Baby Lock BL5380E overlocking machine

Morse 4400 Fotomatic IV sewing machine

New Home Memory Craft 7000 sewing machine

No entry last week, as I was trying to catch up on adding some text to some older posts. There were more than I thought, so I'm not completely done yet.

On to this week's piece of junk. I'll keep it relatively brief, since I've covered this model before. Though, somewhat ironically, I took more pictures this time than of the first one.


This specimen is more complete than the other one I took apart. It still has all of its outer housing parts. It doesn't really matter to me, though, since I can't use any of them.


This time, I remembered the less-than-obvious screw that keeps the back plate in place.



A couple of shots of the inner workings, which I didn't bother with last time, for whatever reason. Between this write-up and the last one, I guess I have a respectable entry.


Basically the same parts assortment as last time. It's nice to have multiples of certain parts though.

Singer Quantum sewing machine

This specimen is as good an example as any of the crapshoot nature of sewing machines. On the one hand, it's relatively new, so there might now be so many mechanical bits to salvage, but on the other hand, a lot of whatever parts that are inside are plastic and thus less of a pain on average to remove. So, going into this, I didn't have too many expectations one way or the other.


Like I said, it's a fairly new sewing machine, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out it was still available at retailers. It also appears to be a low-end model, to make an uninformed snap judgment, and was thus probably cheaper to replace than to fix.

One other thing of note is the design of the little slider things on the setting levers. As far as I can remember, I don't have anything else of a similar shape in my parts collection. And knowing how I think, they'll likely sit unused for a very long time for fear of messing up the only ones of those I have.


Yet another free spool of thread. And this time it's actually in a color I can possible use, you know, if I ever figure out how to sew.


I kept the whole thing. One day, I'll probably get tired of oddly shaped plastic boxes, but that day hasn't come yet.


Fairly clean interior for a new sewing machine.


Note the exposed ends of those wires. They were originally hooked into a connector. I always try to pull those kind of circuit board connectors that plug into the little pins, but they rarely come off cleanly. This sewing machine, however managed to yield several of them with little effort.


Not an impressive haul in number of parts, but some of what I got are somewhat unusual.

New Home Memory Craft 5000

If it wasn't for the fact that I probably had nothing better to do the night I picked this machine up, it really wouldn't have been worth it. I mean, look at it.


For the longest time, I thought this picture was leftover from a set that I didn't completely transfer to another folder. It was only today that I remembered that this was, in fact, the way I found it. I guess there were a lot of salvageable parts on it.



Fortunately, they left the label with the manufacturer and model number on it, which I assume translates to Memory Craft 5000. Otherwise, I'd have had to just label this one 'manufacturer unknown.' Incidentally, I've now taken apart 5000, 6000, 7000, and 8000 series Memory Craft sewing machines.



Not much in the way of parts. You can understand why I didn't bother to take pictures of any disassembly.

Singer model 6235 sewing machine

It's been two weeks, with winter vacation and all, since I've written about garbage. I don't want to sprain any brain cells, so I'm going to do a fairly easy write-up this week. That means, you guessed it, it's time for another sewing machine that wouldn't come apart.



Today's specimen is a Singer, though I can't say for sure the vintage. If I had to guess, I'd say some time in the 80s. While I haven't taken this specific model apart before, I know I've scrapped some other Singers of the era because I have some of those silver sliders.



Pop off the slider tips, open the hood, and stare at all those parts that aren't going to come out. But that's OK, I've come to accept the crap shoot aspect of taking sewing machines apart. Might as well accept it, because I doubt it's changing any time in the near future.



Not many parts out of this one. Mostly just surface parts.

Pfaff 1222 sewing machine

I found this Pfaff on the same night as the Hobbymatic I wrote about a few entries ago. Haven't seen any before or since, though.



This was a fairly solidly constructed machine. Other than the unusual placement of the controls, this is a fairly standard (and sort of boring) sewing machine.



Close-up of the control buttons. The mechanism takes up most of the length of the main body.



I was surprised that the control mechanism came out completely and so cleanly. In addition to the buttons, I pulled several metal parts that sort of look like heads of battle axes. No idea what I'll use them for, but I liked the shapes.



Not many things to salvage beyond the buttons and metal things.

Singer sewing machine

I wish I had much to say about this week's entry, but I really don't. It's not that interesting of a machine, and I didn't get very many parts off of it.



I didn't see any model name or number on this one, but if I run across it later, I may amend the blog. It looks to me like a relatively recent model though, but I could be wrong.



Once the plastic housing was removed, it was a lot less bulky.



The difference between the last picture and this one is basically the total of what I could pull from this sewing machine. See that wheel looking thing in the middle of the inner mechanism? I wanted that, but it didn't come off.



Very small parts pile this time.

Husqvarna Classica 105 sewing machine

When I think of Husqvarna, I think of chainsaws. I do not think of sewing machines. Apparently, there's a whole family of companies with the Husqvarna name. I guess you learn something new everyday.



I've taken apart sewing machines from many different companies, and from several different countries, but this was the first time I got a hold of something by a Swedish brand. I was sort of interested to see if they designed any mechanisms or part configurations differently than the other machines I've taken apart.





Turns out they do. Or did for this model, anyway. Instead of the usual top panel that comes off to access the mechanisms, the side panels come off. It looks like, in some respects, this arrangement would be better for accessing parts to do repairs. I'm sure there's some trade-offs, otherwise everyone would build them like that.



I suppose that's about an average parts pile for a sewing machine, Swedish or not.

Pfaff Hobbymatic 803

Busy Saturday, so I need a quick entry. Fortunately, I've got plenty of sewing machines that wouldn't come apart in the backlog.



This particular one is made by Pfaff, a German company I'd never heard of until I found this machine. The sew/vac place cannibalized the top and light covers before junking it, but it's not nearly as skeletonized as some machines I've found.



Note the paucity of removable fasteners. The few parts I got off were very superficially located.



Nothing came out of here.



I didn't get much out of this machine, and the trophy pile picture came out a lot darker than I thought it would. Meh.

White Super Lock 503 Serger sewing machine

I've got other stuff to do tonight, including trying to figure out what went wrong with last week's pictures, so this will be a short one.


My lackadaisical approach to photography led to this blurry picture, in which the model number is illegible. I had to do a little googling to find out which model it was.


The front plate came off easily enough, and I think a couple other things came off, but overall there wasn't much on this I could or wanted to salvage.


I just kept the knobs. Like I said, short entry.

New Home Memory Craft 6000 (x2)

It really wasn't long after I remarked in my first Memory Craft 6000 entry about how it was rare for me to find the same machine twice, and even rarer to find multiples at the same time, that I found these two machines. Yep, two more 6000s, and on the same night. I still maintain that this is a fluke, but if I'm going to find multiples of something, I could do a lot worse than these.

I've been sitting on this picture set for a while because I didn't know how to handle it with the blog. I basically had three options: 1) don't make an entry at all, since this make and model is already represented pictorially, 2) make another full entry as if this was the first time I had taken this make and model apart, or 3) write a shorter entry, highlighting any differences in procedure or part selection from the first disassembly. I opted for the last choice, since it's better to have more potential blog entries than fewer, in case of lean times, but making a new exhaustive entry is redundant.

Here's the two machines still intact. I didn't bother to take many 'during' or 'after' pictures, since I think I covered that angle pretty well in the first entry, and there wasn't a whole lot of differences in procedure. I will note, though, that I remembered about that 'hidden' screw on the back panel, so that streamlined the process somewhat.

Hey, look. Free thread.

Parts selection was a bit different. The first difference was that I took more of the plastic wire connectors (I'm blanking on the actual term) this time. They were easier to pull on these sewing machines, and I think I have an idea for what to do with them.

The other difference is evident in the trophy pile pictures. Note the lack of the big side panels, and clear sliding things. I decided that they weren't worth trying to find storage for them, and the ones from the last teardown might get thrown away next time I cull the collection. Speaking of storage, I now have so many of those buttons that they warrant having their own container now.

Nelco Model 6955 sewing machine

Before this one, I've never taken a Nelco sewing machine apart. And even after finishing with this one, I could still justifiably make that claim. Yeah, it was one those...

This was a pretty solid machine, mostly metal. The two-tone color scheme is sort of unusual. I kind of like it.

The fold down part here is kind of cool. I had never seen one like that, and when I accidentally folded it down at first, I though I broke it.

I wasn't able to go any deeper than this, especially frustrating because, as you can see, there are a couple of little gears tantalizingly close to extraction, but I just couldn't get at them.

Kind of pathetic parts haul.