OurWorkbench

James

James has been adding to his collection, and also sent pictures of an interesting and inexpensive sewing machine base design.

I am still collecting and working on my machines! After I saw a thread about someone asking about an easy base for their sewing machine heads that will not stand straight for display and having replied with my suggestion, I went ahead and made a proof of concept version of my version of an easy base that anyone can make without any wood working tools. I had recently received dense foam board such as that used in home insulation as packing material for one of my machines that was shipped to me. I selected two pieces and glued them together to get the proper thickness for clearance at the base bottom. I then traced around the head making note of sections that would require more and deeper cut outs. Using an ordinary knife I started cutting a size slightly smaller than required as I planned to keep trimming until I got a good tight fit. It did create a lot of uneven edges and sections of foam material all over the place.

I then trimmed the sides of the base to take up less room. Using a carbide sanding block I smoothed the sides as much as possible. It was possible to make them very smooth and even this way. Things started going a little wrong when I sprayed the base with a combo black primer and gloss paint. It made the surface a bit pebbly but since the foam was so dense, it did not penetrate that far. It still looked ok if someone did not mind that sort of texture and might actually work very well with crinkle paint machines. I decided to cover the base with clear shelf layer material and cut an opening and respray. It did not bond very well with the painted foam as you can see it made waves when I put the machine in. In evaluation of what went wrong I believe this would have worked much better if I had glued the clear shelf layer material on before any spaying or applied artist gesso over the dense foam so that the paint primer combo would not have eaten into it in the first place. The nice thing about using the dense foam is that the tight fit assures that the base stays attached to the head when you pick it up so no need for some sort of hinge latch system! Simply hold down to separate the base when you want to access underneath.











.... to be continued