Does it have a bobbin with black or white lines on it? I had a Singer Athena purchased from local Singer business, it had a "self winding Bobbin"... I took it back, the Singer man told me those Singers have problems with the Self winding feature. So I steer clear of those now. But it sounds from your description that is like the problem I had with the Athena. Hope your Singer man isn't as expensive as mine was to just look at machines. I don't use him anymore., and depend a lot of this site and the wonderful members for infor, etc.