This is Kathy's new sister, Liz. Who was a gorgeous movie star in the 1950's with shiny black hair and violet blue eyes (like the shiny black finish and blue badge on this gorgeous machine)? Yep... :)
Liz and Kathy refused to make it easy for me to choose.
Liz: A drop dead gorgeous machine who makes a perfect, beautiful stitch. I plowed her through a swatch of 16 layers and the stitch was absolutely flawless. But she sews much more slowly than Kathy. The first side by side test I did, she was 25% slower. Then I tinkered, adjusted and re-oiled BOTH machines, ran the test again, and she was 40% slower! But I'm not sure if the one speeded up or the other slowed down. ????
Kathy: quite a lovely machine in her own right, but can't hold a candle to the dazzling Liz. Should I rename her Debbie? (Sorry, bad joke!) The choice at this point would be fairly easy - all other things being equal - except that Kathy is a BEAST of a machine next to Liz. (To carry the bad joke further, who has their money on Debbie Reynolds in a cat fight between those two?) And honestly, If I had only Liz and didn't run her next to Kathy, I'm not sure I ever would have known there was an issue.
Maybe there is still hope for Liz to reach her full potential. Again my disclaimer: I am not an expert at SM repair, not even close. I am an amateur hobbiest tinkering around and figuring it out as I go. (That is half the fun!) So in the pursuit of figuring out the discrepancy, I filmed the motors running, just trying to visualize what could be the difference - is it in the motor itself, or is there some lack of transfer of the full power of the motor to the machine? (I have inspected, tweaked and adjusted everything I know!)
This is the 1951 motor running without the belt:
Here is the same motor (1951) running with the belt:
This is the 1956 motor running with the belt:
Not sure if this will clarify the problem in any way, but I'm working on it!
Meanwhile, I guess Liz can snuggle in for the winter, at least. (Market on eBay is sluggish for FW's right now anyway. Oh well!) And maybe if a "certain someone" ..... *ahem* DH .... were to "forget" that I promised to sell this machine then maybe she can stow away a little longer. :)
I'm no expert either, but why not switch the motors between the two machines and see if the slowness follows the motor. If it does, put the better motor on the pretty one and see how you like it.
ReplyDeleteThese things take up less than 1 cubic foot when stored. I'll BET you can find room for both somewhere!
Thank you for the suggestion - and yes I have thought about switching the motors. But at the end of the day, I just can't face that chore and I don't want to risking banging up the beautiful finish on these machines (put a screwdriver in my hand and it immediately DIVES for the nearest flawless surface!) I guess I'll just accept them as they are...and make room for the newcomer to stick around for a while. ;)
ReplyDeleteI would suggest you try loosening the belt a bit. MY FW ran sluggishly until I loosened the belt and it was much much better.
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