pennycandy

Yesterday I was zig zagging the cut edges of some fabric. I was going along at a good clip and the spool kept hopping up and down. The noise was distracting me and I wanted something to weigh the spool down. Don't know why I never thought of it before but I have a few Handi-Bobs Bobbin Spool holders. Stuck one on the top of the spool with a full bobbin and the hopping stopped.

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minibarn

Thanks for the idea, we were just discussing how to weight thread on another topic here! I was thankful someone even brought up the subject because I never would have thought about it.

Jp

caspharm

I was just at my monthly guild meeting and someone suggested place a section a drinking straw inside the spool to keep it seated on the spindle. That would also cut the hopping and noise.

foufymaus

Flat washer from home depot. Lol

ArchaicArcane

The reason your spool was bouncing up and down is that it was a cross wound spool. They prefer to have the thread come off the top (like a serger cone) than to wind off with the spool. While weighting the spool helps, it can introduce some tension gremlins.

This is a video from Superior threads about the thread types and how they should be delivered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1jq...01QRL-QPUNrCbg

They refer to "spools and cones" but you can get spools that are stack wound or cross wound, just not from them. They only sell stack wound on spools.

J Miller

Maybe it's cos I sew slow but I have very little problems with the cross wound spools. I use the C&C machine quilting thread in the 3000 + yard rectangular spool with the 1/2" (?) ID hole almost consistently. Most of the time it just turns around smoothly and gives me no trouble at all. I just drop it down on one of my widgets and sew.
About the only time I have problems with it is when I'm filling a bobbin. Then I just rest a finger on the spool and go for it.

A couple days ago I did some sewing with my HOTHER (15 Clone) and had the spool on top of the machine vertically. I had no problems at all.
Later as an experiment I put it on a thread stand and tried it that way. No difference in the way the machine sewed.

I must be doing something wrong, I don't have any trouble with the thread on cross wound spools.

Please help, I feel so lonely and left out.



Joe

Cogito

haha Joe, you stinker! I haven't had problems and silly me I didn't even know one could have problems till reading some of these "threads". Lol! Get it....threads?

J Miller

Cogito,



LOL, I got it >


Joe

ArchaicArcane

Joe,
A lot of it is that as you say, you sew slowly. I find that the most trouble seems to occur for me when I get moving fast.

Not all threads seem to care, but definitely, as the thread has time to start to snap back and forth and "load up" a lot of energy - that's when the take off problems occur. And yes, I've had spools actually launch - that really messes up tension!!

Even Superior threads says it's the last 5% of the equation that you can affect. It's not the first go to for tension problems. I do find though that a stack wound spool never climbs up and down the spool pin regardless of me sewing at mach speed or not, and the bouncing of a cross wound spool will correspond to the up or down part of the wind on the cross wound thread.

The extra twist that's being introduced has the potential to be very bothersome with some threads.

All I'm really trying to do usually is let people know that adding weight to a spool that already doesn't want to be turning, or using a cross wound spool on a vertical spool pin, may be OK for -some- applications, but it's possible that that one spool you're going to try one day is really going to object and all hades is going to break loose - and it won't be because your machine hates the thread, it'll be because the rules were tighter for that thread and they were "broken".

J Miller

Tammi,

What you're saying is true. I'm not arguing, honest. Besides sewing slow most of time, I use an adapter I call a widget.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]471459[/ATTACH]
It uses a 1/2" diameter piece of dowel rod with a flat base for the spools with the larger holes to sit on. I made them for the C&C spools with the large hole cardboard spool and the little short cone shaped plastic spools too.

These allow the cross wound spools of thread to rotate easily. They don't bind that way. At least not for us.

My wife does not sew slow. She doesn't know how. Pedal to the metal for her. Using the adapter widget she doesn't have any trouble with the cross wound spools either.

We have one Singer, a 4622a that has the horizontal spool pin and we actually have more trouble with the cross wound spools on that machine with the horizontal pin than we do with the vertical machines using the widget. I've actually used the plastic auxiliary vertical spool pin on the 4622a with a widget instead of the horizontal pin and it's worked better.
Both for both me (slow), and my wife (fast), with our different techniques.

I don't know why as I said, but we just don't seem to have any trouble with them when set vertically.

I had some pic of the widgets from the past, but I can't find them.

Joe