Sunday, May 3, 2015

Field trip

Last week my friend Jess and I took a li'l hour-and-a-half trip up the road to St Charles and visited the Midwestern outpost of Nick-O Sewing. This was my first time visiting an industrial sewing machine shop and, needless to say, I was pretty excited. A huge thanks to Bob and Dave for talking machines with us and telling us about the history of the St Louis rag trade.
The showroom is nestled in an industrial park just off of 70. We only drove past it once.

They have all sorts of machines on hand, but their primary focus seems to be on heavier models -- lots of compound-feed machines in there.

Backroom, full of old machines waiting for some love.

HD double needle.

 277/335-style clone with binder base.

Quad-needle chainstitch with roller puller.

The leatherworker corner: 341s and 227s. They had just sold a used Juki 441 ... sad that I missed it. Maybe next time.

We ended up walking out with a used Yamato 5-thread serger with safety stitch (chainstitch next to the overlock stitch). This came out of a St Louis garment factory that made dancewear. It was covered in glitter fuzz.

Z610 C5DA. It's gonna be a nice li'l machine to have around. Need to find out what the Z stands for ... and find a manual for it.

Whoever came up with the serger is a bonafide genius. If there's a machine that runs on magic, it's the serger.

This is emblazoned on the table. Fitting, since this is where we live.

We went to Nick-O in search of a coverstitch machine, and left with a serger, so we'll be back. I also gave them a wishlist that includes a 441 and shoe patcher. Good times.




4 comments:

SB said...

Are you still making bags? Been following the blog for a while.

cory said...

On occasion. Been majorly sidetracked by my fulltime job and my house the last couple of years. Trying to restructure my sewing space to maybe churn out s'more bags (which involves buying more cool machines). Thanks for following! Leif Labs ain't dead...just real slow. :)

BodaciousAllie said...

Hi! Cool Blog! I also have this particular model of overlocker and I am wondering if you have had any luck understanding the pictured diagram/sticker in threading it up as a 4 thread? I cant for the life of me figure it out!!

cory said...

Hi Allie,

I was looking at the manual last night and seems that the 5- and 4-thread machines are different sub-classes: 610 and 612. Looks like the 610 has an upper looper and the 612 has an upper spreader (but share a sticker). Dunno if you can switch between the two options readily. You can email me at coryleif at gmail if you have any more questions. :)