Urgent advice requested - new serger purchase!

I didn't know which one to buy my wife, so I bought five of the things! Each time, it was one that was more expensive. (They were secondhand.) I didn't a LOT of research though. I'm also a qualified electronic technician... So two things:

1. If I had the choice between an electronic machine, or a fully mechanical machine - I'd pick the mechanical one. Simply because there are far less qualified people able to "fix" the electronic side of things. Nowdays, they just replace an entire circuit board instead of replacing a 75 cent transistor, two 5 cents resistors and three 40 cent electrolytic capacitors. This is only my biased opinion of course. But I have found that in Australia there are far fewer electronic-capable repair guys, whereas there are a lot of mechanical repair guys. Many of these are retiring and working from home for old customers, instead of retraining. This also means they can't pass on their skills to others coming in (if there were any - aparently there's very few).
2. Don't skimp - buy the best you can afford. Through my research I discovered one (general) fact. The more expensive the machine, the more features it had. For instance - the twin-row, straight, double stitching on the outer cuff of t-shirt sleeves (with the overlock stitch underneath) - the more expensive machines do this in one go. (It's called a saftey stitch.) Many machines don't have this stitch. Another stitch that even fewer machines have is called a chain stitch. It's for "butting" two pieces of material together - like when they lock together wetsuit material. (Most 5-thread machines have one or both of these stitches.)

What machines did I buy her? Three Janomes, one Pfaff and one Bernina. They all seem to be excellent machines. The Janomes seem to have fewer features overall. We did spend quite some time looking at a Babylock. Had I not found a top of the line Bernina secondhand & cheap, the Babylock Evolve was the one I was aiming to buy her. Husqvarna (Viking in the USA, I think) are also excellent, but I tend to steer clear of all equipment with those terrible push-pad buttons.

Hope this helps some...

Allan.

Well, I bought my first ever serger at the end of August, and I got a Husqvarna Huskylock 910, having tried a Janoma and the HV. I can't comment about Babylock's - didn't try any.

I was impressed with its solidity and ease of use. I'd never used one before and was wary of the complicated looking threading arrangement - but watched the video, read the manual, and I've been serging ever since! Admittadly I've only done wovens so far, but thats because I had a stash backlog of new blouses, skirts and trousers to make! (And nothing to wear! The old sewing machine had been going from bad to worse and making sewing life a misery - hence the stash backlog). I'm about 1/2 way through the stash back log, and have some cheap T-shirt material and fleece to try - maybe with the holidays here, I'll give the stretch material and differntial feed a whirl!

The HV 910 is £599, but they make the 905 at £449 which is identical minus the display screen. With hindsight, I don't think the screen is necessary, although it is useful, but a 905 would have been fine. Check out

They are the only people with HV prices published on line, and pretty helpful as well when I emailed them with a couple of queries.

I didn't buy from them in the end, as I would have had to have shipped my machine for warranty work. The warranty is with your local selling dealer

*unless* you move across the country. I have details from HV about this, as I checked it out with them. I bought from my local dealer, and managed to bargin in a couple of accessories to sweeten the deal.

HV make a 5 thread overlocker for £899 (the 936) if you think you want to go that far! (I think I may be beginning to lust after it after only 3 and a bit months of serger ownership!)

HTH,

Sarah