Pop Quiz #471 pt.2

5

The answer to the question posed in Pop Quiz 471 is:

A chain stitch machine.

[amended]
Vesta says it’s a lockstitch. I have no idea how I got chainstitch in my brain.

Get New Posts by Email

by Kathleen Fasanella

Kathleen started production patternmaking in 1981. Starting in 1993, she began providing consulting and engineering services to manufacturers, small companies, and startups with an emphasis on developing owner-operator domestic cut-and-sew operations. In 2015 she opened a 5,000 sqft. fully equipped sewing factory: The Sewing Factory School. Kathleen is the author of The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing, the most highly rated book of any topic in the garment industry. She's been mentioned numerous times in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, National Public Radio, Boston Globe, LA Times, Vogue, French Vogue and has at least 15 Project Runway alums at last count. Kathleen writes nearly all of the articles on Fashion-Incubator.com and hosts its forum, the largest private online community for apparel manufacturers on the web.

5 comments

  2. Todd Hudson says:

    The Singer 400w series looks just like this (maybe this used to be one?) and is a lockstitch machine that can be converted to a 2 thread chainstitch machine. Man-sew (http://www.mansew.com/apchain.htm) can do conversions. I don’t know how the conversion works but they have a picture (http://www.mansew.com/style86l.jpg) on their site of the conversion done to a similar Singer machine.

    Even as a lockstitch machine, the 400w is weird because it’s so small and the bobbin is loaded backwards and the hand wheel runs backwards compared to newer single needles. I have a 400w1 lockstitch at home that was my first industrial. It’s nice for light to medium work.

  3. Vesta says:

    Nope. This is a lockstitch. I think Todd must have the best answer to the puzzle. This is a Singer 400w21. We love it, now that the kinks are worked out, except for the inability to reverse. I just bought a Juki 555 something-er-other, with the thread cutter and auto backtack, to replace this as our everyday machine. But I heart this machine, anyway.

  5. Rusty says:

    Judy,

    Maybe you have figured out how to thread your machine by now. If not, maybe this will help.

    I was recently given the same machine. I found the manual for it on-line. You can save it in pdf format and there is no cost for this. Here’s the link: http://parts.singerco.com/IPinstManuals/400W21_22_23_24_28_29_33.pdf

    This manual has instructions for threading the machine. The instructions are a bit terse and the pictures are just what you would expect back in the day. But it might help.

    My machine came with only one bobbin. I’m still looking for a parts list that will tell me which bobbin this machine uses. If you know this information, please reply.

    Rusty

Leave a Reply

You have to agree to the comment policy.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.