Originally Posted by
Gray fox
Possibly this is not definitive, but it clarifies things for me. A bullet shuttle on an arcing path is vibrating; a boat shuttle on a straight path is transverse. But that makes the 1890s Hengstenberg-Anker a hybrid, as well as the Singer 48K. It has a straight path, but a bullet shuttle.
Hi Dianne,
I think this is a bit oversimplified. There are transverse shuttle machines with 'bullet' shuttles (e.g., some Vesta Saxonias, made as late as 1920-1930), and the Singer 48k is a TS. Re your Japanese Wittler, there's some confusion about this; I've seen this machine (I've got two) called a TS too, but I would call it a VS (vibrating shuttle), since the shuttle swings in an arc. Here's another example of one on Needlebar, where it's referred to as a "vibrating shuttle on a transverse line".
http://needlebar.org/cm/displayimage.php?pid=6030
It does seem curious that these postwar Japanese machines use this somewhat obscure mechanism, when almost all the other 'clones' seem to be copies of Singer machines.
pat (who just rejoined after forgetting not only password but also earlier user id)