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Comment by whythre | Hacker News Reader

In a former life I repaired sewing machines. Singer built a reputation for durability, and their old machines still perform much as you describe. Modern Singers, however, are bottom-of-the-market plastic chunks of crap, their reputation running off the fumes of a bygone century. Janome and Brother machines are pretty OK, a decent balance of lower cost with reasonable durability (some plastic wear parts meant to be replaced over time).

Bernina mechanical parts are incredibly solid but their electronics are as vulnerable to failure as everything else nowadays.

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My mother used to have an old hand-cranked Singer with mother-of-pearl inlay. Not as fancy as the really old ones, but still a very nice machine! As a boy I was fascinated by it, and proud to be able to thread it and use it! It always felt as if there was a slight element of danger (needle thru finger) to using it!

The drummer in my band is a sewing machine repair tech. His wife owns a largish quilt shop and they sell Bernina.

We've been practicing at the shop, and I keep wondering if I should pick up some electronics repair from him- he seems like he does okay with the mechanical stuff but anything electronic is generally out-of-scope for him. In general, it looks like interesting work and I was hoping to get him to teach me, though fortunately the music and audio work has been paying the bills this year.

I'm starting to get okay at fixing some kinds of circuits (analog electronics for music), but fortunately I haven't had to dig into that stuff. My assumption would be that it's much cheaper to replace whole boards as is the case with most consumer electronics. But I haven't looked into it, and so I am a bit curious.

With last few decades of Bernina machines in particular, techs are very much incentivized to replace failing boards wholesale. Older machines from the 70s and 80s don’t have the compact machine-built boards; in these you can replace blown capacitors, ect and that’s great. It’s one of the reasons you still have machines in operation 50 years on.

The Asian-built boards are usually the point of failure in the new machines (a distant second are sensors, but those also have smaller, simpler boards in em). A few years back Bernina actually lost the ability to claim they were Swiss-manufactured because the electronics were being made in Maylasia (if memory serves, this was back in 2017, I think).

> Modern Singers, however, are bottom-of-the-market plastic chunks of crap, their reputation running off the fumes of a bygone century.

This is very true. The one exception that comes to mind is the 44S, which is notable for being a solid piece of equipment, widely available for a reasonable price, and without electronics. I suspect it's an old design in a new case.

My mother left me a couple of Bernina machines when she died. I'm pleased to hear how solid they are.

Do you have any experience with or opinions of Sailrite machines?

Not the person you're asking, but I've got a little time on one. If you aren't pushing it and don't need a zigzag stitch and/or walking foot, you'll likely find you'll be as happy with an old cast-iron Singer. If you don't already have one, pick up a 15 -90 or 15-91 or one of the numerous clones (which in my limited experience with them are also decent).

I ran an old Singer 127 through a pile of fabric a Sailrite was struggling with. The old domestic Singers aren't industrial, but if you can't do it once, slowly on a 15, it's even odds whether it can be done at all[0].

The 15 (or 66) is a much, much more refined machine. Parts (bobbins, notably) are readily available, and if you find you do need more, you can sell it for what you paid for it. The Sailrite, IME is a clunky, value engineered version of what you really need when you hit a problem an old Singer can't solve. Once you get to that point, you'll know what you need and how a machine should run.

If you've already hit this point, I'd suggest looking for an old industrial machine on your local Craigslist or Facebook marketplace equivalent. The Sailrite is likely to piss you off with how crudely it runs and handles. I'm told by my upholsterer colleague that an import servo motor is a huge upgrade from a clutch motor. Especially if you're coming from a domestic machine with a variable speed control. On the rare occasion that I've used a machine with a clutch motor, it's a grab hold and hang on for the ride kind of experience.

[0] I'm explicitly not including things that require a serger, blind-hemmer, cylinder bed or other specialized garment/leather machines. The Sailrite won't do those either.

To add another anecdote to this thread, a few years ago, I picked up an old Consew 226R compound walking foot machine to do canvas work for a boat. That machine was a beast once I tuned it. Fast, powerful, smooth, quiet, and with a servo motor, had awesome slow and high speeds, would punch through anything. Its only real downside was the size, and it only did straight stitches. For canvas work, that was everything I needed.

I later picked up a Sailrite LSZ to do some zigzag work on sails. Compared to the Consew, the sailrite feels really clunky, even with the Sailrite servo motor upgrade. It's relatively rough and noisy compared to the Consew, and has less power. Main upsides are the size, and the zigzag stitch for sail work where you need some stretch.

I've ultimately kept the Sailrite because it's still pretty solid, and can be stored on the boat where I need it the most. If I was doing upholstery or canvas work in a permanent shop, I would've kept the Consew, hands down, it was a much more capable and pleasant machine.

The walking foot feature is very useful for heavy materials. I tried sewing light-weight materials on both of these machines and it was awful (bunching, tearing on the foot, can't use really fine needles, etc).

I'm particularly interested in zigzag capability because I want to make some sails for my boat. Are there any older machines you can recommend for this? In general I much prefer older machines--I have a lathe from the 1930s and a drill press from the 1960s, for example.

Oof. I cannot. My interest in sewing is at the garment to backpacking equipment scale. Everything I know about sewing sail fabrics comes from the crossover to the ultralight backpacking world.

I know I was pretty down on the Sailrite, but if you're doing diy sail sewing, it's probably a pretty good compromise for the job.

Background for non-sewers: all fabric stretches, but for most things on a human scale, you can ignore it when you're sewing. When you get into sail-sized products, you'll end up with puckering if your seams can't stretch with the fabric. A zigzag seam will stretch with the fabric. A straight stitched seam will not.

Further background: AIUI industrial machines are a lot more job and/or fabric-specific than domestic machines. And you also get into needles and bobbins that you can't pick up at Joann.

Your sibling commenter is likely more knowledgeable than I am. I was helping a friend doing some cushions for her boat. The Sailrite was struggling with the Sunbrella-type canvas. For sailcloth (on that size boat?) it probably would've been fine.

Good luck!

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