vmaniqui

thanks for letting me know. i was thinking about that but running out of time as i need to get home early. i will try that when i pick it up this weekend.

although the machine is frozen, i gave it a good oil bath this morning. i will see how it goes later.

ArchaicArcane

I did see some rust in various spots, but I think that the hated Tri-Flow would take care of 95 - 99% of any issues with "frozen" parts on that machine. Realistically speaking, most Singers are "loose" compared to a lot of the other brands and it's really easy to free them up.

Unless you're driving a Smart car, I think you should be just fine, as long as you take a couple of good screwdrivers with you.

vmaniqui

you're right about that. next time i will bring my tool bag with me. oh on second thought, i will do that as i might be picking up a White Rotary Treadle tomorrow.

there's rust all over the machine. even the bobbin case is rusty. and the mistake i did was to borrow a plier and forced open the back cover plate. sure enough the locking screw (hand tight screw) flew all over because i broke it in half. the other half is sitting deep down there. no idea how to take it out. lesson learned again. thanks bud.

oldsewnsew

Remove the broken screw by securing the SM on a drill press, and slowly, with lubricant, drilling out the screw. You may need to level it or use a dremel to grind a little divot to work like a centerdrill. Ideally you could user an "easy out" to back out the remainder of the screw.
In the future remember to go easy, patience, coax things-don't force it.

vmaniqui

no drill press for me but i do have a regular drill. it's so small that i need to be very careful. i am attaching a pic of that. as you can see the thumb screw is so small and imagine half of that is sitting on the screw hole. i do have a dremel. wonder if i could use drill and drill out the embedded screw ?

oldsewnsew

The screw may be harder than the surrounding metal, causing it to drift off center. Grind it as flat as possible, then get a cone point stone for your dremel to drill a starter divot. Then, with lubricant, proceed to drill carefully with a good quality 1/16" bit or maybe a little bigger. You just want to avoid chewing up the threads. Or if you do, you can then learn about heli-coil inserts. (thread repair inserts, and not cheap and good luck locating one to exactly replace Singer on standard screw threads)

oldsewnsew

Oh, I forgot about the "easy out" once you have a hole drilled in the old screw remainder. Sometimes you need to use one of these to unthread the old screw remnant.

ThayerRags

If you're lucky, the drill bit may quit cutting and snag the screw to thread it on through and out the backside.

CD in Oklahoma

ArchaicArcane

Somewhere (Needlebar?) there's a list of the thread pitches of the screws Singer used. I had good luck at an Industrial supply type place (Gregg Distributors) and they had the tap for the presser foot bar thread. If memory serves, it should be the same screw for that plate too, so I can look up which one I bought. (6-40 rings a bell, but I will verify it if needed)

It may be possible to buy a heli-coil for this, but they're not cheap, or easy to find that small.

Sometimes, if the threads are just the tiniest bit munged, you can clean them up with the tap, as long as you can thread it in the first bit, to make sure you go in the same way instead of just mashing the rest out of the way. DH cleans up threads that way on lots of things DFIL has touched.

Ooops. That last part maybe should have been my inside voice.

I love when that happens!! I had that happen when I had to drill out the bolt for my side stand on my KTM. I thought I was in for hours. It was about 10 minutes.

Rodney

Put some oil on it and walk away from that part of the machine for several days to give the oil a chance to penetrate. If you need specialty hardware try McMaster-Carr online. I use them. They have a huge selection, prices are competitive and they're great to work with.
Drilling anything that small with a hand-held drill is tricky at best. Find a friend with a drill press and use a new (sharp) drill bit. Try to either grind or center punch the screw to start the bit in the center. The cast-iron machine is going to be softer than the broken screw and your bit will want to wander. If you're lucky the screw will thread out like CD said. Worst case is you mess up the hole and end up drilling and tapping it for a larger non-original screw.
Even with needing a little extra work $30 was a great deal for that machine. I never see model 15s of any series that cheap here.
Rodney