Today I have done things that no technodunce should be asked to do ... By which I mean, I have fiddled with the bobbin tension of Elvis!!!
First up, after bringing him downstairs I read through the manual and following the destructions to a tee I wound an empty bobbin with bobbin fill ... It came out fine ... unlike the first time I ever wound a bobbin on him!!!
Then, my hands shaking slightly, again following the destructions in the manual, I removed the Embroidery unit and slipped off the needle plate cover ... Phew, luckily that came off very easily!
I then with a bigger tremble in my fingers, removed the bobbin, first noting the white marks on both case and race and where they lined up.
Surprisingly there wasnt much debris in the race but I cleaned out what I could find and then, hoping to God I had remembered things correctly reassembled the machine.
I threaded my brand new bobbin, threaded a top thread in Green (
@Lowena ) chose the letter A from the onboard fonts, hooped up some fabric and pressed PLAY.
Time for the big reveal ... No Change ...
Ok when the presser foot is up .. the thread pulls easily through the needle, with the presser foot down, there is resistance ...so I can only assume the top tension is good ... so it must be the bottom tension ...
I dissemble the machine again, check in the manual for a fifth time on what to do and find myself holding the bobbin case in one hand and a teeny tiny screwdriver in the other ..... The clock ticks loudly as I gently turn the screw anticlockwise (and there was a convenient picture just to show me which way that goes) 30-40 degrees (?) ...
I turn the screw a tiny smidge, hoping the bead of sweat that has just rolled off my nose will miss Elvis' innards (It did).
Ok done! Now instead of being a horizontal line (I had noticed that before starting) it was pointing to the 8 on a clock.
I reassembled, re-threaded the bobbin, re-threaded the top thread, choose my letter A, adjusted the placement in the hoop and pressed PLAY again.
Elvis did his stuff, its a good job that the letter A is a quick stitch ....
After he was done I looked at the back ... the same
I repeated the above, turning the screw a lil more each time, adjusting the placement in the hoop a lil each time (I was getting very good at this) and it wasnt until the 3rd letter a faint line of white could be seen down the legs of the letter.
And so it went!
By the time I came to the sixth stitch (the screw was pointing to 4 on the clock) ... I went through the process of putting him back together, re-threading, re-siting the design and after a few seconds of stitching I stopped the machine ... I had gone waaay, waaay too far and there was a lot of bobbin thread on the top ...
Ok at least I knew there was a way too far ...
I repeated dissembling Elvis, removing the needle plate cover, hoiking out the bobbin and turned the screw BACK to the 6 O'clock position .... put him back together and stitched.
To fit the A into my now crowded hoop I turned the A upside down and stopped him before he finished.
Yes there is a lot of green on the reverse BUT you can see a thin white line and on the top the stitch is fine.... and as the good bods at Lords Sewing say ... If it aint broke dont fix it, ie if the top stitch is good enough leave it as is.
The only other thing it could be is debris within the tension plates but that require a fairy sized philips screwdriver so for the present Im leaving him as is ... I might think of buying a new bobbin case, it would be good to have a spare ... but at the moment he is merrily stitching out a design as we speak ... I hope its ok.***
Because Im a nice kind of girl, I wont bore you with interminable picture of Stitched A's BUT if you are interested you can see them in this
album*** Nope, still loads of top thread on the bottom, but the top looks good ... Pics at the end of the album.