Did you guys take a sewing machine repair class or just pick this up, little by little. This thread is so interesting and I sure enjoy the information with pictures. I have a few questions for you guys, but will save them for another time. I just wanted to let you know that I'm kept busy for hours, reading your threads. Thank you all.
Claudia
I took Ray's sewing class in May - a lot of stuff came together for me at that point and I learned a whole lot.
I have been messing with sewing machines for a long time before that. If one broke I tried to fix it. Some sewing machines were sacrificed along the way but not very many. If you want to learn, acquire an old junk sewing machine - something where you don't have anything to loose if it dies. Don't get one with rust - rust is hard to take care of... gummed up with dried up oil and not moving is ok - we can fix that. Muv (and Fav) has a wonderful set of videos posted in the sticky section above Vintage and Antique Sewing Machine Enthusiasts section of the main board. Welcome and don't be afraid to fix something - if you can follow directions to sew a quilt maybe you can follow directions in a repair manual and fix a machine. If you do get one gummed up use Triflow oil - it will save your vocabulary. You can ungum and free up a machine very quickly - it is the dried oil that you can't see that keeps it from moving consider the dried oil/shellac a protective coating - keeps the machine parts from rusting out when it is not used. Yes it looks prettier to clean it all off but it is not necessary. The Triflow seems to melt the gummy dried up oil and make things flow. You can look at people's profiles and find blogs with listings of good topics or some times look at 'recently posted topics' in the profile. I am still learning a lot - Since about December I have acquired quite a few sewing machines with issues. It is fun to try to solve their problems. I have a bunch with wiring issues. DH says he can show me how to solve that in his spare time... Beware that some old junk machines have plastic and stamped parts - these are fragile and we might not be much help with something like that. There was a guy at Ray's class took a machine apart - he wanted to see how it went - he never did put it back together. He says he wanted it for parts. Ray recommended leaving a parts machine in tact and just harvesting parts when needed.