Advice please about my Kenmore cabinet machine
 

This is about my 118.740 but it probably applies to all machines.

It's in a wooden cabinet which I open and close just about every day. Which means just about every day I lift the machine up and out. Tonight one of the screws that hold the hinge to the machine came out and the machine kind of dropped. Hubby fixed it but it got me wondering. Are these cabinets meant to be opened and closed repeatedly - like every day? Is that too much? Should I try to find a different location for this machine. One where I can keep it open all the time?

Thanks!!

Wish you had posted a photo. Love to see all of these old machines and their setup.

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Ask and you shall receive!!

Could you just sew a cover for it and leave it out all the time? I expect you sew more than many people did - I know my mom only took out her machine for clothing repair or if she found a pattern she wanted to sew, and I think that's how most people are, really. Just us maniacs that want to be doing all the time!

Well the place where it "lives" now is in a corner of my dining room, closed, with a decorative vase on it. When I use it, I have to pull it out, I don't have space to keep the side shelf open. Granted, it's a pain to move that vase and pull the cabinet out of the corner on an almost daily basis, but I'd have to do some serious furniture rearranging to find a place to keep it open all the time. But if I have to, I will. I sure don't want to wreck the hinges or the cabinet with the constant opening and closing, raising and lifting.

I don't know that it's right but I generally just rest the cabinet leaf on the front of my machine when it's not in use instead of putting everything back inside the cabinet.
Rodney

I have run across a number of cabinets with loose lid or leaf hinge screws. Those that hold the machines in place seem to be especially prone to coming loose.

On some of the Singer cabinets they have flanged threaded metal inserts that come up from the bottom of the cabinet top so the screws thread into them for the machine hinges. For any cabinet used a lot those would great for a retro fit. I've seen them at hardware stores.

For the others I've found that occasionally checking and tightening the screws goes a long way towards preventing them from stripping out or coming loose.

For those that have already stripped to the point they wont stay tight, I take either a rolled up piece of veneer scrap or some other scraps and push them into the screw hole with some wood glue. I do this to all the holes, then reassemble the hinged part and tighten the screws up. When I've done this none of them have come loose again.
This works great for cabinets with drooping lids.

When I use my machines often I leave the heads up, and either put the leaf up and over the top of the machine with a pad between the leaf and machine, or I use a cover and just leave it set up.
I know space is a premium, but I just make room for my machine.

Joe

If you can tolerate not completely closing the machine up each time, I'd go with Rodney & Joe's suggestion of just making a decorative cover for the machine head and leave it up most of the time. Let's you keep the machine head up and able to stash it back in the corner when not in use while not 'over-using' the hinges/screws. Then you only need to find a new home for the vase!

ETA: Or perhaps even making a cover for the entire top with the hinged side up against the machine so the cover would enclose the entire top??? Would probably need some fairly stiff interfacing to keep the boxy shape.

Thanks for all the replies. I may follow the advice and leave the head up with the leaf resting on it. But that raises another question. Will the pressure of the leaf pushing the head sideways cause another, different issue?

So.....were these machines really designed to open and close daily? What do you think sewists did in the 1950's when my machine was made for example? Did they sew occasionally or daily? Do you suppose a daily sewist would keep her machine open all the time?

I keep my avatar open all the time.....

Oh, this is the type of hinge I have. The bottom (sort of pointy bits) part is what came out, just one. Hubby put it back and tightened the screw that must be at the end....I saw a screwdriver in use.
http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/N5QAAO...GLn/s-l500.jpg