Shredded thread no more
Try this before you give up. We have a Janome Artistic Quilter 18x8 DX which is basically a Tin Lizzie (like yours) but we feel this solution would work on a lot of different brands. When we received our machine there was no hop in the hopping foot, and I was too inexperienced to know. After a lot of frustration, trial and error the hopping foot was adjusted and we have been sewing relatively problem free (thank the Lord). First, use your owners manual and find out where you adjust the height of the hop. On our machine, we had to remove a plastic cover and loosen a bolt to accomplish this. We set ours at 3 mm gap at the top of the hop( needle up a high as it will go). This measurement is taken between the foot and plate. Then we set the gap between the foot and plate when the needle is all the way down. This you adjust at the foot itself. We used a dime (not sure of the specific#) to gauge this gap. A Gammill technician on youtube used 3 business cards to set this gap on his machine. You would not believe the difference after this has been set. We hope this helps and can sympathize with you, but don't give up.