What I've Been Doing...

...instead of knitting.

Yes, I'm afraid the obsession continues. This is my "new" Pfaff 230 from the 1950s. It is the forerunner of my Pfaff 360 from 1962, which I've shown here before. Here they are together:

They are very similar machines. They have almost all the same functions, except that the 230 is a flat bed machine, while the 360 has a free arm. The 230 has a more powerful motor and can run much faster. It sews beautifully, now that I've fully cleaned and oiled it, taken apart and cleaned the motor, and bought a new foot pedal and cords for it. I got this one for $25 off craigslist, complete with cabinet, accessories, and all sorts of sewing bits.

And this is another recent find--also $25 on craigslist. It is an Adler 187, which is another German machine, this one from somewhere between 1950 and 1952, which is the only time these machines were ever made. Apparently, Adler then switched to making only industrial machines. There are very few of these around. I have found exactly one online. I have read several opinions about these machines, though, claiming that they are even superior to the older Pfaffs that I love so much. Time will tell, I suppose.

This machine was in pretty rough shape. It had been stored in a damp shed for several years. It was in a cabinet that was cool-looking but very rickety--so rickety that when I tried to get it out of my car, it crumbled into a dozen pieces! Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to hang onto the piece holding the sewing machine. Dropping it would have been bad for both my foot and the machine. Once I extricated the machines from the remains of the cabinet, I carried it up to my workroom and started cleaning.

Every shiny metal bit was caked with rust. It was so bad that I bypassed my usual cleaning methods and sprayed the metal pieces with Lime Away. It worked like a charm. The rust just melted away. Here is a picture of the worst of the three bobbins before:

And after:


Unfortunately, the metal was pitted underneath the rust, and there's nothing I can do about that. I just wiped it with a little sewing machine oil and polished it up.

This is the only machine I have with the tensioning unit on the faceplate. I don't have a manual yet (and have been unsuccessful in locating one so far), so I'm not sure how to thread it.

If you look really closely, you can see that the labels on the feed dog lever (at the bottom in this pic), are in German: "nahen"--sew--for up, and "stopfen"--darn--for down. I love that.

Not sure whether I should admit this, actually, but these two bring the total number of sewing machines in my workroom to nine.

Maybe I should sew something.