soman2

The McKee Dressmaker.

miriam

Other than the left home needles I like those old Japanese zzers - they have so much character.

vortexblue

Hello,
I found this post while trying to research my recent find. It's a fantastic source to see all the varieties of these different machines. I thought I'd add my own - and what little I know about it.

For the search engines:
It's "The White House" model, which I learned was a private label for an upscale department store. It's in great shape, and works effortlessly. On the machine it says 140, De Luxe, Zig Zag, Made in Japan, J-A13, and KZ 1.
Z21 is stamped into the casting, and so is J 27.
It has a Dynamic Sewing Motor that is color matched to the main body. It says MEW 115V, 0.8A

I did look around and found a similar model, an Alden Deluxe ZigZag at Stagecoach Road Sewing.
There's a video of that one as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWaf7WyVrF0
[ATTACH=CONFIG]528232[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]528233[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]528234[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]528236[/ATTACH]

This is my first sewing machine. I was looking for something to sew light automotive vinyls together; industrial machines seemed like 'too much machine' for me. I then started looking at the Sailrite mini walking foot machine, but when I spotted this, I had to have it. It has no needle yet, so I'll get on that this week. I'll test it out on some scraps.
Should I be OK for light use or will I need to grab a 1.5A motor (maybe get a different machine all together?)


I'd love to hear any further information on this machine, or maybe some thoughts on making it work for my use. I'll attach more pics for the archive.

vortexblue

[ATTACH=CONFIG]528239[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]528240[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]528241[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]528242[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]528243[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]528244[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]528245[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]528246[/ATTACH]

miriam

Give it a bit of oil in all the moving joints and you should be able to sew about anything you want for small projects. Extended use and you may want to go industrial. You may want to find a walking foot attachment to do your vinyl. A 1.0 motor is fairly heavy compared to most Singers at .5

vortexblue

Noob question:
When I'm shopping for feet and such, are these pretty much universal or specific to this type of machine? I think I've got a high shank foot (1" from base to screw).

What do we call these machines when shopping for parts, 'Japanese clones'?

miriam

check the parts on sew-classic - she tells how to know what foot you need
it is called a Japanese sewing machine - the parts place should know
some of the parts do interchange

grant15clone

I found this, this morning and I thought that I would share it with the group. I found it on bestsewingmachinereviewed dot com. I think it will help explain our frustration in finding out who made a particular machine. This information would help Clone owners as well.
~G~

What about J-A numbers and J-C numbers? Forget it! This was a system used by the manufactures that used identifiers like J-Axx and J-Cxx stamped on the underside of some of these machines, but no official information on this system was released to the public. Some collectors and repair people have tried to create a database of these numbers, but the results are incomplete and not accurate. The reason is that most of the manufactures would do overload work for other manufactures so a certain model of machine may have been produced by more than one manufacturer and at several different factories.

miriam

This makes a lot of sense. I'm also wondering if they got parts for the machines from a single source or not? So much of it is interchangeable...

grant15clone

The article mentions that was the case.
~Grant~