Railroadersbrat

So I have heard that these machines are a bit of a bear to work on, mostly because of the near impossibility of finding parts for it, but I rescued this one from certain death about the time I rescued my Koyo. I pulled this one out to clean up and oil this evening after I did a thorough cleaning on the other one, I'll be installing this one into the cabinet later and giving my Koyo a rest until I can get her to my sewing machine guy.

I bought this machine for $1.00, I found it at a garage sale, completely covered in dust, what looked like a fair amount of kitten fuzz and long cat hairs and the inside was covered in spider webs. The gal was just wanting to get rid of it because it stopped working for her, I actually ended up snatching it out of the hands of a man that scraps for a living, he was going to take it home, completely disassemble it and sell the cast iron parts. I'm never one to just give up on an older machine, they're made entirely too well and with the right amount of TLC, you can get them to sing again.

After a good cleaning, using a handheld vacuum and blowing it out with our air compressor, I set about looking for threading and oiling diagrams. This has been a little bit of a chore, I'm having a hard time finding them so I just used a lot of common sense, worked slow and oiled only the parts that I know every machine needs oiled, mainly the needle mechanism. After putting in a new needle and again using some common sense, I threaded the machine and grabbed some fabric.

This baby started singing, beautiful motion, no squeaks, no thumps, bumps or clangs and has some serious speed to it if I just push down on the foot pedal and let it go. I'm still in the process of tweaking the tension, but I'm calling this a win.

The issues are somewhat minor, aside from the fact that the stitch length is incredibly tight and does not seem to change length when I turn the dial and I do not have the cam set needed for the specialty stitches, the zigzag stitch is beautiful, even though the tension is off just a little. It slips easily from right, center to left and back with no hiccups. The back pins for the spools of thread have been broken off, I have one of the pins but not both, so I'm going to set my fiance on that project. I know there are spindles out there to bypass that if needed, I'd just like to see what he comes up with, first.

The craziest issue? I'm not sure when this happened but someone took the light completely out. Not just the light bulb, the entire housing is missing and the cords cleanly clipped, even the button to turn the light on is gone. I know my other half will be able to figure out how to fix that, until then, I have an LED light strip to bypass that so I'm not sewing in the dark.

I'll be replacing the belt soon, I did notice this evening after cleaning and oiling it and running a test swatch that it's slipping. I haven't broken into that side of the machine yet, I'm doing that tomorrow but I'd almost lay money that it's just dusty, though there's no telling how old that belt really is. If it weren't for the fact that I'm gearing up to quilt this fall and winter, I would continue to use the Koyo, but getting a scant 1/4 on that machine when there's a strong possibility it's left-homing will just cause too many issues. I know I can get the right seam on this one.