ArchaicArcane

At least she told them not to do it when I practically yelled NOOOOOOOO! loud enough to hear all the way from Canada.

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I don't know. This thread came up the other night. Old Ms Brunswick heard all the yak yak about being updated, started pitch'n a bitch about that..

sewwwwO, I updated her lastnight and she sews like never before. just as happy as a clam.

course don't tell her all I did was switch thread.

but in real life there is a huge difference between modern polyester thread and say 1970's poly thread same goes for cotton..

I use those Hobby magnifying glass's when sewing. These older threads are super fuzzy, hard to thread a needle with. I've been buying maxi_lock brand it's 3000 yds @ $4.95, there's been several machines that I have ran the entire cone and never broke thread. yes it's made in china

in the 60's ye ol china man said. " we'll take you over without firing a shot , and you'll never know it "

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Where do people come up with the bogus ideas?

great point. where do these sewing machine guru's come up with 15-91' and 201's have all steel gears ? They've obviously never had one apart

Rodney

My understanding is the hook catches the thread as it passes by to loop it around the bobbin. The point is small to catch the thread. Rounding it off defeats the purpose along with throwing the timing off because you time your machine by where the hook is in relation to the needle. The hook should already be polished from the factory. No modifications to the hook should be necessary. Sewing machine factories don't pay their engineers and designers big money to get it wrong.
There's no magic thread content detector in a vintage sewing machine. Tension is caused by putting friction on the thread in a controlled manner. A more slippery (or smaller diameter) thread may require tightening the tension, but other than that no work is needed, nothing needs replaced or updated just because you're using a thread with different fiber content.
Rodney

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make you wonder if that SM guy wear plaid polyester pants eh ?

BUtt dang a 401 is a modern machine

Candace

Wow. That's all I can say. Bet he uses primarily WD-40 too.

ThayerRags

Read that again folks. It doesn’t say that they’re actually filing the point of the hook. It says “on the hook assembly....to allow the thread to pass over it easier”. Maybe he’s figured out a snag in the Singer 401A bobbin case that can be tuned to help with today’s funky threads?

I’d hold off until I found out exactly what they’re rounding off. It might be good.

CD in Oklahoma

ArchaicArcane

So how you're reading it is "point = part" and not "point is literally the point (tip) of the hook"?

You might be right CD but I didn't get the impression it was the bobbin case but some portion of the hook assembly itself instead. Otherwise, I'd think he'd just sell a modified bobbin case for more than modifying the existing one. It could even be done on a "core return" basis to ensure quality that you wouldn't get with a 3rd party case (if the exist) or even a newer Singer case. I can't say I've ever had trouble with the 401 type machines regardless of the thread I've used.

Apparently he's been doing it for 20 years. How have none of us heard of it before now, I wonder?

ThayerRags

Well, the thread is “picked up by” and “slides off of” the hook point, so I’m zeroing in on the “pass over it” part of the comment. In some circles, the “hook assembly” could include everything in the area, including the hook point, race, debris channels, bobbin case, bobbin case cushion spring, etc, etc....

I know that I’ve had a devil of a time getting the bobbin case cushion spring set to the correct clearance on some Singer 401A machines. If I set it by the book with a feeler gauge on some of them, I have problems. Other’s work perfectly with the book setting. My wife and I operate 5 Singer 401A machines (and the girls in the family have another 2) and I have one machine setting in timeout now until I can figure out what setting it likes. I haven’t been able to get it to work consistently with any setting so far.....

With the old standby Coats and Clark thread being made in Mexico now, I’ve noticed a difference in how it performs compared to old spools of the same brand. Nothing against Mexico, but when the place of manufacture is changed, the thread is changed in my experience. That might be what they’re talking about when they say “modern thread”?

CD in Oklahoma

ArchaicArcane

I think the big thing is figuring out the way the tech was using terminology. It could be read either way.

I've had some 401As that I couldn't set the bobbin case retaining bracket as tight as the specs say. Typically in those cases, I set it as tight as I can and test sew. If it test sews out well, I call it good. In theory I could modify to meet the specs but I've been finding more and more that these machines aren't -that- precision or even consistent in their build.

You put your finger on what was bothering me. It's not so much the where things were made in my case, but when. Poly was introduced to the American market around 1953. Rayon (initially introduced to market as "artificial silk") 1924. Nylon 1939. There's a chart at the end of this page. All of these fibers were available at the time that these machines were being designed and sold. The 401A was introduced around Christmas of 1957. Additionally, there were always revisions to bobbin cases and hooks. I've seen at least 3 revisions of the 172082 bobbin case. Yes, these threads have changed a lot since then but they were there and would have been considered by the engineers at the time. They wouldn't have said "those are a fad, we'll make our machines work only with fibers that have been around for 100 years or more."

So I guess the "wasn't designed for other than cotton" and "we've been doing it for 20 years" statements were really making me itchy and pegged my BS meter. 1994 wasn't a huge turning point for thread nor were the few years before it. Then add to that customizing a machine with less than readily available replacement parts... plus vague information on what the customization is...