OurWorkbench

Courtney

Courtney, who lives in northern Colorado, sends us details of some quilting projects and other things he has been working on:

It's Spring time so it's baby time! Much of my time this last month was involved trying to finish two baby quilts. One is for an astronomer and his wife and the second is for the daughter of some old friends. Out of history, I generally make rag quilts for babies. I usually make the baby quilts with only a top and bottom layer and no batting as shown in the rainbow quilt. This makes a nice lightweight quilt that is especially suitable for summer. I try and make the quilts so there is no fraying along the edge so the baby can be wrapped in the back and not be bothered with the fraying. The astronomy quilt I felt needed a bit more color so I used a batting of orange flannel which I think really sets things off but unfortunately it does make the quilt 50% heavier. I hope it is not too heavy for summertime.

Most of my sewing machine time was spent of working with Willcox and Gibbs machines. Shortly after our last meeting, Janey dropped me an email about someone having some problems with a W&G machine on Quilting Board. To me it looked like someone had lost the needle bar nut that holds the needle in place. I wrote my observations and said that I would see what I could find to replace the original nut. The W&G Automatic needle bar nuts are hard to replace because they have tapered threads to fit the tapered needle bar. They are very rare and often demand a rather high price if they can be found. As luck would have it, a couple of days later, someone was offering needle bar nuts on the ubiquitous auction site for a commercial Pegasus machine which was also made by W&G. They did not look identical to the nuts on W&G Automatic machines, but the cost was $9 for a pair, so I took a chance. I got out my cheap calipers and below I compare the two nuts: The first column are measurements from the original nut on a W&G machine from the early 1880's while the second column is the Pegasus nuts.

W 7.1mm 7.0mm
H 6.1mm 4.6mm
D1 3.4mm 3.8mm
D2 4.3mm 4.3mm

The width of the nuts is the same; they both take a 9/32 inch wrench. The biggest difference is the original nut is taller. The lower diameter is smaller on the original nut but the upper diameter is the same (which shows the nuts are tapered.) The Pegasus nuts do seem to hold a needle on a W&G Automatic. I did do some internet searching and found the Pegasus nuts are available from some of the commercial sewing machine sites but who knows for how long.

You can see the comparison between the two nuts it the photos. Pic 1 shows the tapered threads on a W&G Automatic. Pic 2 Shows the original nut on the needlebar. Pic 3 shows a Pegasus nut on a W&G Automatic and the taller original nut next to a Pegasus nut. Finally, PIC 4 shows an Automatic needle bar wrench fitting on a Pegasus nut.

Courtney











... to be continued