The Adler class 8 sewing machine - A look at an original Adler sewing machine table
Resisting temptation.
Click here to see all the Adler class 8 posts.
My wife and I went to a sort of antique/junk shop this morning, looking for something our daughter asked for as a birthday present. We don’t often go to those kinds of shops, so besides picking up the thing-a-ma-bobby she had asked for, we took a good look around.
Lots of old tools, film photo cameras, china, silverware, and just general stuff. I found a Wheatstone bridge ohmmeter (but didn’t buy it.) There were stoneware mugs from a brewery (that no longer exists) that was located in the town we live in. I found an old gyroscope that may have been a kids’ toy or might have a been from the physics class of a school - if the woman who owned the place had asked a decent price for it, I’d have bought it. She wanted about four times what I thought it was worth, though, so I just explained what it was and let her keep it.
We spent an hour or so just poking around to see what was there.
My wife had jokingly suggested that there might even be sewing machines in the shop - but there weren’t.
In the last, furthest corner of the shop, though, I did find something sewing machine related.
Specifically, Adler sewing machine related.
There was a cast iron Adler sewing machine table frame hiding under and behind some random junk.
| Adler sewing machine table frame |
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As Germans tend to do, the table top and sewing machine have been removed so that the frame could be used as a decorative table.
Despite the rust, the treadle and the pulley turn easily.
It looks rather older than my Adler class 8 sewing machine.
This thread in a German sewing machine enthusiast forum shows what an Adler class 8 of the same vintage as mine would look like in its table.
The thread starts with a look at an Adler 8 from the mid 1920s - my Adler 8 was made in 1926.
The table looks more like a desk, with a folding top as a cover when the machine is lowered into the table. It looks like a really nice piece of furniture.
Further down the page is an older, cast iron Adler table. There’s a hand written number (76549) on the bottom which the folks there assume is the serial number of the original sewing machine. That would place its date of manufacture sometime in 1912.
That cast iron table looks like the one I found in the antique shop.
I’ve never had a chance to look at a cast iron sewing machine table up close.
I find the construction rather odd. It looks to me like someone designed a cast iron table, then added parts on to carry the treadle and the band wheel (the big pulley for the drive belt.)
The older table has a smaller drive wheel than the one from the 1920s. I expect the newer one to be able to sew faster. That big drive wheel makes a lot of difference to the gear ratio - I expect it takes that bigger wheel to hit the 1200 stiches per minute that Adler advertised for the class 8.
If I’d have been alone, I might have been tempted enough to buy the darned thing. My wife was there, though, and reminded me that we don’t have room for it. The later experience with the gyroscope makes me think the seller would have asked more than I wanted to pay for it, any way.
I’d have never thought that there’d be a piece of an old Adler in that shop. We’re relatively close to Kaiserslautern, where the old Pfaff factory was. If anything, I’d expect to find Pfaff sewing machine stuff in an antique shop. The Adler table was a complete surprise.
Since my Adler is going to stay table-less on its wooden box, it looks like I’m going to have to get cracking on that new motor controller I’ve been experimenting with.