miriam

I know they only have a limited selection at the stores. I did find some in my neighborhood... We live in a very urban section of Indianapolis... off to ebay....

miriam

When we were down at Glenn's we all went to a Civil War thing - There was a lady there with a machine that had a knob on it. The knob was fixed so she put a fabric cover over it and it turned just fine.
AH I have a picture - You can see the little blue cover she made for the knob. The knob doesn't turn at all it is just a knob. The little blue cover turns - even a thumb cut off a mitten would work...
[ATTACH=CONFIG]495083[/ATTACH]

ThayerRags

Be patient. I searched daily using two different search terms for 4 months and saw 3 of them. I bought two of those three. One was just in too bad of condition.

I fiddled a bit more with my Singer 95-40, and used a couple of pieces of 5/16 leather sewing machine belting cut to fit up in under the lip of the rim. The knob tightened down pretty good and seems fairly snug, so I’m going to give this a try.

I’ll back one bolt out and see if the other one holds everything together while I go get shorter bolts and change these long ones out. I don’t want to peal all of the skin off of my knuckles.

After I’ve tested my 95-40 for use with the Tex80 Jeans thread to make sure it likes it, I’ll probably go ahead and motorize the machine or rig it to treadle in an existing stand that I have set up already. Then I’ll remove the clamp-on spinner knob and keep it to test-sew other treadle heads that I end up with on my work bench. It should clamp onto about any treadle head balance wheel without hurting it, by using plenty of layers of vinyl for padding and shim.

CD in Oklahoma

costumegirl

CD - Here is something to go along with your "big" Adler

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Adler-Toy-Se...item462993ed3a

miriam

he he he he

ThayerRags

Thanks costumegirl, but I think I’ll just stick with the Adler that I have. It is kind of cute though, isn’t it?

CD in Oklahoma

Rodney

Where would he find the toolbox to fit it?
I like the toy though. I think it's the first free arm toy I've seen.
Rodney

Cari-in-Oly

hahaha.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CROWN-PREMIU...item3f3e811ba5

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mac-Tools-Ma...item3cea0bd04c



Cari

Rodney

I should have known.
Rodney

ThayerRags

I did some more denim jeans mending on my Singer 319W Treadle yesterday. I inserted a piece of new heavy denim into a trimmed out hole of a worn pocket panel. I used a multi-zigzag stitch and a fairly short stitch length, which makes for a lot of treadling. My hat is off to those fore-mothers that had to do all of their darning with a treadle sewing machine. It’s work! Although, perhaps for them, not having to do it by hand may have made it less work at the time.

Then, I played with my Singer 95-40 Handcrank (spinner knob) seeing how it worked doing jeans pant-leg hems with big thread. First, I “made” a jeans pant-leg out of a flat piece of heavy denim that I have by sewing it into a pant-leg shape with a fake (3 layers instead of 4) flat-felled seam on one side. Then I pinned around one edge to turn my hem, and started sewing.

I learned some things about the machine that I hadn’t noticed while cleaning it up and test-sewing by slowly hand-turning the balance wheel. By being able to turn it faster with the spinner knob, I noticed that the feed dog was pushing the fabric forward just a tiny bit before pulling the fabric back for the next stitch. I didn’t see that before, so I ended up adjusting the feed to eliminate that. And I had the presser foot set way too light. The needle would miss stitches coming down off of the flat-felled seam until I put more pressure on the foot.

I have decided that the machine actually gets along nicely with the Tex80 Jeans Thread, so that was exciting. I replaced the light-weight beehive spring in the top tension with a heavier one out of my spare Singer 31-15. The lighter spring may have been standard on the 95-40, I don’t know, but I had an easier time balancing my tensions with the heavier spring. The 95-40 was designed for sewing light and medium weight fabrics, so I doubt that they intended for it to use the larger thread that I’m using, and possibly the lighter spring gave more adjustment control of finer threads.

CD in Oklahoma