J Miller

Jon,

All three Boye tubes are marked 21 on the end cap.
The needles are marked:
7 - BOYE 40-60 and several other thread sizes
1- American 1/2
1- HOWE 1

All are exactly the same size as regular Singer 20x1 needles except they have a round shank.


Joe

jlhmnj

The early systems were oftentimes names instead of Singer numbers. There's a "Howe E & B, Round shank" and "American, Plain" and "American, No. 9" that might be the last 2. Likely the first 7 are W&W 126x1 which has a 1.75mm shank +- for W&W 8 and early 9's. Boye didn't make too many round shanked needles so there's only a few choices. Boye 27 is the W&W tube numbers.

Jon

J Miller

Jon,

These are interesting needles. I remeasured the shanks and they are 2.0 mm. I'm gonna keep looking in the charts.
Who knows, I might actually find something.

Joe

jlhmnj

Check out kevinsstuff---all the Boye numbers are there,

https://sites.google.com/site/kevinsstuff1/sewing-stuff

needlexref.pdf

jlhmnj

Good "Free" Needle Chart and supplies:

http://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollect...ines/SIL/0773/

jlhmnj

Here's a pretty neat chart. Unfortunately different needle makers used different numbering systems to represent size.

Jon

jlhmnj

cotton size to needle size translation:

30-40------------- size 18
40-60------------- 16
60-80------------- 14
80-100----------11

Jon

J Miller

Jon,

Thanks for all the info. The cotton thread chart is one I've been using for a while with needles that are identified.
Many of my machines have that chart on the slide plate.

I went to bookmark Kevin's page and found I already have it. I have so many bookmarks I've lost track of what I have.

The Smithsonian booklet I'll look at later.


Thanks again.

Joe

Jeanette Frantz

Yeah, Joe, I've got 102 pages! I printedit out and put it in page protectors. Might have been a waste of paper, but the one time I needed it and couldn't get the website to open, my frustration would beat me up!

Jeanette

jlhmnj

Happy to put all this stuff in one thread. Needles are neat.

Jon