One of my colleagues has an Elna Contessa 400. Elna Contessa's are not exactly my favourite machines but that does have something to do with the fact that ours has a 'pot' metal part, which has disintegrated leaving the machine useless. This one had a seized bobbin-winder and to be honest, I suspected the worst and thought it too, would disintegrate on me. With plenty of oil and a lot of nail bitingly brutal force however, it freed up and is now working fine. Originally my colleague wanted me to sell it and get her another but on my advice decided to keep the Elna when the bobbin-winder was freed. From what I could see this machine had metal cams and gears and was in very good condition, although very dry. I told her that she would not find a modern machine with either of those attributes.
In these pictures the bobbin winder is missing. Where I work is very dark so when I photograph I have to use a flash, sadly white machines and flashes don't exactly work together! I have included a picture of the stitch selector to give you an idea of the range of stitches.
Muy buena ilustración ahora necesito como pasar los hilos y la bobina
ReplyDeletedo you have the Hook Drive Gear of elna contessa 400？thanks！
ReplyDeleteDo you have a user manual
ReplyDeleteyep, same here, seized. i found one on a nature strip complete with box of goodies and the foot pedal. at home the light came on but operation was extremely stiff to rotate. my experience is that folks own these machines for decades but never oil them properly. i took the top off and the base plate and opened the end panel at needle end and gave the entire internals a good dose of WD40. i rotated the dile on the end until slowly the machine loosened up. then a good dose of engine oil to all said internals again. then more hand cranking to the point where the foot pedal was able to do the work without straining the motor. after running the machine for about 90 seconds, the entire workings was back up to full speed running so smoothly and quietly. i would say these swiss built machines are hard to beat. not a rattle, so solid. its really a wonderful precision piece of engineering. was going to put it on gumtree but is so good, well, dont know now.....put it in the cupboard for another fifty years. you cant give them away, who makes clothes anymore????
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