Landis 12 G Outsole Stitcher moving, cleaning, partial disassembly, resurrection

[AlizabethThomas]

Taking small bites. Today I lifted the base, removed it from the cart, and placed it on the ground as far to the side as possible. Then I lifted the head almost all the way to it's position next to that, placing a moving blanket and then a plastic bag between the two. I did a basic cleaning of the back of the head where it will sit towards the base to remove the major grime. I wasn't going to bother getting it spotless, that's more of a disassembly cleaning job. Just some mineral spirits, scrub brush, and paper towels. I did get a lot of crud out of there, and it's reasonably clean. The rest of the gunk can be reached from the sides and front as I reassemble the small parts I removed to separate the head, clean up the moving parts in preparation for oiling, internal cleaning of the wax pots, threading, and the addition of liquid wax. Almost ready to mount the head!

[AlizabethThomas]

It's finally got it's head back. I need to start looking into wax stripper/nut assembly at a supplier. I like Gateway in Illinois. They've already hooked me up with an original foot pedal for $60 shipped, and one of the main techs there has the only comprehensive video (or only video at all) on youtube about threading, wax, cleaning, and lubrication, Steve Mueller is his name. Here's a neat old '90s video on the landis stitcher. A K model is shown, but it's still a 12 like mine. All these have the same basic heart of the mechanism with little improvements and changes to the things around the outside edges of the machines as the alphabet progresses (there is not a Landis 12 for every letter, but I know of an F, G, and K). The discombobulated narration is an acquired flavor. https://youtu.be/h3EhvqTIBhY

Edited April 4, 2021 by Wizcrafts
Fixed link to YouTube video

[AlizabethThomas]

much earlier in the process, i had gotten nervous about whether it was all there or if it were missing parts. Here you can see I have gotten to the point of rotating it through a cycle (it was gummed up slightly and all the oil had basically dried up, dripped off, wicked out into the dust). I not only was able to remove the bobbin to verify that it was present in the machine, but also see the needle and awl present, and figured out that the handwheel rotates away from the user at the top, that is, clockwise viewed from the right side of the machine, the opposite of most sewing machines. Unsure if I was seeing that wheels-spinning-backwards effect video sometimes has on wheels like in car commercials, I could verify this opposite rotation because the awl has to make a hole before the dull needle can travel through the  material to hook the thread from the looper below. Here you can see the two tip-to-tip in the hole making. thread-hooking-from-below part of the cycle. 

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by AlizabethThomas

[AlizabethThomas]

A light dry brush and vacuum  cleaning.

Edited April 4, 2021 by AlizabethThomas

[AlizabethThomas]

A first wet scrub with mineral spirits and thorough wipe down, and breaking up crusty wax pot contents. I've seen shoemaker's wax made with wax, lard, and rosin, and am not sure what this old wax contained. I have a block of wax that came with the machine that is yellow like beeswax but harder and may contain other ingredients. The wax left in the pot looks very crystalline like rosin, dark, and almost green. The wax pot looks like it's made of aluminum, but this greenness almost makes it seem like a bunch of copper corrosion. I don't know, it's nasty and gets scraped clean, and then I will see the condition of the rubber bushing "strippers" that wipe the thread of excess wax, be it liquid or hot melted, from the threrads, both in bobbin winding and in stitching processes. There is one pointed out, and another hidden at the bottom of the wax pot out of view.

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by AlizabethThomas

[AlizabethThomas]

Wax pot scraped and vacuumed until empty, machine deemed clean enough to be oiled and test stitch dry run without thread performed. 

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by AlizabethThomas

[AlizabethThomas]

The wax pot all cleaned out and filled with Sellari's liquid wax. Both cones of thread in place on their holders, threaded through the pot and into the machine. I don't have new wax strippers (rubber bushings under tension from a barrel nut to squeegee off excess wax) but these will work ok for my tests and probably even longer until I obtain newer ones. No leaks so far, but the nuts seem to be specific to each ferrule. I'm not winding bobbins just yet, but I have the thread for that going through the wax pot for when I get the bobbin winder cleaned, installed, and figured out, including any parts it may be missing. So the bobbin thread, which is 6 cord thickness, is just holding it's place in the wax pot, so it doesn't leak, since that ferrule comes out the bottom of the pot. I have one metal bobbin wound with old linen thread, but I am using a 6 cord polyester prewound bobbin thread for now, I bought just two. Ideally when the worldwide linen shortage catches up (2020-21 pandemic era) I'll be using pure linen on the bobbin side, but I bought a cone of the polyester anyway. The top thread is linen, original to the time when the machine was last used, and is typically a 7 cord thickness thread.    

[AlizabethThomas]

The Landis has turned it's first line of stitching in probably decades. Just hand crank for now. I have to take a step back and finish reassembling all the little things or I'll never get around to them. With cold wax, I shouldn't have to be running the heating circuit, but that's just what I'm hearing so far, and in case I do, I'd like it all assembled. I want to get the machine as close to original mechanical condition as possible and reinstall everything it came with. Nobody has documented the details of the guts of any landis online that I could find yet, which is why I started this thread. It could use a new awl, and I sure have to build momentum in that part of the cycle to keep the presser foot from bouncing way up and get it to punch through swiftly. It's struck somethig hard and has a dulled/damaged tip. I just need that square nut driver Steve has in the video. I've messaged his company about getting one of those and a set of wax stripper bushings and possibly nuts, and some stitcher machine oil, just using zoom spout oiler oil like on all my other sewing machines for now. 

Edited April 5, 2021 by AlizabethThomas
details

[AlizabethThomas]

I bought new wax stripper rubber bits and nuts for the wax pot. But before I could thread that up, I started to realize all the touchup painting and some of the small parts I wanted to color match repaint were in that area. So I bought some small tins of black and white rustoleum to go with my rustoleum brown. This was an interesting shade of grey with it's brown oil staining and probably some UV darkening. So I got to work tinting some paint after I took the little drip shelf and thread bracket off and started stripping them and the conduit that provides heating electricity to the shuttle case area. Mainly using the dinged up base to match and play with my color. Spent quite a while on this. I shouldn't have used a whole spoonful of black, because I had to add all the white. When the brown made it too red, green colorant added was the answer. I got it about perfect color wise and then it dried a little darker so I added some of the non-green-tinted to lighten. Still dried darker, but after all that, the two batches were going to go back together in the can anyway, and it was fantastic compared to before. 

[AlizabethThomas]

Spent some time cleaning the moving parts to make sure I was finding all the oiling points. Turns out I had missed some in the back. I cleaned them all off with acetone and used some red nail polish to mark them. I would have liked to use something brighter for visibility, but I think red is tasteful and simple for the age of the machine.