wilburness

"little things fasinate little minds". lol

are you ever going to tell us what was in the first can of chemicals you started this spa treatment with?

ThayerRags

I would rather not. Had the product performed better than Singer sewing machine oil for soaking my machine, I would have, but it didn’t, so I don’t want to appear to be critical of the product.

CD in Oklahoma

Caroline S

What you need to protect you from Randy's oil are some old fashioned coveralls that old timey mechanics wore.

ThayerRags

I agree, but simply taking the time to wipe the excess oil off of the balance wheel before spinning it would probably go a long way in minimizing the mess (hehehe). I was in such a hurry to get a belt on him and start the spinning process that I forgot that I hadn’t given him an “after-soak rubdown” yet.

I normally wear a heavy denim knee-length apron to help catch the mess, at both of my work areas. I have two at the shop (one that I use for machine work, and one that I keep clean to use while clerking in the rest of the shop). I have one here at home too. It’s the old worn one that I wore working on machines in the shop for six years. I didn’t have it on because it was close to supper time and I was trying to squeeze in a little playing time before the wife announced that supper was ready, or the smoke alarm went off, whichever one came first.

CD in Oklahoma

oldsewnsew

ROFL!! no comment.

ThayerRags

Yea, I took a chance at getting blasted with that smoke alarm comment. It’s an inside joke around here. My wife and I cook nearly all of our own meals, and we had a Big George Foreman Rotisserie in the kitchen for a few years. We really liked the food that it cooked, but it had a tendency to smoke just enough once in a while to set off one of our nearby smoke alarms. It had one of the heating elements directly under the food, so everything dripped on it.

It was good for testing the smoke alarm regularly, but was larger than we needed for just the two of us, so we gave it our daughter to use for her family. It doesn’t set her alarm off.

We went to a yardsale last Saturday and found a smaller unused Ronco Rotisserie that we bought and have used every evening since then. We’re waiting to see if we can set the smoke alarm off with this one too, but so far, just good food and no alarm.

Back to Randy the 31-15, I got the bobbin winder cleaned up and attached to the stand top yesterday, and I worked on cleaning up some of his thumbscrews while I ran both Randy and the winder with the motor to distribute the oil in them more. I wiped the excess oil off of the base of the balance wheel this time, and it made a significant difference. No oil roaster-tail this time. Oh, and I had my apron on this time too, just in case.....

CD in Oklahoma

ThayerRags

The parts for Randy came in yesterday and I’ve been putting him back together. Things sure come apart faster than they go back together, don’t they? Of course, part of that additional time is spent cleaning existing parts and adjusting the ones that have adjustments. I hadn’t planned to have to scoonch the Feed Bar over a little to line up with the new Feed Dog and new Needle Plate for the new Small Roller Foot. I don’t know what that will do to the fitting of the original Heavy Duty set of FD, NP, & Foot that I have for it, but I’ll find out later I guess.

I had to modify the new Take-up Lever Assembly to make it work. You’d think that with today’s advanced technology and manufacturing processes that the parts would be better than the old ones, but they’re not. I won’t crawl up on a soapbox here and rant, but it sure is depressing when new parts aren’t made correctly at the factory.

The clutch motor is getting a little more responsive to feathering, but it still runs awfully fast. Hopefully, once the clutch gets some time on it, maybe it will handle better. I have to do something about the knee lift for the presser bar. The stand must have had some other model of machine in it before (I bought it with no machine in it). It’s the wrong type and in the wrong place for this machine, so I’ll have to dig through my stash and see what I can come up with for a replacement. All-in-all, Randy is looking a lot better than he did, and with a few more adjustments, he’ll be ready to do a test-sew.

CD in Oklahoma

ThayerRags

I did a test-sew by hand-wheeling Randy with the small roller foot feed system on it using Tex92 thread, size 18 needle, and sewing recycled billboard vinyl. The thread struggles to slip around the bobbin case, so I must still have the tensions off, or need to buff things more, but I got a fairly encouraging stitch.

I decided to add a piece of 4-6 ounce oak-tanned leather along with the vinyl, and on the first stitch, the leather pulled the needle down out of the needle clamp. LOL! I bent my new needle when that happened, but I have more.

The needle clamp that was on Randy is not the original clamp, but I thought that it might have been working for the previous owner, so I tried it. Maybe it did work for what they were sewing, but it’s not going to work for me. Now I’ve been scrounging through my parts bins for needle clamp parts.

CD in Oklahoma

wolph33

what an interesting process to watch you go through

ThayerRags

I found the needle clamp parts that Randy needed, and got them installed. I’m sure glad that I “invested” what I thought was a generous amount of money in old sewing mechanic box lots the past few years just to have parts on-hand. I’ve bought 3 or 4 lots of old parts over the past 8 years. Paying good money for someone’s junk box of things that I may never use seemed like a waste of money in a way, but the number of times that I’ve went to the junk boxes in desperation and found what I needed has made it all worth it. It paid off once again.

With Randy’s new needle secured in the replacement clamp, clamp screw, thread guide and attachment screw, I hand-wheeled him through some leather and vinyl again. Everything went just fine, so I decided to put him in the power stand and give him a go.

Randy sews!!!! Waaa-hooooo!

He sews too fast for leather work or repair work, but by golly, he sews a good stitch. He’s getting about 5 1/2 stitches to the inch on vinyl alone, and about 6 stitches per inch on leather over vinyl. That’s not bad. I still need to run more thread through him to make sure everything is good, but he whizzed through my sample without a hick-up. Now, I can turn my attention to the power stand and see if I can figure out something to slow it down. With all of the farm machinery around this area, there should be a couple of old pulleys, a shaft, a couple of bearings, and a bracket or two laying around somewhere not being used.

With this posting, I declare the Singer 31-15 Spa Treatment Experiment complete. I’m sticking with my old method of using sewing machine oil to soak old machines back to life. I hope everyone enjoyed following this thread. Now, it’s on to the next project. I still have another “basket case” on my bike table right now, an Adler 205-64, and it’s coming onto time to get the motorcycles serviced up for summer. I’ve got to have the air table cleared off for them.

CD in Oklahoma