How To Quickly Judge Condition Of A Used Knitting Machine - Brother, Studio, Singer, Silver Reed
Let’s look at three basic ways of judging the quality of a used knitting machine, beyond an inventory of missing parts.
1. Slide the carriage off the needle bed and look at the underside.
Is it simply dirty from old oil or is it loaded with gooey lint? It takes more than a few sweaters to clog up a carriage. It is fairly easy to clean out.
2. Sight down the gate posts. Are they all in a line or are some bent? They can usually be bent back to their original positions.
3. Push all the needles forward as far as they will go and run your hand slowly down the needle bed.
Is it smooth or do you feel sharp metal dings? The latter indicates that the carriage has jammed the needle butts into the sides of their slots.
You can remove the needles and take a metal file and sand the burrs down. If the metal slots are visibly badly indented, the machine may catch a needle in the indent with every pass.
There is no recovery from this level of damage. In fairness, I have never found a machine with this problem. Metal burrs yes, significant indentation, no.
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1 comment
Whilst this will give an indication of damage due to being badly used or overused (and is a very helpful list of things to look for), twice this year I have had problems with carriages where the sub drum has ceased onto the post that carries it and the carriage cannot be moved as a result. In both instances the machines were stored for long periods and had not been used. The oil had set as a tough brown stain that wasn’t moving. There were many hours spent removing these subdrums and replacing them bask once the old oil had been removed.
The lesson to be learned from this is that we should try to remove all oil from our machines before storing them. Soaking in an alcohol / spirit (in Australia we call it metholated spirits) can be helpful. If there are any doubts about whether the oli will gum up the wokrs, get the machineout on a regular basis and use it. Even if you are using waste wool for a few rows, it iwll help keep thigs moving. Better to do this than come back five years from now and have a carriage that is frozen. It is very hard to get off the rail once the drum is ceased to the post.
Side racks perish too, and these should looked at when the spongebars are renewed. They are the hard rubber parts behind the rail at each end. They are corrugated and allow a smooth transition from carriage not on the rail, to carriage on the rail. Without them, the carriage with jerk into the notches at the ends and the plastic parts at the bottom of the drum can be damaged..
Great blog, I love my machines, all eight of them, but I have seen a Passap for sale….and when looking for some information on the machines, I came across your site.
What would you say is better than Singer in a passap machine?
REgards
Elizabeth
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