Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Good Old Non-Digital Non-Electronic Machinery

For some enigmatic reason blogger is not showing the image I'm posting, and I can't figure out how to make it work other than shutting everything down and trying again later.  What perfect timing for a computer problem!  I've just spent a couple of hours tuning up Maya's old Davis treadle sewing machine, and how nice it is to fiddle around with actual greasy metal objects.  The main problem we've been having is that the upper thread tension is way too strong no matter what we do.  So today I took apart the thread tension disk assembly and cleaned it, hoping it was just jamming up from lint or old thread fragments.  No such luck.  It seemed to be unable to loosen, resulting in loops on the lower thread and a straight line on the upper thread.  I began to see that the pressure of the spring was really high, and I wondered if I still had the spring from the tension disk assembly that had come on the machine but which I had replaced because the original one was missing a disk.  Sure enough, there it was in the back of one of the drawers, and it was a smaller spring, with only 4 coils as opposed to the six on the new one.  I took out the big spring and popped in the original one, and that fixed the problem.  Now the tension disk assembly works perfectly, and I was able to adjust it easily.  Meanwhile, I still can't see the image on my blogger new-post page.

Update:  the image eventually showed up, but it was oddly elongated.  I removed it and replaced it.  Have no idea what was wrong.  Much prefer fixing the sewing machine.

2 comments:

  1. What a relief to finally determine the issues you were having with the sewing machine. Great sketches too. :)

    Blogger can be so temperamental at times but it usually sorts itself out again, however, not until it has caused more than a little angst for its users.

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  2. My post disappeared, so here it is again! Glad you got that figured out! I still haven't found out what those other parts were! :) And that looks like one great dinner! And a bunch of great sketches! (BTW I could see the dinner in my email update, but not here on blogspot.) Ciao!

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