Nos. 1-4 Glass Presser Feet

#3207

I am about to make up a set of CAD drawings for the glass presser foot of my no.3.? I notice that the needle hole in it is offset, i.e., it does not lie on the lateral center line of the insert. Rather, it is closer to the far edge. Yet I see in some images of other nos.1-3 that the needle hole appears to be centered.? Am I correct on this?? Did the location of the needle hole, and therefore I presume the needle itself, change over time?? Do we have any information as to when that change took place?? Thanks for any help.

Carl

William L Vanderburg

#3208

Mine is centered

Show quoted text

On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 11:45 AM Carl <rcarl.moy@...> wrote:

I am about to make up a set of CAD drawings for the glass presser foot of my no.3.? I notice that the needle hole in it is offset, i.e., it does not lie on the lateral center line of the insert. Rather, it is closer to the far edge. Yet I see in some images of other nos.1-3 that the needle hole appears to be centered.? Am I correct on this?? Did the location of the needle hole, and therefore I presume the needle itself, change over time?? Do we have any information as to when that change took place?? Thanks for any help.

Carl

#3209

There were both offset & centered. My 1860 #1 is offset.? To the best of my memory an 1872 #3 is centered. The needle itself did not change, there was only the one needle offered for all the curved needle machines. Id did of course come in various sizes & likely some different point configurations, but they all had the same radius to the curve & were interchangeable on any of the machines.?

I have not really checked to see just what change was made to ring the needle hole to the center, perhaps it was all in the throat/needle plate.

Miller/TN

On Wednesday, February 28, 2018 3:47 PM, William L Vanderburg <Army30th@...> wrote:

Mine is centered

Show quoted text

On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 11:45 AM Carl <rcarl.moy@...> wrote:

I am about to make up a set of CAD drawings for the glass presser foot of my no.3.? I notice that the needle hole in it is offset, i.e., it does not lie on the lateral center line of the insert. Rather, it is closer to the far edge. Yet I see in some images of other nos.1-3 that the needle hole appears to be centered.? Am I correct on this?? Did the location of the needle hole, and therefore I presume the needle itself, change over time?? Do we have any information as to when that change took place?? Thanks for any help.

Carl

#3210

Thanks you guys for getting back to me.? I suspect there is something fairly complicated going on here.? I have two machines that I think are both no.3s: a first that I found in an antique store in rural IL, about 1873 as I recall (I don't have the serial no. handy right now); and a second, bought for parts, serial no. 651,408.? I have removed and cleaned up the presser-and-piston (part 24) from each.? They are not the same.? The piston portions are identical, but on the first machine, the presser foot extends downward 0.525", the total length of the foot is 1.425", and the interior width of the glass opening is 0.420".? On serial no. 651,408, the dimensions are 0.450", 1.230", and 0.420", respectively.? So the parts are clearly not interchangeable, even though it looks like the same glass insert would fit into each.? And it seems that each would require its own, different glass insert - at least each with the needle hole drilled in a different place.?

As additional observations, the two pressers appear to have close to the same distal (toward the back of the machine) offset from the center line of the piston, though in the one from the first machine it may be a bit larger. They seem to have identical patent markings stamped into them.? The difference you can see with the naked eye most quickly is that the hole-and-slot for the insert-removing tool is much longer on the part from the first machine than the one from serial no. 651,408.? The total length is 0.210" on the first part, but only 0.110" on the second - on the second part the length of the slot is just about equal to the diameter of the hole, but on the other it is clearly longer.

I am wondering if these differences are changes in the factory design over time, or whether they may reflect that some W&W curved needle machines on sale on sale at the same time were somewhat more robust than others, as is sometimes asserted.

Carl

#3211

Carl;

I have simply not measured all those dimensions on mine s cannot say what they are. If this link works you might find this "Ladies Almanac" interesting, published 1867 & includes catalog listings.

?Note the models #'s are related to the machine's finish, not the actual configuration.? A #4 is lsted as for "Heavy Duty Use Only". I have as yet to determine exactly what this #4 model is. I am familiar with; Low Wide Bed; Low Narrow Bed & High Bed but ll seem to be for essentially the same Duty of use.?

The later Singer 1W1, which was the High Bed machine, was listed for light weight articles, but capable of up to 1600 stitches per minute. I simply?cannot imagine that vibrating needle arm going that fast.

There is a 1908 Singer/Bridgeport catalog which is also interesting here;

Miller/TN

On Wednesday, February 28, 2018 5:48 PM, Carl <rcarl.moy@...> wrote:

Thanks you guys for getting back to me.? I suspect there is something fairly complicated going on here.? I have two machines that I think are both no.3s: a first that I found in an antique store in rural IL, about 1873 as I recall (I don't have the serial no. handy right now); and a second, bought for parts, serial no. 651,408.? I have removed and cleaned up the presser-and-piston (part 24) from each.? They are not the same.? The piston portions are identical, but on the first machine, the presser foot extends downward 0.525", the total length of the foot is 1.425", and the interior width of the glass opening is 0.420".? On serial no. 651,408, the dimensions are 0.450", 1.230", and 0.420", respectively.? So the parts are clearly not interchangeable, even though it looks like the same glass insert would fit into each.? And it seems that each would require its own, different glass insert - at least each with the needle hole drilled in a different place.?

As additional observations, the two pressers appear to have close to the same distal (toward the back of the machine) offset from the center line of the piston, though in the one from the first machine it may be a bit larger. They seem to have identical patent markings stamped into them.? The difference you can see with the naked eye most quickly is that the hole-and-slot for the insert-removing tool is much longer on the part from the first machine than the one from serial no. 651,408.? The total length is 0.210" on the first part, but only 0.110" on the second - on the second part the length of the slot is just about equal to the diameter of the hole, but on the other it is clearly longer.

I am wondering if these differences are changes in the factory design over time, or whether they may reflect that some W&W curved needle machines on sale on sale at the same time were somewhat more robust than others, as is sometimes asserted.

Carl

#3212

Miller:

Thanks for these, they were quite interesting.

I think I have worked out how the glass-insert presser feet changed over time.? It looks like there were two configurations, a first that used a longer, heavier presser foot, with glass inserts that have the needle hole offset, and a second, shorter, lighter presser foot that used glass inserts with the holes centered.?

The two presser feet are specific to the their own frogs (part 17) - the side projections on the earlier presser foot are thicker and do not fit into the frog from the later machine.? Also, there appears to be quite a bit of changed geometry going on in the later machines overall - when I install the earlier (frog)-(presser foot)-(insert) assembly onto the?later machine, the needle hole lines up about 2-3 mm too close to the near side of the machine, exactly the opposite of what one would expect from the offset needle hole in the insert.? So at least some of the parts in the rest of the later machine must also be somewhat different from those of the earlier one.

In respect of the glass, inserts, this means that there probably were at least eight (8) different inserts that were used over time in the nos. 1-3 machines: 4 in the earlier version, and 4 in the later.

I have put together the beginnings of a spreadsheet that sets out the nos. 1-3 machines whose specifics I have been able to identify.? All the machines from serial nos. 195,634 to 438,664 use the longer foot and offset glass, while all the machines from 651,408 onward use the shorter foot and centered glass.? So it seems this was part of a larger set of design changes to the nos. 1-3 configuration that occurred about 5xx,xxx, and which is not reflected in the available parts listings.

Carl

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Nos. 1-4 Glass Presser Feet