That's Enough Glue

Within the Kenmore family of sewing machines you'll find a few different types of bobbins with their case and shuttle. I don't know much about the early ones with their sizes, but I will talk about the importance of clearance in the bobbin case. If you want to look up different bobbins this link is a google search for bobbin sizes. In general the sizes we see nowadays are A, L and M. A is also known as Class 15. This little guy is what has been on most of the machines I have owned for my life time. And it is the same size that is in the Kenmores I have been working on. Something that one may not know from their history with sewing machines is that the little slit in the side of the bobbin case is actually quite important when using a zig zag machine. The needle goes down into that slit when the lock stitch is in progress. In older straight stitch machines, this wasn't so much of a concern, and the needle could be set aside from the bobbin case. But in the vertical b...

Saline, Saline over the Seven C-Cams. Ahoy! These waters you tread are dangerous indeed. The sirens are a'calling, and you may find yourself lost before you see a shore again. We'll be a' talkin' about the Kenmore cams. /me clears throat For the Kenmore Experiment, I wanted to help set you all up with what you'll be seeing me work with that isn't really in many modern sewing machines. PATTERN CAMS! These little beauties are not really seen with modern machines any more for a number of reasons. One of which being that they just build them all in now for simple mechanical machines, or can program them into the onboard computer and never bother yourself with cams again. Pattern Cams are actually a fancy name for the mechanic that helps make your stitch shape. Sort of a mechanical instruction for your machine for where the needle is supposed to go, and how the machine should move the fabric. Mix of C-Cams and Monogram cams that I sold   To me...

In this adventure there are 9 machines that will be tested. An important thing to note about the models for Kenmores of this era is the context of the naming scheme. "XXX.MM(MM)Y" The XXX being the general design numbers such as 117, 158, or 148. These often correlate with the manufacturer of the machine and the region of sale. MM(MM) mean while is the model. I have seen model numbers that are from two digits to four digits. All the models I'll be writing on in this series are four digits. Model Number and Serial Plate The last number is the Y, and is always the Y no matter how many M's precede it. It is often casually implied as the manufacturing year, 0 being the first year of manufacture. From what I've actually seen, it's more like revision number just like in modern computing when they go from 2.0 to 2.1. A major revision has been made, but it isn't different enough to be a new machine. With this, sometimes multiple revisions can happen in ...