A horizontal thread holder for a vintage sewing machine

Making things most folks would just buy.

As an official old geezer, I find I need two pairs of glasses to get through the day. I’ve got a pair of bifocals so I can see the road when I’m driving and also be able to glance down to read the speedometer. I’ve also got a pair of single vision glasses to wear when I’m at the computer or otherwise working on things closer than arm’s length. I keep the glasses I’m not using in my shirt pocket.

Shirt pockets do a lousy job of holding on to glasses. I’ve always had trouble with the glasses falling out when I bend over to do things - especially when working in the yard.

That bit me really hard a few weeks ago. My “close combat” glasses slipped out of my shirt pocket and shattered a lens on the concrete blocks of the patio. That’s a nuisance, but not a big problem. I always hang onto the old pair of glasses when I get a new pair so that I always have a spare. Drop the broken ones off, use the old ones for a couple of weeks while a new lens is made, no problem. Until I managed to break my spare glasses the same way.

I wore my spare glasses with a black leather patch for the rest of the two weeks until I got the fixed ones back. It turns out it is easier to not see through one eye than it is to have one eye focused and one eye blurry.

To prevent that from happening again, I made a clip to hold the glasses to my shirt pocket.

Eyeglass clip

The clip has a frame of stainless steel wire under the leather. The frame is bent so as to hold the cloth of the shirt pocket tightly. One earpiece of the glasses goes through a sort of tube in the front. When it is all done properly, the clip holds the glasses to the pocket so that they don’t flop around on the hinges.

Now, as a certain comedian used to say, I told you that story so that I can tell you this one.

This post is actually about something I made for my Adler class 8 sewing machine that I made because the thread I used to make the clip kept getting tangled.

Sewing machine thread is wound on spools using one of two methods: stacked thread and cross wound.

Stacked thread is what vintage machines (like my Alder) were designed to use - that’s what was available at the time. Stacked thread works fine on vertical spool pins like most vintage machines have.

Cross wound thread doesn’t work well on vertical pins. It tends to fall and tangle around the pin.

Most of the thread I buy for sewing leather on my Adler is cross wound.

Newer (but still vintage) machines often had a horizontal pin adapter to use with cross wound thread. My Adler didn’t have one when I got it - I don’t know if Adler ever even made on for that model. I have seen such adapters on Pfaff machines (such as the Pfaff 30 I had a look at a couple of years ago.) While my wife owns a couple of Pfaffs (a 262 and 90,) we don’t have a horizontal adapter.

Correction.

We didn’t have a horizontal spool pin adapter. We do now. I spent this afternoon making one out of bits and pieces I had in the garage.

Horizontal spool pin adapter

I tried it out this evening - it works fine and the thread doesn’t tangle.

Here’s a closer look at how I made the adapter:

Adapter parts

The horizontal pin is made of a brass knob I had bought for a different project (fixing up a Kayser vibrating shuttle sewing machine) but didn’t use. There’s a long brass rod (scrap from a project from years ago) that I threaded to fit the knob. The rod is screwed into the knob, then silver soldered so that it can’t come undone.

There’s a piece of 10mm square iron rod (more scrap) with four holes drilled in it. One hole (5.5mm diameter) goes on the spool pin of the sewing machine. The second hole (4.5mm diameter) is for the brass rod of the horizontal holder. Finally, there is a threaded hole (M4 thread) at each end of the iron rod.

To hold things all together, I made two wing screws out of some threaded rod (left over from some project who knows when) and a couple of wing nuts. I thought I had wing screws here somewhere, but didn’t. The wing nuts are silver soldered to 15mm pieces of M4 threaded rod.

It looks all confused (it has three different kinds of metal, each a different color) but it all fits together.

Most importantly, it works.

I suppose I could have bought one from eBay or somewhere, but there are currently no originals available. I found an aftermarket adapter, but the seller is in the US (I’m in Germany) and wanted a stupidly high price besides.

Are you having trouble sewing with cross wound thread? Find a horizontal spool pin adapter for your machine or else get a cone stand.