Singer 31-47 Thread Tensioner

[GeorgePepper]

I recently purchased a Singer 31-47 in need of some care.  While cleaning and servicing it, I have noticed that the thread tensioner does not appear to have a tensioner release pin (32574); I don't mean the pin is missing, I mean there appears to be no where to put one.  I have uploaded a parts image to help.  If I remove the tensioner assembly (44118) by releasing the spring regulator set screw (448AL), then disassemble the tensioner by removing the regulator thumb nut (1560C), the inner screw stud (50327C) on which the tensioner discs (2102) sit can be unscrewed from the grooved outer body (7336) freeing the spring (43946).

Inspecting the stud (50327C), there is no central hole up which the release pin (32574) would pass.  On pictures of tensioners from other models, I see the stud has a through hole along its axis through which passes the release pin.  When you operate the presser bar lifter to free the items under the foot, as there is no release pin (and no possibility of having one with this tensioner), the thread tensioner cannot release the tension on the thread.  Is this normal?  Have you seen tensioner assemblies like this one?  I would like to keep the machine as standard as possible, but I would also like to use it, and this may be a problem.  Thanks in advance.

 

[CowboyBob]

On some older Singers there's a tension release on the side,not in the middle,if you look in the hole after you take the tension out can you see the release lever back there?  part # 20314 is the old style.

[GeorgePepper]

Thank you Bob for your quick reply.  I took another look and I don't think it's this old style of release.  I can see how this works if you have a cutout in either the body of the machine or the grooved outer body (7336 in my image which looks equivalent to 20061 in your image), in order for the prong on part 20314 to pass, but neither is present on this machine.

 

[GeorgePepper]

I am fast coming to the conclusion that this was a Friday afternoon assembly model.  It appears to me as if the stud has not been drilled with a through hole.  I just don't see how this tensioner has ever worked, and perhaps this is one reason why this machine was put to the back of some room to gather dust.  Each the operator must have tried to release the fabric and pull some slack thread, it must have snagged in the tensioner.

On this web site

https://theprojectlady.com/singer-31-15/

the lady restores a 31-15 which has the same tensioner setup; towards the end of the blog, there are pictures of the tensioner and pin in-situ and removed.  I am now wondering if the stud has had some hardening treatment.  If not, I can have a go at drilling a through hole and fitting a release pin.  Does anyone have an idea of the rough diameter of the pin?  I am guessing at  ~1/16" or maybe  3/32".

[CowboyBob]

This tension post is an old style someone put in it,it's hardened & will never drill,a new complete tension unit is around $8.00 + postage.

 

[GeorgePepper]

OK, thanks Bob, that saves me trying and blunting a bit.

[CowboyBob]

50 minutes ago, GeorgePepper said:

OK, thanks Bob, that saves me trying and blunting a bit.

Your Welcome.

It might help you sometimes if you fill out some of your profile so people know where you live.They can recommend a supplier to order from.

[Wizcrafts]

2 hours ago, CowboyBob said:

Your Welcome.

It might help you sometimes if you fill out some of your profile so people know where you live.They can recommend a supplier to order from.

The member's IP address suggests that he is in France. But, he could be using a VPN to mask his true location.

[GeorgePepper]

Well spotted Wiz, I am actually in Paris, France; no intentions to hide my location, just laziness in filling out the profile.

My thanks to everyone for their help.

Regards, G

[CowboyBob]

1 hour ago, GeorgePepper said:

Well spotted Wiz, I am actually in Paris, France; no intentions to hide my location, just laziness in filling out the profile.

My thanks to everyone for their help.

Regards, G

College Sewing in the UK should have a complete tension for you.

[GeorgePepper]

Thank you Bob, but since the Brexit debacle, many companies either simply do not deliver to mainland Europe, or you are grouped with "rest of the world".  I looked at the shipping information on the College Sewing website, and the option to deliver to Euro destinations is now in strike-through.  I am not saying they won't deliver to France, but it may turn a $20 order into $80 with all the excise duties to pay.  The same occurs in the opposite direction.  I recently helped out a buddy in the UK with a part for a French designed RV that cost less than $3.  The company flatly refused to deliver to the UK, even when contacted by phone.  They said the paperwork is a nightmare.  I ordered the part for him and sent it via regular shipping as a kid's toy.  The final cost including shipping was over $28, but had the customs guys decided to open the packet and play nasty, the bill could easily have been double that.  It is now often cheaper to ship things from China than the UK, and because it is a well established trade route, it makes fewer waves with the customs guys.  So, I do less business with the UK - ain't me loosing out.

Back to the stud/release pin, in the end I noticed a couple of light grooves starting to form on the stud where the 2 discs sandwich the thread.  I thought, if this is a hardened part, how come the grooves?  Taking a file to the end of the stud showed it is not hardened at all.  That is kind of consistent, because if this indeed was a part that somehow missed the drill operation, for the hole for the release pin, then it may well have missed the hardening process as well, which would obviously have followed the drilling operation.  Either that, or the studs are not hardened after all.  So I set up to drill a 1.5mm hole through the centre of the stud.  Done.  A small nail, polished to fit the hole gives me a release pin, and the assembly now works like it should.

 

[chrisash]

It also works the other way, last week i tried to order a bag pattern valued at 3 euro from a German company, they refused to send the PDF file to me even though i offered a 6 Euro paypal payment . We dared to leave the EU and now we are public enemy to the whole of Europe. we must have been bad to them by saving them from the Germans

[Constabulary]

2 hours ago, chrisash said:

It also works the other way, last week i tried to order a bag pattern valued at 3 euro from a German company, they refused to send the PDF file to me even though i offered a 6 Euro paypal payment . We dared to leave the EU and now we are public enemy to the whole of Europe. we must have been bad to them by saving them from the Germans

Are you aware that the UK Gov. wants EU supplier to collect taxes for the UK Gov. for orders below 135 GBP and transfer the VAT to the UK Gov. - that requires work a tax consultant meaning it costs money and a 3€ order is just not worth the trouble.

If you run a business in the UK - would you collect VAT for the Italian, French or German Government and then transfer it to them - I doubt so. But the UK Gov. wants just that!

The UK for sure are not a public enemy. But the UK decided to leave the EU not the other way around. Brexit makes it complicated in both directions - we all suffer from that!  @GeorgePepper  pretty much hit the nail. It´s just too complicated - tax + paperwork - and not worth the trouble especially for low value orders. I also no longer can place orders in the UK - I tried 3 Co´s none will deliver to the EU - including my long time supplier College Sewing. I really would love to spend my money in the UK - I just can´t - because of BREXIT.

I wish Brexit never happened and I´m sure if the people and businesses in the UK had proper information on how BREXIT will impact their life most people would have not voted for leave / more would have voted for remain.

 

Edited July 14, 2021 by Constabulary

[chrisash]

2 hours ago, Constabulary said:

 

I wish Brexit never happened and I´m sure if the people and businesses in the UK had proper information on how BREXIT will impact their life most people would have not voted for leave / more would have voted for remain.

 

Sorry but that is very wrong we did know it would be difficult, but we never voted to join in the first place, we had voted to join the common market and then the government agreed to Masseteric without going to the people. The brits have complained about the EU ever since and have always wanted the government to be sovereign powers

The damage done to German and French relations is massive with many refusing to buy goods marked from either country, the remainer's are few but loud but seeing the inflexibility of the EU is slowly killing them off, many of the young were remainer's but have now seen they have not lost much

I guess article 16 is the next step and FTO rules as the more likely outcome as NI cannot be separated from the UK

If you are looking for small items to be posted over, I may be able to help, thinking get CS to send to me and i post them onwards, might be worth a try

[GeorgePepper]

@chrisash, I thought long and hard as whether I should post a reply, partly because we have hijacked a thread about a sewing machine to discuss the aftermath of Brexit.  I know I first mentioned the topic, so I am partly to blame.  In the end I decided to do so because it is rare to find a discussion on this topic conducted in a civil manner; the exchanges all too easily descend into preaching from one point of view or the other with opinion masquerading as fact.

I agree the people of the UK were never given the opportunity to vote for the treaty of Maastricht, but that was down to whom?  The UK government saw fit not to put it to the vote, and I don’t remember there being anywhere near as much noise made about it as the noise we heard over leaving the EU.

You wrote “The brits have complained about the EU ever since and have always wanted the government to be sovereign powers”; surely you meant “Some of the brits have complained about the EU ever since and have always wanted the government to be sovereign powers”.

Undeniably the damage done to relations between the UK and the current members of the EU is massive, but as Bob pointed out, the UK decided to leave the EU not the other way around, for good or bad reasons depending on one’s viewpoint.  I am reminded of the old French proverb “Comme on fait son lit, on le trouve”.

Any trading nation not in the EU has either to negotiate a specific trade deal with the EU or be subject to generic WTO rules, that is not the EU being inflexible as you put it, they are just following well defined and established procedures.  Why would it be any different for the UK.  The UK spent almost all of its years in the common market, and subsequent EU, trying to negotiate preferential arrangements, and good for them if they obtained them.  However, it is now a bitter pill to swallow that this negotiating stance has been lost and the UK is to be treated as any other non-EU trading nation, a position about which the EU has always been clear, on the lead up to the UK referendum and in its wake.  If you interpret that as the EU being inflexible, then that is your outlook, but I don’t see any legitimacy in taking umbrage any more than I could accept the claim the UK is being inflexible in expecting the transposition of previously negotiated preferential arrangements.  These are negotiating stances, hard as they might be, but why would you expect any different positioning from either side.

I would welcome some development of your remark about the so called remainer’s where you say they “have now seen they have not lost much”.  I am inferring a conclusive statement; you did not write, for example, “now are seeing...”.  Organisations like Bloomberg (among others) have analysed the situation as recently as June of this year and are seeing trends that do not substantiate your remark.  At the same time, there is open admission by the same analysts that things are still very unclear, partly due to the fog created by the COVID situation.  Under any circumstances, I do not see how one can draw the conclusion you made.

[DonInReno]

On 7/13/2021 at 7:01 AM, GeorgePepper said:

I am fast coming to the conclusion that this was a Friday afternoon assembly model.  It appears to me as if the stud has not been drilled with a through hole.  I just don't see how this tensioner has ever worked, and perhaps this is one reason why this machine was put to the back of some room to gather dust.  Each the operator must have tried to release the fabric and pull some slack thread, it must have snagged in the tensioner.

Unlike household machines that are used relatively little and have few owners fiddling with them, over a long career industrial machines may have been adjusted by dozens of people with different abilities, knowledge, and access to the proper parts.   While it’s possible the wrong parts were assembled at the Singer plant, it’s far more likely sometime in the past the mechanic working on it used the part he had in front of him to get the machine going.   Given the choice between not working/not getting paid, vs having to use a machine without thread release, I’ll bet most operators would just put up with having to pull extra thread past the tensioner when finishing.

Hopefully it’s not too hard to drill, but if you are able to drill it, the pin can be most any diameter that fits between the slot in the post.   The shank off a dull 3mm drill bit would probably be the first thing I’d try.   
 

Good luck - let us know how it turns out!

[Wizcrafts]

On 7/14/2021 at 4:53 PM, chrisash said:

Sorry but that is very wrong we did know it would be difficult, but we never voted to join in the first place, we had voted to join the common market and then the government agreed to Masseteric without going to the people. The brits have complained about the EU ever since and have always wanted the government to be sovereign powers

 

On 7/17/2021 at 2:58 PM, GeorgePepper said:

@chrisash, I thought long and hard as whether I should post a reply, partly because we have hijacked a thread about a sewing machine to discuss the aftermath of Brexit. 

This stuff should be posted in the Off Topic forum. We try to segment our topics and this section is for technical and operational leather sewing machine issues. Off topic has other political discussions going on.