Oiling and Cleaning a Vibrating Shuttle Sewing Machine

Recently I have acquired a number of new machines, including two vibrating shuttle machines.  I decided to create a post detailing how to oil and clean one, particularly in the case of the machine being seized through being left to sit.

From the front

The machine used below is called The Valley B.G. and is made in Germany.  I suspect it could be a re-badged Vesta.  It should be noted not all machines are identical although most parts operate in a fairly similar fashion.  A White vibrating shuttle, for example, has a different mechanism for operating the shuttle movement.  If the machine is seized, gently clean the oil holes to try an reduce the amount of dust likely to fall inside and apply oil to all oil holes on the arm of the machine, see below:

Oil holes on arm of machine

There is another oil hole just out of frame which lubricates the main shaft as it leaves the head and is attached to the hand-wheel.  This machine had no oil holes on the bed but some machines do, so check yours and oil if need be.

Now turn the machine on its back so that you can see underneath.  Referring to the diagram below oil the machine, applying grease to the roller and its track (see close up below).  Use all oil holes but if there doesn't seem to be one just drip or spray oil into the join between two moving parts as much as possible.  The top left hand arrow in the picture which says 'grease' should actually say 'oil' instead.  Using steel wool and oil, you can clean all the rods, being sure to remove any rust and wiping the parts clean with a rag afterwards.

Underneath of machine showing oiling and greasing

Oil hole in shuttle mechanism

Showing where to grease roller for shuttle mechanism

Remove the back plate on the machine and thoroughly grease the cam and fork and the rocking mechanism, as indicated in the image below.

Showing greasing under back plate.

Now remove the face-plate, needle, foot and throat plate.  Take note of which way the needle was inserted and if in doubt about whether it is a standard size, hang on to it for later comparisons.  If the machine is still seized and with the needle down, removing the needle may be impossible, in which case the throatplate will not come off either.  However, if you have oiled the machine as above, some gentle force may help your cause.  Sometimes you will have to repeat oil them and leave them to sit for a few days before they will yield.

Shows screws to remove throatplate, needle and foot

Now turn your attention to under the faceplate (the metal cover that sits on your left if you are facing the machine).  Underneath you will have the needlebar, presser bar, take-up lever and other delights which won't concern us yet.  Clean the needle and presser bars well with oil and steel wool and then evenly oil so that they glide smoothly up and down.

Under the faceplate

Both the take-up lever (seen above) and the needle bar are moved up and down by a cam stud roller following a cam.  These rollers and cams need to be well greased so that the move freely without dragging.  The rollers are supposed to rotate as they travel around the cam so they do not drag an wear it.  This can be hard to test though, watching closely with a torch is your best bet.  Below are close-up images showing these rollers and their cams in relation to the surrounding parts and showing where to grease.

Take-up lever operation from under face-plate

Take-up lever roller and track from front

Roller for moving needlebar up and down from under face-plate

Now turn the machine upside down again and clean the arch of the shuttle's track well with steel wool and oil.  Once clean, smear a film of grease across it using your finger.  This is to lubricate the shuttle as it runs across.

Shuttle track, clean and grease.

Shows shuttle sitting on its track

 Now dismantle the tension assembly carefully.  Remove the thumbnut all the way and then carefully take the pieces off, laying them in order so that you know how to replace them.  Leave the take-up spring on the shaft and clean the threads with a soft wire brush and some oil.  Clean the tension discs well so that they don't snag thread and ensure the tension spring is put back on with the final loop facing downwards.

After removal of tension assembly

Parts of tension assembly in order of reassembly

Showing correct placement of tension spring

Now turn your attention to the shuttle.  You should remove the tension spring and clean it well with steel wool and oil and clean the shuttle thoroughly in the same way.  Tension on the thread is adjusted using the screw you remove to take out the spring.

Removing tension spring

Tension spring and screw, before cleaning

Showing lint under spring which will interfere with tension regulation

Once reassembled, grease flat edges of shuttle lightly.

Where to grease shuttle

Now you can thread the shuttle with a long bobbin.  Using two hands, hold the shuttle in one ( the left if you are right-handed) and the bobbin in the other, so that the bobbin thread is across the bobbin and the end is on the right, as below but I only had one hand spare!

Showing bobbin thread direction and cut in shuttle.

Now drop the bobbin into the shuttle, dragging the thread down the cut in the side until it reaches the end and moves up the other side.

Thread at end of cut

Now pull the thread to the left until it goes under the finger on the tension spring.

Showing thread under finger

Bring thread back to the right over the finger and your shuttle is ready to go into the machine.

Finished threading

To insert the shuttle into the machine, place it point first into the shuttle carrier and drop the other end gently guiding it to sit straight and evenly into it, as below:

Inserting the shuttle

Hopefully the above can serve as a starting point to anyone wishing to work on a vibrating shuttle sewing machine.  Any questions feel free to contact me and I will do my best to help.

A Vested Interest

The Vesta is finally finished.  It is nicely clean, although not perfect and it sews, which is good!  I do not have a leather belt to treadle it with but we fashioned a belt out of rope and it seems to work.  The stitch is decent and the machine even reverses!  Some more pictures from the process below.

The tension assembly in pieces before cleaning.

The tension assembly in pieces after cleaning.

The snake skin patterning was difficult to clean as I was paranoid about scratching the chrome.  I ended up coating them in oil and then carefully cleaning the grooves out with a machine needle, rather time consuming.

Back cover after cleaning.

Faceplate before cleaning.

When the back cover was removed, all the workings in that end of the machine could be seen, I could have spent forever watching them!

Under back cover.

Before I went to the extreme lengths of tidying off the Vesta's table I wanted to check the machine actually stitched, so here is a picture of it all threaded up and ready to go.  The thumbscrew holding the faceplate on is one borrowed from a tucking foot and the only one I could find that would thread into the required hole.

Not a very good photograph, I know!

The machine did indeed come with accessories, however I am not sure how many are original as there are no markings on any except for the ruffler which is labelled 'Singer' so is clearly not original!

Accessories and the piece of paper it came with.

I'm not sure what the piece at the top roght is off, I think maybe a ruffler again but I'm not sure, however the others are as follows:
Middle row (from L to R): Binding foot, two thumbscrews, the lower one is not original and does not fit the machine, the upper one is to secure the machine to the table and finally top foot is standard straight stitch foot and the bottom foot is a rolled hemmer.
Bottom row (from L to R): Hemming foot and Tucking foot

Next on the agenda is a Christmas shirt to wear on Sunday, I think I may be pushing it a little but who knows?

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.....!

Lemair 1781

I have had this machine sitting in the lounge waiting for me to have another look at it for a while.  Now that studies are finished for the year I decided to drag it out again.  It is made in Korea and extremely heavy.  Originally I brought it home because it needed a new pedal but then when I took it apart I realised that there was a problem with the bobbin winder.  The casting that has a groove cut into it for the spring to sit in is a trifle dodgy, as can be seen below.

This machine is, for the most part, well made but there are some hopeless blunders (cost cutting exercises?), obviously the casting on that piece for the bobbin winder is one, however there are two plastic pieces that I really don't like.  One is cracked and can be seen in the picture below, it is under the side cover, and the other is the cam follower on the rod that connects the top to the bottom of the machine, I'm sorry, I forgot to take a photo!

For some curious reason the inside of this machine is full of blue tinsel!  I have no idea what it was used for, sewing Christmas tree costumes or something??  Judging by the number of needle tips I also found, the machine didn't like it!  Another good thing about this machine is that it has metal cams and has one of my favourites, a side loading bobbin.  I would argue that a side loading bobbin gives greater precision for zig-zag stitching, however that is just a theory based on the fact that the bobbin moves with the needle and thus the hook always intercepts the needle at the same point in the rotation.

The tension assembly on this machine is woeful. There is one coarse spring inside and the discs have very poor surfaces. 

When actually stitching this machine is incredibly, beautifully quiet.  I love the stitch and it feels really lovely to use.  For $25 someone will have a bargain!  I wish I needed another sewing machine....

Tomorrow I'll see if I can post the manual for this.  I also had a real treasure waiting for me at work today which I'll share tomorrow.  Anyone who is obsessed with machines will love it!