It is ALIVE! Cheating to Get the New Family Running

I ordered some kinda-sorta 12x1 needles off Ebay Monday night.  I thought I could be patient for them to get here.  I was wrong.

The biggest problem with 15x1 needles is that the shank is just too darn wide.  There's a length difference as well, but the shank is the killer.

Well, this morning after doing my morning chauffeur duties for the family I got to pondering.  What if I just pulled out the Dremel and got rid of that annoying width difference.  So I did.

It wasn't difficult.  A regular aluminum oxide grinding bit for the Dremel worked fine.  It took just a few minutes of running it up and down the sides, remembering the needle goes in with the eye facing front to back.  The trickiest part was ensuring the sides were balanced.

Next was getting the machine threaded up.  Now the user manual on the Singer site HERE is a handy resource, but at the time of that printing Singer hadn't quite gotten the step-by-step picture thing down, and the text is a little obtuse at points.  So what follows is how I did it.  I believe I got the shuttle threading right.  If someone disagrees let me know.

The first thing the user manual instructs you to do is the set the needle.  I skipped doing that until the end.  When we get there I think you will see why I like my way better.  I did put the needle in but didn't set its height.

The last owner had loaded up the bobbin in their attempt to get it running, so I skipped that.

Right off the bat is the most confusing bit.  The instructions read:  Hold the bobbin with your thumb and forefinger of your right hand ensuring the thread goes over the bobbing toward your hand."  Simple enough.  Done.  Next:  "At the same time take the shuttle in the fingers of the left hand with its point towards the hand,"  Umm, what?  Which direction is "towards the hand"

Going by what the first line says.  Thread over towards the hand, holding the shuttle in the other hand with the point "towards the hand," gives you this result:

The next instruction is to "place one end of the bobbin in the spring center of the end of the shuttle cavity next to the point,". That means we need to turn the bobbin to fit, but which direction?  Thread over or thread under the bobbin when it goes in?  Here's my thought:  If you go over the top then you end up with thread rubbing against itself going in different directions.  If you have big ups and downs when you spooled your bobbin there is the possibility of the thread tangling.  You negate that by going under the bobbin.  So I went under.

Whew, major drama in the bobbin threading so far, huh.  Next with the shuttle opening facing up, go out the bottom slit of the side with two slits and then back in the top slit.

Next over the bobbin and out through the first hole closest to the blunt end of the shuttle.  Then weave in and out of the holes, however many you need to set the tension you want making sure to exit through the hole closest to the point.  HOWEVER! If you end up going in the point end hole, you come out the slit below the holes.

I went back in at the next hole.and out through the pointy end hole.  It worked fine for me.  Finally you go under the spring next to the holes and slit.

Once you have the shuttle threaded just drop it into the carrier, spring up, point towards the hand wheel.  I didn't take a picture.

Next it threading the machine.  There's only five steps so it wasn't nearly as difficult as the first time I tried the thread up a 403 without instructions.

Very quickly:  1. Go from the spool through the thread guide.  2.  loop under and between the tension discs.  3. Up through the check lever.  4.  Down through the hole in the needle clamp.  5. Through the needle front to back.

Now for the fun part.  Setting the needle height.  In reality it was the quickest part of the whole preparation, only two steps.  First step is to level the engraved line on the needle bar with the top of the machine.

Here the manual tells you to put the point of a fine needle into the eye of the mounted needle and align them using the throat plate as your level.  Well since I have a thread already in the eye of the needle I just adjusted the needle until the thread was level with the throat plate.

Now with my 15x1 hack job needle I also needed to make sure than I aligned it properly with the hole so I wouldn't be chewing up the hole in the throat plate, or worse, driving the needle straight into metal.  Thankfully my eyeball dremeling was pretty good and I have a nice fit.

Once we are threaded and lined up, it's time to sew.

Imagine cool treadling noises here.  I'll break the GoPro out sometime and put some video here so people can really see and hear it.  A few seconds later, an awesome stitch.

Threads were left attached as evidence that that stitch did come out of this machine.  Wouldn't want people to think there was fraudulent sewing going on, would we.

The stitches are even, the muslin doesn't really wrap around the lock stitches so looks like pull-throughs, but they aren't.    The stitches are not quite as good as Wicked Queen and the other 15s, but I would say they are comparable to the 301.  Not bad at all for a 138 year old machine.