New Home MyLock 334 Serger Fix

Friday morning about 9:00, my phone rang. On the other end, was ‘Jan’ from a local church quilting group. I had not met her before, but I would very soon. I had already met ‘Peggy’ a few weeks ago when she asked me to take a look at a machine that she picked up at Goodwill. I had a nice visit with Peggy when she picked up her machine and one I donated to the group, and since that visit, ‘Joann’ had called me to ask me about looking at a serger that was donated to their group. This morning Jan said she had the serger, and asked me if I could take a look at it. I told her I really did NOT know much about sergers, but I had passed the ‘scared’ stage of threading them awhile back, so I told her I would at least check to see if it was threaded properly.

Jan came over about half an hour later with serger in hand. She was going to leave it, but I invited her to stay and let me see if I could get it going. The right needle thread cone was completely gone. There was only one needle in the serger, and I found that it was in backward, and not all the way up inside the holder. I added another needle (thank the Lord the serger uses regular sewing machine needles). I checked the threading and it looked ok, so I tried to form a thread chain with it. It would rotate a few turns, and although it was making a thread chain, something inside would ‘hit’ on something else and not want to move. That was a mystery for awhile. I thought the right looper was hitting the bottom of the plate, so I messed with that for awhile, but that just didn’t make sense. It started moving again better, (after ‘tweaking’ the left looper with my pliars---that’s what someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, does) but I noticed that the left looper kept breaking thread. By this time, it was about 11:30 and I needed to just ‘give up’ for awhile. I also needed to quit to get ready to go have a mammogram, so I told her if she would leave it, I would try again later, but if I failed, she would have to try to find someone more qualified than me. I showed her a few sewing machines that I could offer to the group, she chose two, and after a brief visit in the driveway, she left.

This afternoon after my mammogram, I came home and had lunch, then got ready to go to an Easter Cantata, so the serger sat, still not working.

Tonight, we got home about 10:30, and about 11:00 after Louie went to bed, I thought I would take another ‘stab’ at seeing if I could get it working. At this point, the left looper thread was breaking, and it wouldn’t even form a thread chain anymore. I thought I would just completely start from scratch and see if I could get it to make a thread chain. I pulled all the thread out, then decided to give it a bath before I tried to rethread. It looked like it had sat in a garage, as it had what looked to me like gravel dust on it. I cleaned out all the grooves, and I also ran the edge of my dish cloth through the tension disks. I started over fresh, and completely threaded it again. I did notice a thread guide on the left looper that I missed the first time, but still it would not form a thread chain. I scratched my head, and started turning the hand wheel and trying to see why. I noticed that the left looper was grazing the needles and pushing them back a little bit as it passed, so I ‘tweaked’ the left looper back just a little bit, and it started to make a chain! YaHoo! Mountain Dew! (How many people remember that?!!!)

Everything fell into place after that. I still don’t know why earlier it sounded and acted like something was hitting, and it didn’t want to turn, but it all started working! Maybe it all just needed to move as I think this machine has sat for a very long time. (Arthritis?)

I set both needle tension disks on 4 and both looper tension disks on 5, and serged several test strips on my c-fold towels. I think it’s ready to go report for duty!

Persistence and patience paid off, and I feel so blessed to have been able to get this working so the quilting ladies can do their work. I don’t know if I learned anything from this, but I did win this one!

It’s all good!