Anyone know how to thread this machine?

[Muv]

Hello Jennb,

I have done a long blog post today showing a similar bobbin winder - not exactly the same as yours, but it should help you work out how to wind bobbins.

[Muv]

Jennb,

I have just been looking at your machine and noticed the tiny tension discs above the bobbin winder. Try taking the thread to the top left, back to the right and between the tension discs, and then through the top of the upright of the bobbin winder. That's my best guess, without having the actual machine in front of me.

[jennb]

Hello Jennb,

I've done a blog post about oiling the shuttle race. Your felt is there - if it absorbent stick some oil on it.

I have done photos today of the method for winding bobbins and will do tomorrow's blog post about that.

You might need a few days' practice before you take it to show your friends, and I suggest you cut a short piece of pipe lagging or protect the handle in some other way when you are transporting it. German machines came with beautiful porcelain handles - hardly surprising when many of their machines were made in or near Dresden - and if you crack or chip it you will be hard put to find a replacement.

I'm puzzled by it being marked Wanzer, if they were Canadian manufacturers that went out of business in 1892. This is a vibrating shuttle machine, and in 1892 Singer still had the patent for them. They took out the patent in 1886. Perhaps the name Wanzer carried on here as an import agency for German machines for sale in England, or perhaps it is a coincidence that agents in London for Muller machines had the same name. It would be interesting to find out.

In reading about Wanzer, he basically stole the patents held by Singer and because he was outside the USA he had some measure of immunity. He was a cunning little guy. A bit of a weasel it seems.

What confuses me, though, is that I can't find any "model" for this machine. None of the photos I can find show this. They almost all show models that resemble Willcox & Gibbs machines. I wish I could date this machine. My best guess is that it is one of the last models made by Wanzer, though the London stamp on the slide plates and Dresden on the front metal cover, Wanzer being a Canadian company, and Muller on the brass plate makes this one a bit of a mystery.

[Muv]

Hello Jennb,

Essentially this is not a Wanzer (ie Canadian) machine, it is a Clemens Muller (ie German) machine, a vibrating shuttle, sold through Wanzer and Co of London. Whether they were anything to do with the Canadian Wanzers (which I think unlikely, because they ceased trading in 1892) or a firm of importers that kept the Wanzer name after the Canadian company went out of business, or was run by someone with the same surname, I do not know. There were lots of companies in London importing German machines prior to 1914.

Alex Askaroff of the Sewalot website is well up on Wanzer and on London importers of German machines. Why not email him?

There are plenty of photos of Muller vibrating shuttles just like this on the Needlebar website.

[grannysewer]

This thread is like a history lesson for me! And I love it! All the old machines have such a history and life to them.