Binder

[ojd]

I operate and manage a knitting mill as my 'day job', we use a lot of binders for various seaming operations on knitted apparel. From my experience, there is no field where the old saying 'you get what you pay for' is more true than binders. The amount of time I've spent desperately trying to file, bend and braze bad binders is something I would like not to Think off.

We only buy suisei (japan) or rimoldi (italy) these days. Make sure you buy the right 'gauge' for what you're gonna sew. Otherwise the tape will cause a drag, and you will get a really bad finish. On Machines for knits there is almost Always a differential that you can adjust to somewhat counter the drag from the tape, but it can't rectify even modest faults caused by bad binders.

We buy some from college sewing machine parts as mentioned above. They're a real gem for sure. We also deal a bit with local machine dealers, not really good prices, but we get binders that do exactly what we want them to do, and they can be used 12+ hours a day without moving around, causing drags, or even worse, production stops. We also want to have local machine businesses around, so by buying locally we're voting with our wallets. Long time ago when I started out I bought a few cheap binders without really knowing what I was gonna use them for, they're all scrapped now. No use. If you're sewing as a hobby, by all means, go ahead and buy a few cheap ones to figure out your needs, but if you're serious and wanna do it as a business, I can't see any other way than forking out for professional Tools.

We have made a few ourselves, but to be honest, it's cheaper to have them custom made than to make them ourselves, at least for us.

(My browser keeps capitalising random Words, sorry for that)