Needle Bar Removal–Part 2

In the last post the needle bar screw, needle bar plug, and presser lever were removed.   This time we’ll remove the actual needle bar – I can tell you can hardly wait! Ha Ha 

Before removing the needle bar I thought it might be a good idea to take pictures of the position of the various parts as the needle bar goes up and down.  Sounded good but this pesky little fork shaped part kept getting in the way, so I decided to remove it.  Isn’t there an old saying “when in doubt take it out”?

After reviewing the Adjusters Manual, I couldn’t find the official name for the fork shaped part so I’m calling it a “bar fork”.  (Perhaps there isn’t a name for this part in the adjuster’s manual because it isn’t supposed to be removed?)  it was pretty easy to take it out – 1 simple screw.  The first photo below shows the screw location and the second photo shows the part after removal.

    

With that part out of the way, it was much easier to take pictures of the needle bar in the various positions through the stitch cycle.  I’m hoping this will help me put it back together when the time comes.

Needle up, thread take up lever down:     

Needle down, thread take up lever at mid point:

Needle up, thread take up lever up:      

At this point it the time had come to take out the needle bar.  Theoretically it should have come out pretty easily, but as we’ve already learned, theory doesn’t work real well with Ms. Rusty.  So I had to tap out the needle bar (with a wooden dowel) just like the presser bar because it was glued in with rust and gunk.  It also became apparent why there is a hole where the needle bar plug is.  As you can see in this next photo, it wouldn’t be possible to remove the needle bar without this nifty little hole

Needle bar exiting needle bar hole:

Here’s the front-end of Ms. Rusty without the needle bar:

And here are some photos of all the parts that were removed during the presser bar and needle bar removal process.  It may just be me, but after all that work I expected to see a much bigger pile of parts laying there.  By the way, the presser bar is the longer of the two bars.

These parts (except for the oil wick) were then soaked in kerosene overnight to removed all the old grease and gunk.  They probably didn’t need to soak quite that long, but it doesn’t hurt them to stay in a bit longer. 

Then the parts were soaked in Evapo-Rust to eliminate any surface rust.  My intention was to soak them for just a few hours, but I forgot about them and they ended up soaking for almost 36 hours!  Not surprisingly, Some of the parts, especially the bars, were blackened with oxidation.  This isn’t unexpected when you leave the parts in too long since this is one of the warnings listed on the label.

It was fairly easy to remove the black stuff by very lightly sanding the surface of the parts with a fine-grit sand paper.

Then I treated the parts to a spa treatment by lightly rubbing them in sewing machine oil.

I then put the oil wick into the thumb screw and applied a liberal amount of oil to the wick.  I pulled it out temporarily after it was partially soaked to show you the difference between dry oil wick and oil filled wick.  The narrow light colored band on the left is the dry portion of the wick.

Then I placed the parts in a labeled zip lock bag so they are all ready for reassembly in the future.

Now what should I tear apart next?  Hmmmm……

Needle Bar Removal–Part 1

True to my word, today and tomorrow’s segment will be on how I removed the needle bar from Ms. Rusty. Notice I did NOT say this is a tutorial on the correct way to remove the needle bar.  The reason is because I don’t recommend doing things the way I did, but it seemed to work for Ms. Rusty.

The first step was to removed the needle clamp thumb screw & position screw, which allowed for the removal of the clamp and removed thread guard from the bottom of the needle bar.  Those are all the parts at the bottom of the bar on the right hand side.

My next step was to remove the screw holding the needle bar in place.  The only way to access it is through a hole on the back side of the arm.  In the photo below I tried (although perhaps failed) to show where this hole is by poking a pink pen through it.

At this point I needed to move the needle bar to the down position.  Surprisingly, since the presser bar was removed the needle bar moved quite freely. 

Presser Bar Removal

Today, boys and girls, we are going to remove the presser bar from Ms. Rusty.   What is the presser bar you ask?  Well, it’s the steel bar that attached to the presser foot of course!  The presser bar is the tall bar with the spring around it on the left in the photos below.

    

Here we go!  First step is to remove the screw in the presser bar guide bracket

Then it’s necessary to remove the presser regulating thumb screw.  Because the name of this part is so confusing, it may help to clarify that the function of this thumb screw is to regulate the pressure that the presser foot applies to the fabric.  (Can you tell I had a hard day at work today?).  The next two photos show the location of the presser regulating thumb screw and what the front end of Ms. Rusty looks like with out this important piece of hardware.