Monday, January 7, 2019

328K Is Singer For Awesome!

This is a follow up to my original post about coverting the 328K to a treadle machine here.

Taking advice from Leila from Grow Your Own Clothes here and some folks on Victorian Sweatshop  I replaced the 328K's stock hand wheel with a 9 spoke designed to be used with treadles.

Singer 328K Treadle Sewing Machine Conversion

Unfortunately the 9 spoke fits so close to the case that I had to remove the motor cover to let the hand wheel sit correctly.  I ordered another cover to have a spare to grind down to fit.


For the first time in years I used the 328K without a single dropped stitch.  In the last 328 post I showed a picture of the stitches I got.  It seemed like nearly half the zigzag stitches were dropped.  Not so today.


I was whipping the stitch width on the zigzag back and forth as I sewed.  Historically on the 328 this made for really bad pull throughs.  Not so on the treadle, the slower stitch speed probably deserves the credit there.

I still think an electrified 328K is a bit of a dog.  The motor is just way too weak and doesn't age well in comparison to motors I have on even older machines that are running strong well past their 80th year.  The 328K's was all but dead after 'only' 60.  I know it has been pointed out by experts that the needle alignment lacks good adjustments, but the only machine I ever ran into needle alignment issues with is the 29K73.  All my others seem to remain spot on.  I've done whole lot of sewing through the years on the 328K (which probably explains why the motor was dying) and never has the needle alignment been an issue for me.  Hopefully that stays true in its new life as my primary zigzagger. 

Singer made a great call having the 328K designed as a treadle convertible machine.

I shot some video of me gushing over it as well.

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