It was bitter cold here today so working in the sewing room was not going to happen. Instead I decided to do a little cleaning on the 1953. Specifically the hook and hook area of the head.
It was another one of those times where it wasn't until halfway through that I thought it should be something to post about here. So the disassembly and cleaning didn't get much documentation.
Pretty much what happened what I removed the face plate, side cover, bobbin cover plate, needle plate, needle bar, presser bar, stitch regulator indicator plate, feed dogs, bobbin case tension plate and hook assembly from the machine and gave them all a good cleaning and/or dremeling. I pulled out the vacuum and sucked all the dirt and dead spiders from inside and out from under the head. Then gave the head a good nylon brush down, really focusing on getting all the fluff balls out of the hook area.
I took the hook completely apart and dremeled all the individual pieces before putting it back together and reinstalling it.
After finishing up with the 1953 I started thinking that it had been quite a while since Black Swan had a good cleaning of her hook. 2015 was the last time I had her apart. So I pulled her hook out to take a look.
That's after only a little more than three years since the last time I had the hook out, with regular light cleaning in between. Now granted Black Swan sees the most use of my machines and at Philmont she sewed almost eight hours a day for about a month straight before I picked up the industrials, but still the amount of stuff caught in the hook space was surprising.
The hook itself was pretty icked up as well.
I'm really leaning towards a sonic cleaner at this point. I keep putting it off, thinking I should get one of the big ones, but really 90 percent of the parts I clean could be easily handled by one of the cheap small ones. It would really save on the dremeling time. But for now, dremeling it is.
The hook area was cleaning just using nylon brushes and microfiber towels. None of the fluffies that had collected had a chance to solidify yet and came out pretty easily.
Cleaning, I was reminded of a website I saw a few years back of some clown trying to sell overpriced machines. He claimed he restored them before putting them up for sale and then showed the pile of q-tips he used on one of his "restorations". Seriously, the guy didn't remove a single component off the machines and claimed he was restoring them. Thankfully I haven't found the website again. I hope that means he realized what an idiot he was making of himself and closed it down to avoid further humiliation.
After cleaning the hook I was thinking about giving the head a quick cleaning with oil, but decided to take care of some of the missing paint first.
Two things here. One, I know that Ford engine semi-gloss black is the go to color for touching up Singer japanning, but I'm a life long Chevy guy and while I was at Advance Auto I just couldn't bring myself to buy a product with Ford in the name. Sorry.
Secondly, I know I've said that Black Swan will get a repaint at some point. She will, but it will be months from now when it paint won't freeze before it has a chance to dry. In the mean time a little GM black will keep her shining.
While doing all the cleaning I realized that I've never talked about the needle plate on Black Swan. Back in 2017, before going to Philmont, I decided I would really like one of those cool gauged number plates. The only problem is that at the time I could only find HA-1 versions.
It's not really a big deal. The HA-1s copied the Singer 15279 feed dogs. These are the feed dogs that were used on the 15-87 and earlier. (Edit: Leila makes a good point in the comments. If you do this make sure the vendor does call out specifically which feed dogs the plate is designed to work with. A lot of sellers don't really have a clue what they have and just think cause it looks like a Singer or HA-1 plate that it is. Unfortunately not all vendors know their stock.)
Now there is one trick to using the 15279 feed dogs on a 201. The 15s have the vertical hook vs the 201's horizontal hook. As such 15 feed dogs are curved on the under side of the dogs themselves, where the 201 feed dogs are flat. If you try to use the 15279s without modification they will grind the machine to a halt when they dig in to to the bobbin case tension plate.
This is corrected by grinding down the rear and leading edges. I think I took off about half the metal off the front 1/4" and just a bit off the rear.
The ad on Amazon, where I bought this plate, even calls out the need for the 15279 feed dogs. But sure enough, after I bought it, I checked the reviews and saw people complaining that it didn't 'fit' their 201s or 15-91s. Sometimes you have wonder how we made it down from the trees with genes like that in our pool.
Other than grousing about the doofiness of our fellow humans, it was a pretty relaxing way to spend a frigid day in Connecticut.
I bought one of those numbered plates from someone on ebay. It didn't fit my 201, like they claimed it would. The holes for the feed dog did not quite line up right. I can't remember if it fit my model 15. Also the measurement lines were unevenly spaced and did not indicate the measurements correctly. I returned it. I ended up just using tape to mark the seam line.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I avoid buying things like this off Ebay unless I can read the part number, at least on Amazon you can be a little more secure in the knowledge that you are dealing with a vendor who knows their inventory (hopefully). If you get one of these plates that's not specifically Singer or an HA-1 clone you can get end up needing to dremel out the feed dog slots and doinking up the alignment. I've seen that happen to a few people.
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