Annie Lynn

I have a vintage Kenmore 10-Stitch, which has been used very little - stored away for a long, long time. It is in excellent condition, and has been cleaned and oiled by me. It has one large stitch selector dial for choosing how you wish to sew. This dial has three color sections - Yellow, Red, and Green

Red: straight stitch, and four zig-zag stitches of differing widths. These all sew moving forward.
Green: Shell stitch, blind stitch and mending stitch. All sew forward.
Yellow: Smocking stretch, rich-rack stretch, serging stretch, overcast stretch, straight stretch. These all automatically and only sew backwards. I have been unable to find anything in the instruction booklet indicating that I need to do something extra to make them sew forward, and the reverse lever has not been touched and is not stuck. When the dial is moved to one of the red or green area stitches, it sews forward again!

One additional issue: because the machine was stored for so long, I cleaned and oiled it. The hand wheel still moves very stiffly, but the machine sews quietly and well, though it does not sew at what I would consider "fast speed". Could the motor be somehow bound up, and is there anything I can do to ease up this situation?

OurWorkbench

Welcome Annie Lynn.

A couple of things come to mind. Does it reverse on the Red and Green stitches? Do the Red and Green stitches stitch properly when you change your length and width? Do you have the stitch length dial in the yellow zone while trying the yellow stitches on the stitch dial?

When machines have set a while, it will sometimes take some repeated cleaning and oiling. Frequently dried oil or lint is hidden deep inside that take a while to work out. Perhaps it could be that something is not connecting or moving correctly on the cam stack.

Good luck on getting the stretch stitches to work properly.

Janey - Neat people never make the exciting discoveries I do.

Annie Lynn

Thanks, Janey & John.

Just after I posted, I continued to research and found an article suggesting using a hair dryer to warm up the inner parts of the machine (this is after I cleaned - not much needed - and oiled the parts. I tried that, and moved the dial between stitch selections slowly, over and over, and then tried them all again. Voila! All of the stretch stitches stitched perfectly in the forward direction!

The only issue that remains - and I do not want to run the machine until I find out more about this - is that the hand wheel is very stiff to turn. The innards seem to be moving nicely (when viewing them from the bottom of the machine, or inside with the top cover off). So I am concerned that the motor itself may be frozen up to some extent, and I don't want to burn it out by running it. I am assuming it is pre-lubed, since it is not like the Featherweight or Singer 301 which have a port for lubing the motor. Would it be safe to heat up the motor itself with the hair dryer to see if that would loosen it up? The belt looks like it is brand new, and probably has never been replaced (the machine was hardly used), so I don't think it was installed too tight. Anything else I should look for or try?