I meant pressure foot bar in the post above, not needle bar. I would expect any capable machine, moder or old would be up to a layer of webbing and short intersections of more layers. I have done a lot of small repairs and alterations on my old 99, back packs, laptop bags, sleeping bag straps, bonded nylon webbing is no problem for it, neither is cotton webbing. I can't say I tried many layers, maybe three in places. The humble 99 is not a particularly strong machine, regarding size, motor specs or needle torque, but for some reason it punches through with jeans repair, corduroy, bull denim, duck canvas, behaves well with silk and finer cotton. It's not the most silent when working extra hard, but it stands up to quite a lot.