Got any Tool Tips?
 

I am ssssssssooooooooooo wimpy... I have had quite a bit of trouble with stuck stuff lately. I got mechanics gloves to help get a balance wheel off a stuck Singer 500 but I had to borrow my DH's hands to get it off - I think he had to take the rest of the day off and nurse his sore hands, arms & back... but the gloves worked.
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Then I've had other smaller stuff I couldn't get any grip on so I found a bike inner-tube in the garage and cut a section out of it. I put it over a stuck thumb screw and used curved beak vice grips to get that off - I just don't like the idea of tearing anything up.

Then I had a couple stuck throat plate screws - I found a T shaped ratchet screwdriver with an extension and it takes the little screwdriver tips AND has a magnet - found at Harbor Freight. WOW it has leverage. I broke the screws loose with it and then used the little tips to get the screws out.

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Please feel free post your tool ideas here.

I prefer using this gunsmithing set over hunting for the proper size loose screwdrivers. For low clearance like difficult throat plate screws I use a proper fitting bit and a 1/4" wrench. Like Miriam mentioned, a variety of vise grips with rubber or leather protectors is indispensable and one of my most frequently used tools.

Jon

I'm listening intently to this one. I love tools almost as much as sewing machines, but my DH always steals my tools and I'm forever looking for them, broken, or not. Maybe getting a gunsmithing set might make him think twice next time he goes to lift one of my needed tools. He'll really start wondering what I'm up to then. :)

~ Cindy

I also search for screwdrivers that are narrow and thin... Too wide and too thick don't work well for me. I also have a set of those gunsmith screwdrivers but I don't love them as much as that T shaped screw driver. I should see if the bits fit it. I also have the little box wrench but some times there is not enough Egor in me to get it to turn on the throat plates.

I thought of another tip - no not a sledge hammer... unless YOU have tension problems in your own belfry...
A long time ago my DH had a magnetic sign on his truck - well things happen and I ended up with the sign stashed somewhere although bits and pieces were cut off here and there. Glenn made a comment about a sheet of magnet on the bench so now most of it is on my bench - magnetic side up - it catches screws some times - well a lot of times. It is very easy to take something off the machine and line it up on the magnet sheet - I know it will pretty much stay put if it sticks to the magnet at all. if I could just find that little stray tension end screw I lost before I thought about that magnet sheet... no bigger than the head of a pin........ I went to a place that sells sign materials to buy the magnet sheet.

Don't forget a very important tool----a digital camera that can take really good close up pictures! I don't start to do anything without it charged up and ready.

Good tips! Thanks Miriam.
Rodney

I use Chenille for cleaners. Our old shop had a very large stock of the old style Chenille Stems (pipe cleaners) in 2 or 3 diameters, as well as some Bump Chenille (diameter changes back and forth several times along the stem) when we took over the shop. Chenille isn’t all that popular right now, so I use them a lot for cleaning out small holes such as screw holes, the center of the upper tension stud, the center of a class 15 bobbin case, feed dog teeth, etc. In the race area of a vertical hook, I bend a loop in the end of one and use the loop to clean lint out of the inside, up under the lip. The hook doesn’t snag Chenille like it does a cotton swab when cleaning around it.


Some Chenille has very limber wire that stands up to flexing fairly well, so with one of those, I make a hook in one end and feed it in and around the presser bar and needle bar inside of the head to clean them using a see-saw motion to rub up and down the bars. Basically, wherever a cotton swab could be used, I generally use Chenille to avoid leaving cotton stands behind on protrusions. Larger holes can be cleaned by folding the Chenille to multiply the strands to make the diameter larger. I save the cotton swabs for mopping out old grease, and surplus oil when I get one in that has been drowned with oil trying to solve a tension problem or the like.


I apply my Tri-flow grease using a Turkey Basting syringe that has the end cut off on an angle with an Exacto Saw, and I have my Singer Sewing Machine Oil in a Disposable Diabetic syringe (with the longest needle available at my Pharmacy), then reload them as needed. The oil will distort and ruin the rubber plunger in about 4-6 months (not so with the grease), and have to be replaced with a whole new syringe. I don’t alter the tips of the diabetic needles, so they are treated with the utmost care and the needle cover replaced immediately after each “shot” of oil. I load the basting syringe by removing the plunger, squeezing grease into the basting syringe out of the grease tube, and then replacing the plunger. Then I remove the tip, press the plunger, and work the air bubbles out with a broom straw. The grease can be dispensed in very small quantities this way, so each filling lasts for a very long time. For the oil, I remove the oil bottle cap, insert the syringe needle into the bottle with the tip of the needle in oil, and draw the oil into the syringe with the plunger. Need to go slow, because oil is thicker than most injected medicines, and the needle hole is very small. If I get air bubbles, I’ll simply wait until they decide to come out. I reload my oil syringe frequently since it holds a small quantity of oil. If drawing slow and the shaft of the plunger pops loose from the rubber plunger, it’s time to break out a new syringe.


CD in Oklahoma

I thought of another one. I found a whole pack of 100 disposable eye lash brushes - those get in some real cracks when you are trying to get lint out. They do not hold up real well - pipe cleaner might do as well.

I use the Chenille ALL The time, But I use the ones with the stiff bristles worked into them. Oil ports, tiny passageways, I bend them in to a crank shape, double the end over and "thread them into threaded screw holed to clean out the threads.