I was looking at one of DH's store-bought shirts this mirning, and I thought "Well, I could do this better with a regular machine. The stitching was really crooked! And he doesn't trust me to sew for him? HA,
% threads can also give you a 'safety' seam line
Thanks for the info - I'm saving these to re-read a few times.
A
I understood that the three manufacturers were Asin Seki (a Toyota group company), Juki and Babylock. Various brands and companies own patents on various bits, but the three manufacturers have licences to produce machines for them. Each brand/company specifies what they want, puts it out to tender, and buys in from the company who offer what the brand considers best fits their market. Thus you only see the free arm on the Huskylocks because they tend to be expensive to produce, and other brands cannot see their customers wanting them enough to pay that sort of price for them... You only see that marvelous totally opening front on Frister & Rossman, because they own the patent and won't let it out to other brands... Same with the air jet threading...
This is why, even though all the machines are made in the same three factories, and many (especially in the lower price brackets) share component parts, you never see all the fantastic features you REALLY like on the same machine!
The Toyota brand machines and the Huskylocks are made by the same folk, share a sturdiness and general reliability, but no component parts are the same! AAARRGGHH! Best thing to do is just go round and TRY as many as you can within your price bracket, and see which does the most of what you really want. I came to the conclusion that the air jet threading was for wimps ( ;P ), and I much preferred the free arm, as I could learn to thread a serger very quickly, but there were always going to be places where the free arm would make life so much easier it was worth the extra dosh! I'd dearly love that Frister & Rossman fold back opening: having had one to borrow for a week, I can tell you that it makes cleaning and oiling a breeze!
What I needed in a serger was:
Relative ease of threading
4 threads good rolled hems with easy change-over easy cleaning Something that would slide through 3 layers of Polartec 300 as easily as silk, and would roll a silk chiffon hem with the same panache would withstand the high volume I doIt came down to two: the Bernina and the Huskylock. Huskylock won on the free arm: the Bernie was the same price without it! The only advantage the bernie had over the Huskylock was that it was quieter!
Now, I have had a few problems with my Huskylock getting stiff on me this last year... After some debate and experimentation, Wilf, my sewing machine wizard, has come to the conclusion that, because I use it more than your average domestic user (who is surprised to hear they? No-one? ;D ), and tend to do long runs on awkward fabrics at high speed, I need to:
1 Clean and oil every couple of days/end of every project, whichever comes first 2 Use industrial machine oil, which, being designed for faster machines, is a little more viscous and won't be soaked up and used up quite so quickly as regular sewing machine oil (which is just fine for 90% of domestic users, and all hand crank and treadle machines)If, after a few weeks of this, I still have problems, we are going to Have Words With Husqvarna to see what they recommend...
I am on the cusp of needing commercial machines, but really do not have either the room for them or the right setting, as they are noisy, so not what I want in an upstairs bedroom in a terraced house!
My very strong recommendation would be to take all the different types of fabric you sew regularly with you, test all the functions you want to use on these fabrics (but remember, some things are impossible, like button holes, and rolled hems on Polartec 300!), and see on which machine you can do what you want to most easily: aim for that one! It might be a second hand Toyota, it might be a Babylock Evolve... In which case, Start Saving NOW!
And have fun trying!
Asin Seiki is one, Hosei is the high end producer and does the computerized ones like the Pfaff, Bernina Elna and I believe one BabyLock. Juki farms theirs out also but pretty well sticks to the beehive knob configurations. Singer has owned the patent for the free arm for a long time. Machines with the bulging tension dial config and or free arm is Singer produced from extremely low cost models to expensive ones. The Pfaff 756 was one of the best sellers that Pfaff had and is identical to the less costly Singers. The company name may have changed due to the many problems with Semi Tech Global, and at one time Juki was looking at purchasing the factories so that my have happened but it is still Singer and a lot of the parts are interchangeable amongst various brands. Singer does a lot of the mid and lower priced sergers and they are very good machines. Lay in threading is usually Hosei and I think one of the best. A typical Hosei machine is the Pfaff 4872 which HV has never been able to improve yet. The TOL HVs are Hosei produced machines. I recently ordered a foot for a lady with Huskylock 901 and it is a Singer foot.
What I am trying to say with all of this is that it is not a product where brand loyalty is important. Get the features you want and think you will use. As the machines are very similar, their price and features become the most important considerations. Also dealer support with classes and instruction. If you can get the exact same machine for $400 less because it does not say Huskylock or whatever then do it. A good place to compare is
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