Needle Bar Reassembly

Below is a picture of all the parts I’ll need for today’s project – reassembly of the needle bar.

I needed to refer to my previous posts and Needle bar removal Part 1 and Needle bar removal Part 2 to refresh my memory and give me an idea of where to start since the Assembly Manual was a bit lacking.  The first step I took was to re-install the “bar hook”.  The tricky part here was knowing how tight to tighten the screw.  If you go too tight the bar won’t move.  I’m not sure, but I suspect it’s supposed to move because it has a spring attached. 

Next. I turned the wheel stub to bring the needle bar connecting stud to its lowest position. 

Then oiled needle bar and placed it in Mrs. Rusty with the flat part of the top of the bar (see photo below) toward the arm of the machine.  Inserted the set screw and tightened it.  The assembly manual states to adjust for correct height, but that can’t be done until the bobbin assembly is in place.

I then placed the thread guard into the clamp body. 

Then placed the clamp body onto end of needle bar. It will let you push it up less than an inch so you don’t have to worry about going too far up the bar.  The clamp position screw is attached last.

Last, the needle bar plug was replaced.  It didn’t slide in nicely, so I had to use my rubber mallet to gently coerce it into position.

I had a few parts left over, but those likely are part of the presser bar, which I’ll do next time.

Feed Lifting Rock Shaft (FLRS) Reassembly

Hello everyone.  I sincerely apologize for my overly extended absence.  I could go into the details as to why, but that would be boring.  Instead we’ll just jump right into the reassembly of Ms. Rusty!

We left off last time installing the Connecting Rods.  The next step I tackled was the Feed Lifting Rock Shaft, or FLRS as I affectionately call it.  The next two photos show all the pieces/parts needed to install the FLRS.

All the individual parts 

Parts laid out in approximately correct location when assembled. It took me a bit to figure this out as I’ve been away from Ms. Rusty for so long!

The first step is putting one half of the feed dog raising mechanism on the left end of the shaft as shown below – be sure to put it on facing the right way (screw toward the inside of the machine)

The mechanism at the right end of the FRLS (Feed Lifting Rock Shaft) is used to raise or lower the feed dogs.  The pictures below show the position of the second half (front/left half) )when the feed dogs are raised and lowered.  Honestly, I’m not sure which one is represents raised or lowered.  I could make an educated guess, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out after the feed dogs are installed.  The screws will also have to be adjusted a bit after the feed dogs are in to make sure they are at the correct height for sewing.

View from left 

View from right

At this point the rod is ready to put into the base of the machine. Lay the machine on its side with the bottom facing you and the balance wheel end to the right.  The FLRS attaches to the top legs in the base. Put the two “pointy” screws partially into the legs on the machine base on both the right and left side.  The photo below shows a “pointy” screw in the right leg of the base.

Place the FLRS bar between the screws and tighten a bit.  You don’t want the bar too tight, just enough to hold it, as you need some room so you can attach it to the connecting rod. Attach the end of the feed connecting rod (installed here) to the FLRS via the taper hole.  The connecting rod should be towards the balance wheel and the nut towards the bobbin area (see photo below). 

Tighten or adjust the end nuts and taper nuts as needed so when the balance wheel is turned by hand the connecting rod doesn’t bind or drag, nor have too much play.  It isn’t too hard to do this.  It’s pretty obvious that you need to move/adjust the FLRS one way or the other if you can’t even get the connecting rod to butt up against the taper hole.  This is what happened to me on my first try.  Once I had things lined up right, everything just slid into place.  After that, only minor adjustments were needed to make it rotate smoothly.  It seemed to me that if it didn’t feel/look right, it probably wasn’t right. 

Here is a photo of the bottom side of Ms. Rusty with the FLRS fully installed.

Connecting Rods Assembly–Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of the Connecting Rod Saga.  Fortunately, installation of the second connecting rod was much easier than the first one.  The photo below shows the connecting rod with the end cap connected and the screws attached. 

The end cap must be removed to put it onto the horizontal arm shaft.  At the top of the cap is an oil wick, which in Ms. Rusty’s case was all dried up and looked like a piece of lint stuck in the top hole.  I applied quite a bit of sewing machine oil to the wick to moisten it and “fluff” it up.  The photo below shows the cap as viewed from above so you can see the oil wick.

Connecting Rods Reassembly–Part 1

First of all, let me apologize for the long delay between posts.  Between work, making 3 baby quilts, and a much needed vacation, I haven’t had much time for blogging.  The next month should be a little better so I’m going to try to post at least once every week for the next 4 weeks.  Now, back to Ms. Rusty.

The Singer 201 has two connecting rods –  one with an end cap and one that is forked.  This post will cover the forked connecting rod and the next post will cover the other rod. 

Below is a photo of the parts used to reassemble the forked connecting rod.  The rod itself (top), the feed regulator (bottom), the slide block (small rectangle), the hinge screw and the hinge screw washer. 

Upright Arm Shaft Reassembly

Today’s adventure was pretty straight forward for a change.  I decided to install the upright arm shaft, which is the shaft with gears that connects the lower gear shaft with the upper gear shaft.  A picture is below and a link to the disassembly of this baby is here.

The upper gear is the smaller one, and that is the one that I took off to insert into the arm of the machine.  The photo below shows the “flat” of the shaft where one of the set screws of the gear should rest against when it is reassembled.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m lightly oiling all the parts with regular sewing machine oil before assembly.  This helps the parts slide together easier and adds a little protection from rust.

Here are photos of the bottom of Ms. Rusty and they show the “before” and “after” shots.  It’s easier to show pictures than try to describe where to insert the shaft.

 

Now here is a photo of the top end of the shaft, as seen through the arm side cover opening.

 

What this photo is intended to show is that it is not possible to attach the top gear to the shaft without first moving the gear on the horizontal arm shaft out of the way.  That is why I didn’t worry too much about exact placement when this gear was initially installed.  After the horizontal gear is pushed back a bit, then the upright gear can be put on.  This can be a bit awkward for one person to do since you have to push up on the shaft while aligning the gear over the hole, and then tightening the screw.  To solve this problem, I propped up the shaft at the bottom with a small box of toothpicks and then it went pretty smoothly.  An alternative would be to have a helper or a third hand, but I had neither at the time You can tell the gear is in proper position on the shaft when, using the words of the Singer Adjuster Manual, the end of the the shaft is approximately flush with the face of the gear.

The next step is to bring the gear of the horizontal arm shaft and put it in mesh with the gear of the upper arm shaft.  It helps to have a pair of bent nose pliers for this step to pull and hold the horizontal gear into place to tighten the set screws.  The photo below shows the completed assembly.

Then I rotated the shafts at the balance wheel hub to make sure everything was turning smoothly and nothing was binding.  The adjusters manual warns that the gears should not be pressed too tightly against the bushings as this could “retard the free rotation of the upright arm shaft”.

When I was sure everything was working the way it should be (at least as far as I could tell), I applied grease to the gears and did a few more rotations to work the grease into the gears.  I want to make sure those babies are ready for the big show when the time comes!

Next time I’ll tackle the connecting rods.  Oooooo – what fun!

Reassembly of Thread Take-up Lever

Today’s post cover’s the reinstallation of the Thread Take-up Lever Assembly and the Needle Bar Link.  These parts attach to the end of the horizontal arm shaft that we installed in the previous post.  Fortunately, these are pretty easy to put back on.
The thread take up lever goes on first.  A key land mark on this piece is the flat edge on the post for the set screw.

HAS Reassembly

The Horizontal Arm Shaft, or HAS as I like to call it, is the next part I put into Ms. Rusty. Ms. Rusty’s driveshaft has 5 pieces. There is a 6th piece, which is a bushing near the needle bar area, but I couldn’t manage to remove that during the disassembly process so it is still in it’s original place.
The 5 parts that were removed are shown in the next photo. The long bar at the bottom is the HAS and the four part at the top, from left to right are the stop motion flanged bushing, the feed cam & feed lifting eccentric, the bevel gear, and finally the needle bar crank.

Upper Bushing and Needle Bar Post Reassembly

Today I will show you how I returned the upper bushing for upright gear shaft and the needle bar post to their proper locations.  These were the last two mechanical parts to be removed from Ms. Rusty before she was cleaned and stripped many moons ago (click here for a flashback).
I started with the upper bushing for the upright gear shaft.  Notice that there is a mark at the top of the bushing that “points” toward the hole in the side of the bushing?  This hole will face toward the back of the machine when it is properly placed into position.  Also note the slightly flat side of the top of the bushing?  This will face the side where the set screw holds the bushing in place.

Touch-ups

This past week I removed all the plugs and tape from Ms. Rusty and was surprised how well they worked.  Not only did they (the plugs and tape) do a good job of preventing powder coating from going where it shouldn’t, but they were also very easy to remove.  Here is a photo of the interior of the needle area after all the plugs/tape/etc. have been removed:

However, there were a few areas that needed some touching up.  One area was the serial number plate.  I had forgotten to cover it with tape so it was completely covered with powder coating and clearcoat.  I tried using an razor knife to scrape it clean, but I ended up putting a gouge in Ms. Rusty’s new skin and I nearly cried.

Decals!!

Today is the day I describe how I applied decals to Ms. Rusty.  The decals I’m using are waterslide decals that I found for a Singer 301 (3/4 size bed) so they aren't quite long enough nor have enough corner decals for the bed of a 201. However, they have the same design and Ms. Rusty originally had and one sheet of decals is enough for two 3/4 size machines so I'll have enough extra decals to make them fit my machine.
One sheet of decals: 
The first step in the decal process is to cut out and trim all the decals.

Bubble Repair

As I mentioned in the previous post, the powder coating process was mostly successful.  The problem was that bubbles appeared on the bed surface. 

   

I discussed possible causes of the bubbles with my husband, who has much more experience in powder coating than I do.  He said it could be due to any number of reasons, including either porous metal or contaminants trapped in the metal.  The air or contaminants (such as oil) trapped in the metal would start to expand as the metal is heated in the oven at temperatures up to the 400°F that is required to liquefy and cure the powder coating.  The bubbles then form as the contaminants escape through the powder coating.  However, he points out that this is all speculation on his part and the true cause remains unknown.  All I know is that Ms. Rusty looks like she has a bad case of acne and I need to fix it!

Blasting and Coating

Now that Ms. Rusty is all plugged up and protected, I sent her into the blast cabinet.  Here are pictures of her viewed from the door of the blast cabinet and through the window.

At first I was a bit scared to start taking off her paint, wondering how hard it was going to be and having second thoughts about this whole crazy plan of powder coating her.  But I reminded myself that she REALLY needed a new coat of paint at the very minimum, and bead blasting her was going to be easier, and more thorough, than trying to use paint stripper.

Plugging Holes

The last step before removing all of Ms. Rusty’s paint by bead blasting is to protect threaded and machined areas.  I’m choosing to use heat resistant tape and silicone plugs so they can stay in place during the powder coating step, which requires Ms. Rusty to bake in an oven at high temps to cure.

The flat areas are best covered by the heat resistant tape, as shown in the photo below.

One particular area that was tough to cover was the exposed surface in the bobbin area.

To cover this I cut a piece of tape larger than the area to be covered and placed in over the hole.

Then using an Exacto knife, the excess tape is cut away

 

All other flat/rounded areas were covered in this way 

Plugging holes was relatively easy using the variety of plugs I recently purchased (see previous post).  I used the caps to fill in longer holes like the one shown here: 

However, some longer holes were an odd size and instead required the use of two plugs.  This next photo shows how one plug was the right size in diameter, but wasn’t long enough to completely fill the hole.

So I took two identical plugs and cut them in half so I had two shorter plugs of the same diameter.

The two shorter plugs covered both ends and protected the interior from bead blasting & coating. 

For added protection, I covered/plugged several of the interior holes. I’m not sure these will be actually exposed to sand blasting or powder, but I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Photo inside of arm:

For those of you interested, here are 12 photos of Ms. Rusty from multiple angles so you can see what holes were plugged and/or covered.

Top on my agenda for tomorrow – blast and coat Ms. Rusty!!