Reacquainting yourself with your machine Singer 20u & Stitch Lengths

 The machine I had been working with stopped forming stitches, so I moved the industrial machine over from storage.  This was no easy task, too heavy to move as is, it needed to be taken apart.  Once  in place, I checked my little featherweight, and the issue was a piece of thread that had made it's way behind the bobbin.  It's working again, so I can start again tomorrow. I swear that machine is a difficult woman, I'm renaming her Scarlet. In the meantime, the Singer needs to be oiled and cleaned.

I've struggled with this machine, it's an industrial, and it's ugly.  This is a machine that my mother purchased over 40 years ago, it's had a lot of use.  She chose it because the Pfaff  sewing machine had started acting up.  So much for German precision, the timing belts on that vintage machine were not standardized, so finding the exact belt it needed became difficult over time.  It was my machine in college, but it was eventually sold on ebay after it's last service.

Mom selected this machine because she was looking for consistent, well formed stitches.  This has been in storage for the last 5 years, and after a good cleaning and oiling (to show it I still love it), it does not disappoint. This machine is simple, it has a straight stitch, zig zag, and reverse.  In the booklet, they give you instructions for embroidery, which I have never tried. Mechanically, it is easy to service, it has no belts (except for the handwheel), it is gear driven.

Here is the first stitch sample, for the straight stitch. I'm pleased with the stitch formation, and now just checking to see if the stitches per inch are correct.

The number settings on this machine range from 1 to 5, they say that this represents the stitch length in millimeters. I'm sure there are wonderful reasons for this, one being that measuring in millimeters is more precise than measuring in inches.  What we really want to know is what are the stitches per inch.

Many times, when instructors are recommending stitch lengths, they give you a recommended setting but, then follow up with "but check with your machine settings".  Why?  A setting of 1 should be the same across all settings.  I'm actually pretty shocked that the test between Singer 20u, vs Bernina Artista 730 gave a different result.

The Bernina, is calibrated more closely to the mm stitch length.  In order to compensate for this my Singer 20u settings would need to be set to compensate as follows.

Moving onto non precise mechanisms for setting stitch length, these would almost have to be verified each time you change the stitch length.  Yikes!!