You're so right! I LOVE the old mechanical buttonhole makers, too - they make nicer buttonholes than any computerized machine's one-step buttonhole that I've ever seen. We'll just live with the extra noise, hm? Rackety-clackety!
But the zig-zag attachments and blind hem attachments, while just as noisy and cumbersome to operate as the buttonholer, are not any good at delivering results. :mrgreen: I've tried them on my 15, a treadled 27, and a 301 and none of them really did anything cool.
To get any kind of results, you have to use a very stiff, pressed fabric - like buckram or med-heavy interfacing or starch the bejeebers out of quilting cotton. And it just isn't pretty. The action is erratic and keeping the sewing along a straight line must be close to impossible! (Although if you try to sew a gentle curve or wave, what you will get is a mess!)
I still buy these attachments for my vintage machines just so that they will have a full collection of their "stuff" - part of their historical record. But to try to sew with some of them? No way.
The blind hem stitch and zig-zag attachments were made in low-shank (FW, 201, 27/28, 66, 99, 15, etc) and slant-shank (301, 404) versions.
The zig-zagger had several iterations, from a very plain device that looks a little like a gathering foot to a black enameled beetle looking thing that takes round cams to make different kinds of stitches. They're fun to play around with on a winter day and they don't cost much, so it's cheap entertainment. :) But the stitching doesn't look anything like the zig-zagging made by a machine that's made to zig-zag.