Riccar 3600: The Good, The Bad, & The Pretty

I buy very few sewing machines these days.  I would be happy to downsize the herd.  But every once in a while something tempting comes by.  What made this one irresistible?

Riccar:  a couple of them have sashayed through here and they were terrific machines.  Didn't automatically mean that this one would be though.

It has a free arm.

And obviously, the REAL reason I bought it:  It's PINK.

And the price was thrift-store-reasonable, so it came home with me.  I spent zero time in the store checking it out.  Sometimes I do much more, taking top and bottom off to check for plastic.  It's mostly a question of mood.  Sometimes I just feel like rolling the dice.

So which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?  Should I extol the many virtues of this machine and discuss all of its features, building the excitement to a fever pitch?  Only to reveal the (possibly future) fatal flaw?

Guess I'll start with the bad news.

I don't know what to call this part.  Gear-thingy is my best attempt.  It goes around.  It has fingers sticking out.  Those fingers push on the bars you see to the left and extending to the left edge of the photo.  They meet the cam stack off to the left and drive the cams.

When I first saw the crack I thought it was threads caught on the gear-thingy, but no such luck.  And there is another crack of a different shape on the opposite side of the gear-thingy.  Definitely cracks, you can feel them easily.

So that's the bad news.  Yet I am not heartbroken.  Tell you why later.  However I am EXTREMELY IRRITATED with the fools who designed this machine.  As I cleaned it I did not find any other plastic parts.  The cams in the cam stack are metal.  The top gear is metal.  WHY, OH WHY???  Why this one critical part in plastic?  If I had a time machine I would go back and slap them in the face.  With a really nice pair of long leather gloves.

While you are waiting for me to reveal the ultimate fate of this machine, let's talk about all of its good features.

It has a free arm, which is a relative rare feature on a good vintage machine.  (See this previous post on the difference between good vintage and crappy vintage.)  Sleeves and pant legs, among other things, are much easier with a free arm.

There's a handy ruler.  And FYI you can buy rulers-as-tape and stick them on the edge of your sewing machine cabinet.  They come in both a paper or plastic tape and as steel tape.  I can't imagine life without them.

It has a convenient handle.  And although it is quite heavy, it is not as heavy as a Singer 237.  Specifically that one because I picked one up last week.  Sorry, I forgot to weigh it.  And Google doesn't know.

The part-which-removes-to-create-the-free-arm contains an accessories tray and half a dozen posts for the bobbins.  Which are class 206 bobbins, not class 15.  Rather unusual.  The bobbins came with the machine.

This the coolest feature of this machine.  With the free arm in place you can flip open the top of the accessory tray, flip down the bobbin case access door and change the bobbin.  No need to remove "the part-which-removes-to-create-the-free-arm".  Extremely easy access to the bobbin in other words.

It is a multistitch machine

I tested the zigzag and blind hem only (so far) and they work.  Stitch length and width work.

Needle position works.

Next I looked on the top for the bobbin winder.  No bobbin winder.  I had noticed the bump on the handwheel side but hadn't checked it out yet.  Indeed it hides the bobbin winder under a hinged cover.

I then looked for thread guides and didn't see any.  So I just threw it on there.

Don't do it this way.

And I got the lousy results that my lack of attention earned.

Experienced sewing people know that the way that the bobbin is wound really, really matters.  Thread spooling up off a bobbin wound this badly will feed unevenly which will mess up your stitches.

So I slowed down a bit and took a closer look at the machine.  And wound the thread off of the badly wound bobbin onto another bobbin.

The bobbin winder thread guide/tensioner hides on the back right corner of the machine.

And as you pull it out into position, it stops the needle motion while the bobbin is winding.  Same thing that releasing the clutch knob on the hand wheel on the more usual vintage machine does.

In the photo above I have highlighted the thread path in red.

And using the machine correctly produces a much better-wound bobbin!

It came with a nice selection of presser feet, most of them snap-on.  The snap-on shank and zigzag foot are on the machine.

Top left is an attachment screw but the others are a mystery to me.  Any knowledge gratefully received, leave a comment below.

 I feel like I should recognize this spring, but it isn't coming to me.

 Things end up with sewing machines that are not sewing machine related.  Or maybe came from a different machine entirely.

 Like this broken feed dog, which I think came off of a sraight stitch only machine.

A cheap plastic case is better than no case at all.

And a poor paint job in PINK is better than any other paint job in black or beige.  In person these are obviously paint job issues rather than wear.  And even if it was wear, that would also indicate a poor paint job.

I did not find any "Made In ..." on the machine, but the motor was made in Taiwan.  By a Japanese company.

There are a lots of clues here that this was made very late in the "good vintage" era of machines.  I confess that I have only done a one-minute Google search, mostly looking for a free manual.  Didn't find one.  I may look for for information later but right now I really don't need to do that.

So, lovely machine, everything works, very cute, free arm, etc, etc.  Problem is, I can't sell it.  Because of that cracked gear-thingy.  Those aren't just surface scratches, they go deep.  One of these days it will fail.  Could be tomorrow, could be 20 years from now.  I can't sell it.

And I'm trying really, really hard not to accumulate more machines.  But I have a plan for this one.  I have recently taken on a couple of sewing students, and this is a good machine for student use in the studio, right up until the minute that gear-thingy blows.

So even with the cracked piece I'm still quite happy about this acquisition.

* * * * * * * * * *
As always, I look forward to your comments below.  If you know anything about this machine I would love to hear it.  And I'll try not to feel guilty about being too lazy to search for the information myself.

 * * * * * * * * * *
And because we all enjoyed the recent troll, I have decided to begin sharing with you some of the comments that I delete from the blog.  I'm not sure what the posters get out of this, but they turn up on OLD blog posts.
 
First, there comes some strangely worded praise of my blog;

  Paul Brown said...

This article gives the light in which we can observe the reality. This is very nice one and gives indepth information. Thanks for this nice article.

 

Next comes a link to a business.  Not included here for obvious reasons and I have never clicked on one.

Regards,
DragonPoodle
providing "the light in which we can observe the reality"
Thanks, Paul Brown (probably not your real name)

Hilarious Conclusion to 2019

 Before, above and after below.  Keep reading for the story.

Greetings, dear readers.  Read on to find out just WHY you are so dear to me!

If you had holidays to celebrate recently, I hope they were dandy.  My Christmas was fantastic, in no small part because both of my daughters have brought fabulous new people into the family.  One daughter married in October, and her new husband is from a lovely family that has been very welcoming to me.  And he has two small nephews!  Yay, kids!  And my other daughter and her partner bought a house together and the partner has a small daughter. Whoop De Do!  And my niece moved nearby to finish up her degree at UNC on a full free ride.  Pretty impressive, amiright?  And she has two terrific teenagers.  So my holidays were full of parties and activities and family fun.

My chronic fatigue syndrome has been minimal since returning from that awesome vacation to Newfoundland that I keep threatening to tell you about.  I did quite well all the way up to almost the end before collapsing in a little pile of melted dragonpoodle.  I did miss out on a few parties at the end (sorry Patty!).  But I'm springing back and and optimistic about 2020.

But now let me tell you about Alex.  I don't know who Alex is or where he or she is from.  Day before yesterday I received this comment on an old blog post of mine titled Stripping the Paint from a Singer 27.

Alex  December 29, 2019 at 12:19 PM

I believe you are an ignorant American moron and probably the only one person on this planet to do such thing as to destroy that beautiful decals on this gorgeous sewing machine.

Although it appears that English is not Alex's first language, still he or she did a fine job of conveying their opinion.  (I'm using "their" as the gender neutral singular pronoun it deserves to become.)

However I am a bit confused about why Alex thought this machine had "beautiful decals".  I didn't post extensive before pictures of this machine but you can clearly see from this photo that the decals were pretty well trashed.

And what was my reaction to being called an "ignorant American moron"?  Did I weep and wail?  Did it send me into a deep depression?  Spoiler:  NO

I replied to Alex on the blog thusly.

DragonPoodle  December 29, 2019 at 2:10 PM

I have no idea how you meant this post to be interpreted but I am choosing to regard this comment as HILARIOUS! And I feel no compulsion to defend myself but in the interest of my readers let me assure you that this model is so common that I have been unable to even give them away.

 

That's quite true btw.   We're talking about a Singer 27 with no motor boss, meaning no hand crank or motor can be attached (at least not easily or simply) that can only be treadled.  I took a similar machine to the 2018 NC TOGA, an annual gathering and swap meet for the vintage-sewing-machine-addicts and nobody wanted the thing.

Anyhow, after thinking things over for a bit I found that I had even more to say to Alex.  So I said it online.

DragonPoodle  December 29, 2019 at 2:20 PM

And I'm considering adding "ignorant American moron" to my business cards, Oh, Alex, you brought me so much joy today! I will be laughing all day.

And I did.  And I'm still laughing today.

And this is why you, my dear readers, are so dear to me.  I started this blog in 2009 and this will be my 213st post.  Although my memory is notoriously unreliable (What did I have for breakfast?  Did I even have breakfast?) I have NO memory of a single unpleasant or aggressive or attacking post in all that time.  Maybe there was a minor snipe or two that I have blocked out.

But Alex, I will never forget you!  Too bad your comment was set to "no reply" so I could not email you directly with my response.  I will just have to hope that you look back at my blog to see what I had to say.

Alex, I hope you enjoy being laughed at.  Which is really the only reasonable reaction.

Want to see that repainted Singer 27?  Decals purchased on eBay.

I feel no guilt about stripping and repainting this machine.

Sincerely,
Cheryl, ignorant American moron

Not-So-Ugly-Betty

First let me explain Ugly Betty to non-US readers (or US readers who don't follow all the TV shows).  Ugly Betty was the name of a TV show, one I never watched. Since I never saw it I don't know if my following comments are relevant to that particular show.

In the American film industry if you put an actress in glasses she is therefore classified as "ugly".  The glasses are your cue to view the actress as ugly.  She may later in the film remove the glasses and then a miracle occurs! Now she is attractive! Who knew?  And once she becomes attractive she can now become a love interest!  Isn't that just AMAZING?

Or maybe, just maybe, it is NAUSEATING.  You decide.

So what does all this have to do with that cute little Elna Lotus SP shown at the top of the page?  Not much.

Apparently the Lotus was filthy dirty when Barbara got it from shopgoodwill.com and she named it Ugly Betty.  By the time I saw it she had cleaned it up and I like it.  She's still not crazy about it but we had a good time looking it over.

The obvious comparison is to a Featherweight or those mini Kenmores we talked about a while ago.   Today we're comparing the Elna Lotus SP with the Kenmore 1040 and its cousins with just a brief mention of the Featherweight.

Stitches

Featherweight:  straight stitch only
Kenmore 1040, etc.:  have a variety of stitches, click on the link to see the earlier post
Elna Lotus EC:  straight stitch only, the economy model
Elna Lotus ZZ:  zigzag.  We don't have an EC or ZZ to examine
Elna Lotus SP:  the top of the line model

• straight stitch
• zigzag
• buttonhole
• "elastic blind hemstitch and edging stitch".  Imagine that a blind hemstitch and a multistitch zigzag had a baby
• "overcasting stitch and special zigzag".  I saw this on Tuesday.  I'm writing this on Friday.  I  have no memory of what this stitch looked like.  Probably because I was so enchanted by the offspring of blindhem and multizig.

Barbara explained the controls to me.  On Tuesday.  My takeaway, on Friday, is that I would be heavily reliant on the manual for a while.

There is a big difference in how much this matters depending on whether you own one machine or multiple machines, and whether you sew frequently or infrequently.  

Gears

Kenmore 1040 etc:  Metal
Elna Lotus SP:  Plastic

Belts

Elna Lotus SP:  Cleated.  Now we know nothing about Elnas but experience with other brands suggests that replacements for these are difficult to find. If you know otherwise, please chime in.  It is also tucked away in the interior of the machine, probably not easy to reach.

Kenmores 1040 etc:  Two easily accessible belts.

Case

Kenmore 1040 etc, click and scroll to the bottom to see the case:  All but the last model had a plastic rose-embossed case.  Barbara and I agree that it is kind of a pain to finagle the machine into the case.  If this were your main machine I'm sure it it could be easily mastered.  Also, plastic breaks, duh, and of the three rose embossed cases that have gone through my hands, one was broken and there was no way to fix it.  On the other hand, they are quite cute.

Elna Lotus SP:  There are metal flaps that fold up and click in place and that creates the case.  They are not removable and when they are folded down they create ramps up to the machine bed.  Barbara and I both think this would be an odd and uncomfortable way to sew.  And because they don't come off we can't envision any way to get the machine bed level with a larger surface.  She also thinks that fabric might snag on the metal edges.

Portability

Kenmore 1040 etc:  No handle on the machine itself.  Weighs 15 pounds, 17 with case.
Elna Lotus SP:  We didn't think to weigh it.  The Google machine tells me it weighs 13.6 pounds.  And it has a built in handle.

Accessory Storage

Kenmore 1040 etc.:  a small rectangular plastic box that slides into place on the front edge of the machine bed.
Elna Lotus SP:  a molded tray with slots for each accessory, located at the top of the machine and accessible by flipping the top back.

Bobbin Winding

Kenmore 1040 etc.:  The usual method.  Turn the clutch knob to release the needle from moving.
Elna Lotus SP:  This is an unusual feature of this machine.  There is a knob underneath the hand wheel with three settings.  One for stitching, one for bobbin winding mode, and one for something else which Barbara DID explain to me.  On Tuesday.

I often think that it would be fun to blog more frequently, with shorter posts, rather than being the George R.R. Martin of the blogosphere.  (If only...)

This post is about as quick and snappy as you can expect though.  Obviously I could have called Barbara and gotten clarification on all the things I had forgotten between Tuesday and Friday.  My normal procedure would have been to do that, and maybe even go over to her shed and take more pictures, especially of that cute accessories tray on the top of the machine.

But I am a hopeless night owl and calling Barbara at 2:00 am would NOT have been a good idea.  And by now it is Saturday morning, the Saturday before Christmas, and I'm just going to send this off to you with my cheeriest holiday wishes.

Happy Holidays!  A salutation meant to be inclusive and embrace everyone.

Merry Christmas! if that is what you celebrate and do NOT believe the culture warriors who have tried to make you believes that anyone finds this offensive.  No one does!  And never did!  That was a cynical ploy to divide us.

So let us not be divided but enjoy the season and embrace all humanity in love.

Shameless Promotion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2roa0WexMCc&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR2jOsKi_EYbyK9nMgYIINGuWCDyjUBJHpEiRBGRmk4nRHKnMP4RqYyzOzY

I made my more-or-less-annual visit to California in September to see Amber and Greg and their adorable children.

One of those children is a skilled builder of Lego models, including ones he designs himself.  During my last visit he was building steamships.  An impressive Titanic about a yard long and another one whose name escapes me.

This year he is into Star Trek, a passion we share, along with every other member of both of our families.

He made a YouTube video showing his re-creation of the Enterprise, NCC-1701.  Click on this link, or the same link under the picture above, to watch it.

And he would LOVE it if lots of people viewed it and hit the like button.

So that's exactly what I am asking you to do.  Watch the video.  Hit the "like" button.

Hit "subscribe" also if you want to see music videos from his dad's band, Cuddlefish, who seem to be channeling my generation (60's rock was THE BEST btw).

Thanks for doing this if you do it and thanks for being a reader of my blog whether you do this or not!  I appreciate all of my readers and am grateful for you.

Mini TOGA and The Pizza Cutter of Death

So.  In early August Linda called me to tell me that she and Missie had decided to meet up at my house.

(pause for laughter.  Linda is a Very Good Friend and I took it in the humorous spirit it was offered.)

Linda lives 2 hours south of me and Missie lives 2 hours north so it made perfect sense.  And I didn't make it to TOGA* this year because I was too busy whooping it up in Newfoundland on THE BEST TRIP OF MY LIFE.  Maybe I'll get around to showing you my vacation photos one of these days.  There are thousands of them.  You want to see them, right?  You want to see ALL of them, don't you?
No?  Wait, why are you running off like that?.....

*TOGA, Treadle On Gathering and Academy, the NC one held in Monroe NC in early June each year.

The weekend before the planned mini TOGA my grand-niece Carla was in town with her grandparents.  I knew that Linda was bringing her daughters and so I begged to be allowed to have Carla for the week.  There were big demands on her time that week!  Between helping babysit a 2 year old one day and going to the beach with her aunt and cousin another day she was kept quite busy.  But I had her for three of those day and one was with Linda and her daughters.

Carla and I prepared a craft activity in advance.  I introduced her to my studio and gave her the safety rules.  The most important one is:  Do not touch The Pizza Cutter of Death.

You may know it by its official name:  rotary cutter.  But Pizza Cutter of Death is the best name if you have kids in your studio, as I often do.  And the only kids who ever make it down there are kids I can trust not to be stupid or rambunctious.

I also tasked Carla with watching me to make sure that I closed the Pizza Cutter of Death EVERY SINGLE TIME I laid it back down on the table.  Good habits are your friends.  She caught me putting it down open only once.  Kids love it when adults mess up.  I didn't do it on purpose either, I genuinely messed up.

We prepared 12 inch squares of muslin for flower pounding by cutting the squares and then prepping the fabric with Bubble Jet Set then letting them dry.  The fresh flowers were from Walmart because nothing in my yard was blooming at the time.  The girls taped flat, or flattened portions, of the flowers to the fabric with masking tape and them turned them over and pounded them with hammers til the flowers disintegrated and the pigments bled through to the fabric.  I put out all of my hammers from tiny tack hammers to the big boys to the rubber mallets for them to experiment with.  It was loud.  They had fun.

The pictures showing all this fun that SHOULD be in this post aren't.  Because while the little girls were whacking things with hammers, the adult girls were upstairs looking at my antique treadles and hand cranks.  And nobody was taking pictures until they showed us their results.

And here's an artistic vision of my 1874 Wilson treadle.  No relation to Wheeler & Wilson.

The mini TOGA began with the arrival of Linda and her girls Tuesday night, continued Wednesday with arrival of Carla, Missie, and Barbara (sewing friend only 20 minutes from me), and finished up Thursday with only Missie and me.  Thursday night Carla got back from the beach and she and I spent Friday in the studio sewing.  We made a pillow from the embroidery that she worked on throughout the week.  And it is a present for her little sister!

Linda brought over a serger I gave her last year after I bought The Love Of My Life, a BabyLock Evolution serger.  More about that in a future post.  We changed the blade on the Simplicity serger that I had bought in the 1990s.  I used it A LOT and it was a great machine (but the Evolution has air threading and I will never serge again without it).  And I showed Linda the basics of serging and unloaded a bunch of fabrics on her from my stash.

All knit and she didn't take all of them.  I really needed to downsize and I have moved towards fabrics with 2 way stretch.  These are all one way.  All bought at thrift stores for no more than $1/yard.

Barbara also came over and while Linda and I were serging, she and Missie were tucking.

Since I missed out on that Missie trained me on the tuck marker the next day.

We began by planning to do a tutorial but I quickly chickened out.  Too lazy this time.

And we played with toys too of course.  While I was looking at this attachment through my lighted magnifier I noticed Missie in the background.  So, more artistic photos for you.  You're welcome.

And finally, here is a rare, (probably) never-before-seen photo of my workroom, the room where all the tools live.  And the sewing machines that are either waiting to be repaired, or repaired ones waiting to find new owners.

What are you up to now?  I am doing some Christmas sewing but obviously I can't show you any of that yet!

Happy Holidays!