought home the standard size walking foot machine that was in the shop and replaced it with the Singer 139. The skiver was on a short table that Bob Kovar custom built for me. It fit between a display cabinet and the wall behind it, which amounted to something like 32 inches.

As much as I miss the awesomeness of the Union Lockstitch machine, with its needle and awl system that I had adjusted to space station accuracy, I make more use of the two machines that replaced it than I would have if I'd kept it. Sometimes you have to let go of machines that aren't truly needed and move on to others that are more useful for the work at hand.

As things turned out, last summer we took over a second adjoining room that had even more footage than the original. It is loaded with machines and a cutting table, plus rows of storage cabinets and stacked drawers. I could have easily fitted the ULS into the new room; now dubbed the sewing room. But, that's not how it played out in my timeline.

Edited March 2, 2016 by Wizcrafts

[Gregg From Keystone Sewing]

I can hardly believe my life has come to me viewing online pics of a sewing crate with real, genuine interest. Looks great by the way, and yes, we have had many cardboard boxes show up with smashed machines inside. I've long wondered how UPS can show up with equipment damaged so badly I couldn't have done better myself if I tried.

[billybopp]

Shippers do indeed do some amazing things to equipment. I used to fix mainframe computers for a living, when those were still a thing. We had a customer with a failed disk drive, when those were the size of a dishwasher. The individual drives were about 60 pounds or so, but came boxed and well padded in the box. The replacement was shipped with lots of "handle with care", "Fragile", and other such labeling on it. The first replacement failed immediately when we installed it, so a second was shipped, this time with shockwatch and tip labels. This time around, somebody was near the front door when it was delivered ... to find the FedEx driver flipping the box end over end along the sidewalk all the way from his truck to the door. So much for handle with care!

Bill

[JREESER1]

I have had several shippers and mail handlers tell me, over the years, that "FRAGILE" just means ....."throw it underhand!"

jr