Pink Atlas: a closer look

I did a gentle surface clean last night, and took a vacuum to the case this morning and got rid of all the lint, dust, and dirt that had accumulated in the case's nooks and crannies.

Then I removed the needle plate, under which I found where the bulk of the lint had been collecting. That's what I expect to see in old machines!

The bobbin hook and race was taken apart so I could oil behind and around it. Surprise--more crap!

All moving parts I could find (underneath, behind the front "door" that contains the light bulb, and behind the back panel) got a drop of oil. My final task before putting Pink on the sewing table was to transfer the still-strong bobbin thread from the existing, rusty bobbin to a new one.

Halfway through the rewinding, the thread ended and I feared I had somehow messed something up and snapped it. Turns out, not so. I wonder if people still load multiple colors on their bobbins these days? (And I further wonder how many more colors are beneath the navy thread.)(8 May edit: one more color, in which the final few inches of the navy was tangled, causing the top thread to snap as I was sewing. At least it's nearly empty now.)

 

I loaded the rusty bobbin on the machine; when it's empty I'll see if some gentle rubbing with 0000 steel wool will remove the rust satisfactorily. Some of the Class 15 bobbins I have on hand are fractionally narrower than the original, almost imperceptibly so, just enough to make the bobbin bind on the winder and prevent everything from turning. This older one may be hard to replace!

Once Pink was on the sewing table and threaded up, I grabbed some fabric and started in to adjust tensions. However, within seconds of stepping on the foot pedal a most alarming screech started in, emanating from beneath the machine. Something metal was binding up and stopping the smooth turning of the bobbin mechanism. I propped the machine open and ran her (without the hook & race assembly) so I could see the action and hear more precisely where that awful noise was coming from. It didn't take long, and several more drops of oil here . . .

. . . had her purring quietly in no time.

I've got an accurate 1/4" seam marked on the bed (place a strip of clear tape on the bed, mark the tape with a Sharpie, then cover the line with another strip of tape so it doesn't rub away) and am looking forward to starting my next (commissioned!) project soon. At the moment I'm unable to because there's so much stuff stacked on my cutting table. 

Why? Well, I'd cleared the area for my new sit-down mid-arm (a Juki this time--the Viking turned out to be beyond help [the sensors being the least of its problems]) and in preparation for that, all the crap that had accumulated on the old table got dumped on any and every available surface.

I'd be assembling the Juki's table right now if it weren't for one slight problem which became apparent almost immediately.

There are no legs! (The thin white pieces are spacers that lift the cut-out surface flush with the machine bed.) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of the six boxes the shop owner loaded into my car, one of them contained an extension to the main table (very pricey, and something I neither wanted nor paid for).

Ruh-roh! To make matters more chaotic, there's a quilt show this weekend at which he's a vendor, so it'll likely be another week before all this (and the aftermath of selling wares at a quilt show) is sorted out. In the meantime I've texted pictures of what I've got and what I still need (he suggested I take LOTS of photos of an assembled table in the store so I'd have something to reference when I put mine together [my choice to do that], and I'm glad he did!)

Nothing to do now I guess but relax for the rest of the day in my comfy recliner. My girl cat never has a problem with that solution!