(no subject)

[figment]

Auuugh!!

I just bought myself a new serger. Hooray! (I bought it in person today because the one I ordered on line was cancelled. Blah.)

But!! I am working on setting the ratzenfratzen thing up, and I had forgotten what a gigantic pain those things are to thread. No matter what I do I seem to keep on messing up the fourth thread/lower looper thread. It looks to me like I've done it right, but no, it doesn't work.

This is when I really, really miss living in the same area as my friends who sew. I could really use a sympathetic ear, and another pair of eyes to look at it and see where I'm going wrong.

Comments

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I made sure to do as you said this morning when I was attempting again, and so far I have had more luck. Strangely it seems that the lower looper thread wants to break at the cone/spool - I serged very slowly and was able to see it break and tie it back together to keep going - I'm not sure if there is something wrong with that particular cone of thread, or if I just need to serge slowly and be careful. But thanks! It does seem to be going better now.

[dreamsewing.livejournal.com]

hmm, if you're serger has an arm that sticks up as a thread guide/holder before going round the first tension knob... then... if it is an "L" shape a) make sure it is turned the right way round, you should be looking at the inside of the joint. and then some machines like better to be at 10 & 6 o'oclock and others at 5 & 8. Otherwise the bottom looper thread is spinning out at a different rate than the others which causes tension and snapping. If you have a straight arm; try threading through the arm in the Opposite direction of the others on the arm AND on the "over and under" jon the body of the machine before it goes into the first tension knob, again, that sometimes help the thread feed rate. If all else fails, , have you tried using a different thread spool? It could be a crap spool. Sometimes the first time it's good to put a different coloured thread on each spool, so you can if it is looping right, if the colours suddenly change it usually means the middle 2 threads are misthreaded, Not necessarily the bottom last thread (even though it's snapping , it could be the others are knotting it, and then causing tension etc.)

And honestly, a lot of the time, the far right thread simply doesn't work well, so unless you REALLY need that look, you can just use the main first three from the left. We have an industrial Juki and the 4th never works, in fact in all the years, all the shops I have worked in, we usually don't bother with it! ;)