Sail and Sunbrella sewers

 Here is an innocuous looking pair of Japanese straight stitchers. from the 1950's and 60's. the American Home machine is kind of bland, but the cream and blue Woodwards is quite pretty.

Don't be fooled by their looks though. these area pair of kick ass sewing machines, set up for light leathers and tough fabrics like Sunbrella!

How this came to be is an interesting story. Both thses machines are Japanese versions of the Singer model 15, which in it's final evolution
 became the 15-91, which is the machine that
 every one wants for heavy duty sewing.

Now the model 15 was first introduced in the 1880's when the majority of people lived on farms. They were designed to sew what ever could be found on those farms, everything from satins and cottons up to heavy canvas and leathers. They did this all quite well, because back then, they came as hand cranks and
treadles. Now a days, we forget just how strong our arms and legs are. It was that strength that gave the machines the piercing power needed to penetrate tough fabrics.

But then along came electrification and people started moving off the farms and into the cities. heavy duty sewing became less common and 50-60 watt motors were found to work for most sewing. there the matter stood, generally, small motors and lighter sewing till the15-91 came along. It's unique gear drive and spring loaded balance wheel, allowed the machine to get up the speed to piece heavy fabrics again. The mechanical advantage of this arrangement, effectively doubled the power of the machine from 50 to 100 watts.

In the 1960's, the zig zag machine came along. These had a lot more moving parts and required a bigger motor, which led to the introduction of the 130 watt motor to drive them.

Now if you take a very easy to turn model 15 or Japanese copy of it, and give it a 130 watt motor, and it looks pretty, you have a sleeper. It will sew all the normal stuff quite nicely, but turn it loose on heavy duty fabrics, it comes into it's own. Set up correctly, 6 layers of denim, 4 layers of light light leather? No problem! Bring it on sucker.......