My new Yamata fy335

[Flatcapper]

Hello everyone. Last Friday I received my brand new Yamata fy335 cylinder bed sewing machine. I ordered my machine from All American Sew, Vac and more. I must say that the owner Alex was very helpful. I first contacted him through his eBay store, as I was looking at his listing of a yamata fy335. I had some questions about this machine as I was originally looking at purchasing a go-8b. Both machines were the same price. The eBay listing showed a flatbed style of table. I was interested in a U shaped table. Alex was nice enough to check with his supplier and found out either standard table or U table was available for same price $1200 plus shipping. I will be honest and say the only reason I went with the fy335 is because the go-8b models were out of stock. So I took the plunge after hours of investigating the Pfaff 335 clones. It appears that several industrial sewing machine vendors are selling these 335 clones all with their own “brand” name printed on them. Now all I make are leather goods. I started my long adventure in leathercrafting shortly after my life changing accident when I fractured my neck as well as damaging a lot of soft tissues. So as I’m no longer able to work, my family wanted me to fing something to occupy my time. I started with beaded jewelry, until my oldest son came to me asking for help with a leather project he wanted to make. So that got me headed once again down the rabbit hole of leather working. 

So fast forward 6 years and 7 hand surgeries later I still love making things out of leather. Last year. Used my stimulus money th buy me a THOR go-1541s Sri package from Sunny Sewing Center in Dallas, Tx. What a fantastic machine. I especially like the walking foot height adjustment knob on top of the machine. So nowadays I sew almost all my flat work on the 1541s. I’ve recently decided to start making more bags and purses. It’s sure tough to sew gussets on a flatbed. Hence my search for a cylinder bed machine. I’d wanted a gc-8b for several years, but just didn’t have the money, and when I purchased the 1541s it seemed the better way to go at the time. Now in hindsight I wish I’d have went with a go-1341 or tech sew 2750 pro, either machine with flatbed attachment. This would have killed 2birds with 1 stone. However at the time $2700 was a whole lot of money for a sewing machine. 

So, back to my new fy335. I ordered my machine with the U table, and a speed reducer on Monday, and received them on Friday. One other thing I changed with my order was that I upgraded the brushless motor ftom 550 watt to 750 watts. I figured one can never have some extra power under the table. So machine showed up on Friday and got it together fairly quickly with few issues. The table came with L legs instead of K legs which was a little different to work with. My first real industrial sewing machine was a New tech go-0303 which was totally the wrong machine for what I was doing. Thankfully I fount a great buyer for it that needed for sewing vinyl dividers on school buses. So my boys helped me get tha fy335 assembled. I did make a couple blunders along the way having to do with the belt sizes to go from motor to reducer and reducer to machine. I knew the belt that came with the machine wasn’t going to work so I cut it in half to use for measuring belt sizes. I made 4 trips in all getting the proper size belts. If you ever need belts for your sewing machine and don’t have time to wait on a order then check out your local hardware supply. They should carry v-belts in multiple lengths and widths. You want 3L size belts. You can get away with 4L belts, but they are thicker and don’t sit as deep into the pulleys so usually you go up an inch or so in length. Got everything working and set up and even was able to do some test stitches. During this test stitching I realized a couple things, one is that the binder attachments are in the way especially if you need to rotate your leather piece, and the second thing is this may solve my bag issues. The only thing that is irritating is the oscillating bed plate that has the binder attachments. Hence I’ve ordered a blank bed plate for it. The machine actually sews nicely. It may need some slight adjustments. So if anyone out there is in the market for a cylinder bed machine, check out the various Pfaff clone. I’ll have some photos posted soone.

[JSBernardo]

Thanks for sharing some of your story and found a Yamata FY335A  on offer up (that is a story in itself).