Red Helvetia Free Arm Sewing Machine

So my holiday has been slightly more busy and slightly less productive than expected.  However, I have managed to sort out my images of cleaning the red Helvetia into something postable, so here goes....!

This is how it looked when I brought it home

Stitch length lever

I paid $50 for it, which to be honest was probably a bit much as it is fairly scratched in places.  However, it did come with a box of accessories and its flatbed attachment so it probably wasn't too bad.  One of the most challenging things about it is that everything is done up with screws that require an Allen key to remove.  Fortunately there was one in the box of accessories which I used throughout.  The machine is an end loading oscillating hook, only capable of straight stitch both forward and reverse and the feed dogs drop.

Accessories box

Firstly I wanted to take the motor off it, so that I could clean behind it and so that I didn't have to worry about accidentally leaning the machine on it while I was working on it.  These machines have a light under the faceplate which is wired to the motor, so you have to undo the wiring to get the motor off, as shown below.

Back of machine

Remove the bottom piece of plastic that is pointed to by the green arrow in the picture above.  It goes without saying (I hope!) that you make sure the machine is unplugged first!  It is held in place by one or two screws, I can't remember now and I don't seem to have an appropriate picture.  You should then have something that looks like the image below.  In the picture below I have unscrewed the two large screws holding the motor bracket on so that I can move the motor about and take it off as soon as the wiring is out.

Wiring at base of motor

In the picture above, the two green arrows that are essentially pointing at each other are showing the wiring to the light.  The other two arrows are pointing to where these wires are wired in and the screws that hold them.  Once you loosen the screws you can gently pull the light wires out and lift the motor away.  The light wires stay protruding from the back of the machine as shown below.  Make sure you label which wire goes where into the base of the motor.

Showing light wires

I then set about removing the wooden base from the machine.  To do that, remove the three screws circled in green in the image below.

Showing base screws

Underneath base

You can now turn your machine over and oil anything that moves under there and grease any cams.

Next you can remove the cover on the free arm and the face plate, both are held down with a couple of screws and unfortunately I have a photo of the removal of neither.  The faceplate cannot be lifted right off due to the wiring of the light, as seen below.  You can also remove the back cover which is held in place by the same screw that hold the thread spool holder in place.

Under back cover, oil the LH rod where it sits over the crank and grease the cam & slider on the RH rod

Oil all the oil points and lift the feed dogs up and lightly grease where they slide against another piece of metal.

Oil the oil points on the take-up lever etc and lightly grease the needle and presser bar.

You can now get stuck into dismantling the bobbin area.  One you have the bobbin case out you can remove the piece that holds it all together.  Unfortunately I cannot remember how I did this but will update when I can.  Basically, you remove this piece:

Holds everything together.  Can remove metal spring as indicated for cleaning purposes

Now we have something as below, the hook (the crescent shaped metal piece) will now drop out and we can remove all the screws circled in green.  Incidentally, you can see a piece of thread caught up in mine.

Thread catch

Screws to remove

It will look like this and you can clean it to your heart's desire!

Bobbin area

My hook had a few dints from being struck with the needle but nothing too serious.

Hook strikes

One it's all clean you can re-assemble.

Reassembled

 Finally I took the tension assembly apart and cleaned it well.  You just unscrew the knob and it will all drop to pieces in your hand, very simple.

Tension assembly

Tension pieces in order of reassembly, left to right.

 So that's it, probably not one of my better guides to taking something apart but hopefully followable if you're desperate!  I guess I shouldn't leave it 6 months between taking them apart and writing them up!

Singer 320K Machine

I have acquired rather a number of machines over the past few weeks, it does not matter how hard I try, I always find more to buy!  One of these machines is the Singer 320K, a free arm version of the Singer 319K (which I also own).  Getting this one was an incredible stroke of luck as the vendor told me it was already sold, before contacting me a week later to say I could have it.  For $25 complete with instruction manual, all cams, all throat plates and various feet, I was extremely happy!  Today I got around to looking at it.  It was very dirty, particularly on the outside and had some damage, mainly from misuse.

The wooden base forms the flat bed.  This is before cleaning.

The bobbin area was very felted and I took the whole hook assembly apart.  When I re-assembled it I retimed the hook for a standard needle, thus doing two jobs at once.

Bobbin area before cleaning

Bobbin assembly dismantled before cleaning

The cleaned bobbin area and feed dogs reassembled

The outside of the machine was stained with lots of old oil.  I have found methylated spirits to be very good for cleaning machines, so long as you check you are not removing the colour as well.

Cam selection keys, before cleaning

Zigzag arm, before cleaning

The back of the machine after I took the motor off, before cleaning.

The zigzag arm and back of the machine arm after cleaning.

Under the faceplate was not too bad, the worst bit was oiling everything with my wayward spray lubricant.  I was getting more oil in my face than the machine was.

I always remove the needle, foot and bobbin/bobbin case before I begin to clean any machine.  Consequently they are the last items I clean and replace on the machine.  When I cam to clean this machines bobbin case I was horrified by the number of needle strikes on it.  It has at some time been incorrectly positioned and the needle has struck the case about fifty times.  As a result the case was misshapen and starting to fracture.  We carefully beat it back into shape and filed the sharp edges off and it seems to work okay.

Bobbin case showing the needle strikes

The pedal innards also required some work, as they had at some stage been assembled incorrectly.  However when I got this machine up and stitching I was very pleased!  It is very quiet, other than the clacking of the throat plate (I must see if I can quieten that down a bit as it is rather irritating) and put up with been run at top speed backwards and forwards without skipping a single stitch.  No mean feat for one of these machines, which tend to be super sensitive.

Lovely and clean, showing fee arm

Clean back of the machine.

All in all, not a bad days work and a very worthwhile $25 I think!

Singer 201K

Quite some time ago I bought a lovely Singer 201 from work.  However with study I never got around to cleaning it.  On Sunday I was bored and decided to get it out and play with it.  Every time I get this machine out I sit and look at it for a bit because it is just so beautiful and sleek.  This time was no different and afterwards I set in to cleaning it thoroughly.  There is no rust on it, excepting the hand wheel but a lot of caked on oil and dust.  This I set about removing, before oiling it and trying to set it up.  I started under the bed of the machine, because I always do.

Packed in its crate with its motor, as it has been for a year.

Under the bobbin area

Gear cover, to remove, remove circled screws.

Bobbin gear cover, to remove, remove circled screws.

Lovely metal gears.

Once I had finished under the bed I did the rest of the machine, starting with under the faceplate and moving through to the bobbin area and finally all the 'cosmetic' work, which isn't necessary for the efficient functioning of the machine but I like to know it's all shiny.

Under the faceplate, before cleaning

Bobbin and needle area, before cleaning

Hook, after the removal of the bobbin case.

Clean bobbin area

After some cosmetic work 

At the moment I have it mounted in the Singer 206's table, running off the industrial motor as its own motor needs a lot of work.  I am very pleased with it, it is very quiet and stitches very neatly.

Reassembling the Singer 206 Motor

As you may remember back in December 2013 (here)  I took the Singer 206 industrial motor apart in order to replace the bearings.  It sat around in pieces for a year (just over actually) before we got around to removing the bearings and replacing them.  I wish we hadn't put it off so long as it only took 2 days to do!

First we removed the outer, easier, bearing using a gear puller and then we removed the shaft, this left us with one bearing lodged inside the casting and held in with a circlip.  We ran a screwdriver behind the circlip and then we had all three bearings out.  It cost us $35 to buy replacement bearings but I figured it was cheaper than buying another 206.  Below are images:

First bearing removed, second still on shaft

Arrow pints to the circlip holding the bearing in

Using the gear puller to remove the end of the motor and the second bearing

The shaft of the motor, without the casing.

When it came to reassembling the motor and attaching the wires, I was glad I had taken so many photos before but I still could never quite find the right photograph!  While we were doing electrical work on it, we decided to shorten the power lead, so as to cut off a damaged bit.  This resulted in having to rewire the switch on the table.

Switch inside

Despite our concerns the motor now works fine and is MUCH quieter than it was before.  We are considering putting rubber washers on the bolts that hold it on to the table though as the table is hollow and acts as an amplifier.

In other news, I have been quite busy and managed to miss Tallulah Bankhead's birthday, however I thought I would still post a couple of pictures of her.  I love many of her quotes as they make me laugh.

When I stop being so lazy I should have a nice post about the beautiful 201K I acquired a while ago.

Elna Supermatic

Due to the amount of studies I have had recently, I had about a week were I did not work.  When I went back in on a Saturday morning there were three machines awaiting me.  One was a modern Brother overlocker, with no pedal (I'm yet to decide what I'm going to do with it), one was a Singer 5528, the second of them I've had in as many months and I keep meaning to devote a post to them and the third was in a very square metal case.  There was only one machine I knew for sure came in a metal case (Elna model 1) and this was the wrong colour, so I was extremely excited when I took the machine out.  It was a gorgeous Elna Supermatic, complete with ~11 cams plus the buttonhole attachment, a few feet and the cover plates for the feed dogs.  Half of the case forms the flat bed for the machine and the machine is a knee control (I love knee controls!).  This machine is made in Switzerland and has all metal gears and parts, that I can see, the body is aluminium and consequently the machine is not all that heavy.

It wasn't until a week later I found time to take it home and look at it, there is no way I am selling this machine, I am BUYING it!

Firstly I removed the cover from the free arm and the throat-plate just sprung off, the bobbin loads from the back, I then removed the feed dogs so that I could get the bobbin holder and the hook apart, for ease of cleaning.  The surfaces here have been de-rusted at some period in time as the chrome is less than shiny in parts.

To get the bobbin holder free from the hook there are two little screws (with little springs coiled around them) that need to be removed, they are directly opposite each other and the holes can be seen in the photograph below.  Just be aware they are very springy and are very easy to lose if they spring away somewhere.

 
The next thing I did was remove the base of the machine (remove screws circled in red in image below) so I could see up the pillar, it is incredible.  The motor and all the necessary electrical parts to control the speed of the machine through the knee control are mounted in there.  The motor is geared into the machine much higher up the arm and cannot be seen in the following photographs.

Finally I checked and oiled all the moving parts under the faceplate and cam door.  The faceplate cannot be opened unless the foot is down.  The machine is threaded by passing the thread down the back of the faceplate, through the tension, from back to front, and then through the take-up lever and then as usual.

Whilst I was oiling this machine I noticed it had a hard spot, I thought maybe something wasn't oiled properly but despite oiling all the usual spots the noise persisted.  When I actually plugged the machine in and ran it the noise increased with the speed (as was to be expected) and the machine clunked dreadfully.  It wasn't until a couple of days later I found enough time to go and look at it again.

It came to my attention that the noise was not always in the same place in the machines rotation, this implied the motor was at fault.  Eventually I disengaged the machine from the motor as for bobbin winding and the clunking continued, definitely the motor.  With the base removed it became obvious that every time the machine clunked the entire motor was moving, which it definitely was not supposed to do.  The problem was, how to see up the arm to see the gears?  I did not have the appropriate circlip pliers to remove the handwheel and try and see in that way but eventually remember we had a camera for seeing in confined spaces.  This worked and I can now say that to all intents and purposes it looks as if the gears up there are chipped and resulting in the machine not running smoothly.  When I am finally finished for the year (another 4 weeks) I intend to go through the painstaking process of removing the motor and actually being able to personally see the extent of the damage.  It is annoying to have such a beautiful machine, complete with accessories and be completely unable to use it!!  At least I only have to pay $10 for it as it is completely unsaleable.....!