That ain't all Bubba did. Bubba bent the needle shaft. My Singer 500 donor machine let me borrow a nice one. It took some doing for me to work up the courage to fix it but it wasn't really all that hard.

wonder if they put the sucker stick there and then did the same thing that broke the thread holder to begin with and the sucker stick pushed through instead of breaking.

I appreciate that Joe. The bits of the one I have here is the color of laundry lint, but I doubt that's the color it started out.

That's a shame. I had a similar day. Had to replace the gears in a machine today, in the end, the only reason it didn't get pitched out the window is that the machine doesn't belong to me. What a chore. It's supposed to be a lot easier, but everything went wrong.


Poor machine! I would never have thought of a sucker stick. It's weird they'd put the washer in there... maybe to make it harder to punch through?


How does one bend a needle shaft? I would think it would have to hit something pretty solid like concrete? I'm guessing the needle plate didn't look great either then? I did a complete dis-assembly on the FW, and was pretty surprised at how easy that portion was to take apart too.

I bet you're right. That instruction plate doesn't look like a lot of fun to get off either, so it would be hard to fix once you realized your "oops". It looks like both Miram's and mine have had at least one attempt at removal.

The spool pins are held on by an identical clampy thing too. Really unfriendly this particular feature, but so far, it's the only thing that makes me go "What were they thinking".

I didn't get a chance to clean up that machine today after all. The client machine fought me too long, and I'm beat after having to do some emergency IT things after that, so I'll tackle it tomorrow when I'm fresh and less likely to lose my temper. :(

At this point I vote for a free standing thread holder accessory and just run the thread over the top of the machine rather than mess with it or mar the door any more.

The only clue I have to the bent needle bar was some lint impacting the bobbin area (looked like upholstery) and a bit of matching really heavy sick green upholstery fabric in the mix. Maybe they figured that machine would sew anything. Could have been a lot of weight or maybe they tried to pull the material through as they were sewing. Yeah I had to replace the needle plate. I have a longer list of things to look at when I evaluate a sewing machine... That needle hit the foot - I tried adjusting/centering the needle to no avail - I couldn't see the bend in the needle until it was out. Then it was very visible. Works great now. My sister sat next to me with the manual and we figured it out. I had timed a needle plenty of times so got it pretty quickly. We also "practiced" on the parts machine...

You're probably right. I have one here I've never really tried that hard to use. I got it because so many machines I was getting had broken spool pins, but then ended up with a bunch of spool pins. :) The only thing is then there are 2 gaping holes in the top of the machine. I wonder what it would take to "convert" it to the regular spool pin style... hmm,.. I'll have to think on that.

I wonder if it was sold to the person you bought it from as "Heavy Duty" or "Industrial" and someone realized a little too late that it wouldn't do what they wanted and sold it to you.

The manual I take it is the "something like 400 page service manual" for all slants? I'd love to get my hands on a better copy of that one (the pictures are pretty dark), but it's been a life saver as it is.

I looked and looked in all the most obvious places for the little ivory colored washer thing yesterday and couldn't find it. Typical, I trip over something until I want it, then I can't find it.. I'll keep looking.

Joe

No problem!! I am mostly just curious. I appreciate you looking to begin with.

I wonder if the extra spindle out of a Singer 500 would fit that?

It doesn't look like it, but I'd love to be wrong. It's the same pin as on a 290C, which I used to have. I have one of those 500 pins coming though, so I will know in about a week to a week in a half.

I -still- didn't get a chance to clean this machine up. DH came home a little under the weather, so I left the sewing room for the afternoon.

Ok,.. here we go. So this is what I picked up on Tuesday. Today it got a complete cleaning, including both tensioners (needle and bobbin) disassembled and cleaned, oiled and greased.
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As discussed, I added felt to the bottoms of the spool pins, to take up the slack. It's a little spongy though. It doesn't seem to affect the thread spools in a short term test. We'll see over a longer term project though. (If I knew how to make one of Joe's bags for instance... :rolleyes:) I may replace the felt with washers or something.

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A close up of the bottom of the spool pins. It was pretty tough to put the steel lock washer into place. There's no bend in that plate, but it's certainly out of shape. I wonder if it will settle down eventually.

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I found 3 surprises though, all related to the bobbin.

1. It's significantly different than the bobbin that's in a 401/ 403/ 503. I don't have a 500 here to compare with, but I suspect that it's the same as the other 3. My guess is that this has something to do with the ability to chainstitch?
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The second surprise was the "epoxy" or similar on the edge of the bobbin case. Miriam, does yours look like this, or is it a repair the way I suspect it is? It seems to work fine for lock stitching. We shall see about chain stitching tomorrow when I have some focus back.

Third surprise, it needed a new tension spring, but I replaced that with a spare from 403ish bobbin case, set it to the "specs" in the TFSR manual and the test stitch is perfect! Next test, probably tomorrow now - project chainstitch. :)

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Here's what the machine came with, besides the manual.
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It also came in a cabinet, which I'll just store for now, and maybe send with another machine at some point. Once I've had a chance to go through all the treats I found in the drawers, of course. The guy I bought it from said he got it at an estate sale auction. All of this came with it, plus a Griest buttonholer.

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I picked this case up from the Singer store that just closed, and it's a perfect fit for this machine, so that's where it will be stored.
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I picked up this 115 from the same guy, and I suspect he got it at the same auction. In the drawers for the 411, I found a green box of low shank attachments, and the buttonholer was a low shank as well. There was also a manual for a Blind stitch attachment, and coincidentally, my BS attachment was missing its manual.

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It will get cleaned up at my next opportunity. It's got some paint that's been dripped on it, so I'll have to figure out how to remove that. Today it got a wipe down, and a good oiling with Tri-Flow. It's freed right up. I think I'll make a box for it, and put my "spare" (chinese) hand crank on it. No parts required.