A customer's comment about my sewing stations changed my whole setup

I had this one lady in Portland last fall who brought in a bunch of old sheet music she wanted rebound. She pointed at the thread tension on my machine and said it looked like I was choking the life out of the signatures. That one comment made me check my tension discs and I realized they were way too tight after years of use. Now I back them off a quarter turn and my spines lay way flatter. Anyone else get weird feedback that actually fixed something?

3 comments

3 Comments

kevinw941d ago

That quarter turn thing is interesting...

paulnguyen1d ago

Did you just adjust the tension or did you dig into the discs themselves to see if they were worn down in a specific spot? I'm curious because I had a similar issue with an old Singer and it turned out the springs were actually bent at a weird angle from years of pressure. Would love to know if a quarter turn fixed it completely or if you ended up replacing parts later on.

the_riley1d ago

Man that's a bummer about the tight tension, but hey, at least you caught it before it caused real issues. I had a similar thing happen with a drill press I bought secondhand. The owner told me the chuck wobbled like crazy and I almost returned it, but then I realized the belt was just sitting loose on the pulley. Tightened it up and it runs smooth now. Sometimes the smallest things get overlooked for years until someone points them out.