Knitting Machine Maintenance notes

I was lucky enough to attend a talk recently by Neil Collison, of Knitting Machine Repairs, at the Long Buckby machine knitting club, and took these notes. Hopefully they will help others who for reasons of geography cannot use Neil's excellent services. I left my faulty garter carriage with him - it would sit on the bed and make all the right noises, but only knit a few stitches and then sit there chugging away and not moving. He returned it very quickly and replaced a circuit board. The only hitch in the whole transaction was that my email provider refused to accept his, so invoicing ended up being done via Whatsapp!

Brother sinker plate

• Remove yarn from around brushes

• Brush wheels can be replaced with rubber ones

Lubricants

• Gun oil (not bore oil)

• Sewing machine oil

Retainer bars

• Spartan or Andeeknits in the UK, they are ordered in bulk from Germany

Maintenance steps

1. Push needles to UWP, use clean paintbrush to brush out the needle strip area and the back rail area

2. Run a finger along the needles, the latches that don't drop back are bent

3. Open all latches, push down quite hard. Use a piece of paper to flick the latches shut.

4. Return the needles to A position. Stroke along whilst pushing forward, this checks the needles for straightness

5. If any needles get jammed low in their channel, you may need to release the patterning belt to free them.

Cleaning

Neil uses a solution of 2 parts iso propyl alcohol to 1 part surgical spirits. This is used to soak stuck components eg stuck buttons (requires some carriage disassembly). Items should be soaked for a few seconds and then wiped off. You can also use the paintbrush to get the solution into difficult areas. Disassembly of the plastic lid from the carriage is done by loosening the brass coloured screws. 

For needles, use surgical spirits with a few drops of oil in a jar. Soak needles for an hour. You can clean needles in situ - when the retainer bar removed, wipe in HOLD with the cleaning fluid, push them down and put them back into position and clean off.

Use a clean paintbrush dipped in the oil/spirit solution to clean the front rail. You can also use cotton buds dipped in the solution to clean small, tight areas eg rails, slots on the underside of the carriage. 

If you are doing a full clean, use a cat tail brush to clean out the retainer bar slot. If you put a small 90 degree bend in the handle end of the brush, you can use it to retract the brush easily by winding it back out. 

Knitmaster drums: use WD40 to loosen seized drums (this was the only time he would use WD40). 

Plastic parts: Flash all purpose cleaner is fine for plastic parts

The carriage underside: apply the gun oil to the two large cams. Rub it into the grooves using your fingers. Oil the front and rear rails. 

Passap jaws: apply surgical spirit with the jaws open. Passaps take 6 to 8 hours to service. Brush out the needle slots with surgical spirit only and a toothbrush. When all has been cleaned, replace the middle 40 needles on both beds, set to N/N and “air knit” for a bit to bed in the needles. Add 10 needles each side on both beds, repeat until all needles are back in place. Repeat this with the pushers. Set front and back beds to alternate the pushers every row. 

Knitting machine comparison

There's been discussion of creating a record, a comparison of what knitting machines can do what, so to that end I started a spreadsheet here and a friend and I started to fill it in. See what you think! The link is view only right now, happy to admit others if they can add machines.

Knitmaster carriage from the underside

I'll state here that this is a bit of a guess - Knitmasters select and knit (or whatever) within the carriage, there is no needle preselection - so they are less obvious than Brothers. Hopefully these pictures will help anyone having problems with their carriage. Click on one to embiggen. This is a punchcard carriage with side levers.

Needles in A (non-working) position
Needles in B (working) position
Needles in C position
Needles in D (Hold) position


Plain (0) position


Lace (punchlace?)


Slip


Tuck


Fairisle

Brother carriage settings from the underside

Lots of people get machines second-hand, which need some TLC, and they don't know what things are supposed to look like on the underside. I thought I'd post pictures of some of my carriages in the hopes it might help diagnose faults. These pictures are of the KH260, which has the split-button / punch lace feature. Note that these are just pictures of the cam buttons being pressed - in order to make the patterning read from the punchcard, KC or SM would also need to be pressed (see later pics). As always, click on the picture for a clearer view.

Key:
Needles in A (Non-Working Position)
Needles in B (Working Position)
Needles in D (Upper Working Position)
Needles in E (Holding Position)




This is the underside of the carriage set for N or stocking stitch. Note that any needle in HOLD (the blue line) will knit back.



This is the carriage set to tuck - note that needles in B don't move out as far (ie they tuck). Needles in D and E position knit.



This is the carriage set for fair-isle. Needles in B position take a slightly shorter route and knit the yarn in feeder A. Needles in D or E position knit the yarn in feeder B.



This is the carriage set for punch lace - this is a very similar set-up to the fairisle one. Only later machines have this function. Both yarns knit together in certain areas, and the second yarn only knits in other areas.



This is the carriage set to slip - needles in B position hardly move and therefore do not knit.



This is the carriage set to hold - any needle in E position will remain in E position.



This is the carriage in N position. Note also the pink plastic part - this is the end needle selection cam. It's not always pink though, sometimes it is yellow.



This is the carriage in KC (Knitting Card) position



This is the carriage in SM (Single Motif) position - not available on all machines.

Buying a knitting machine, part 2

I got a comment on a post I wrote on an old blog I'd quite forgotten about here about buying knitting machines. 

"Good summary of machines, but I was hoping you would actually say HOW to buy them. Any reputable websites for buying new (I guess only silver reed)? Any brick and mortar places to buy new or refurbished machines? Any buying tips or reasonable price ranges (so we know we aren't getting ripped off)? I would love to buy a knitting machine, but in months of looking I have yet to find an online source that seemed 100% reputable. Suggestions?"

Well, for a start, I'm in the UK, and I haven't bought machines from many dealers here. I bought my SK860 plus ribber new from Andeeknits, and she kindly adjusted it under warranty when it turned out the back rail wasn't square. All other machines I've bought second-hand from Ebay or from friends. I can also recommend Metropolitan Machine Knitting. I've also ordered small items from Heathercraft and Knits n Bits. There's a good list of all the current stockists I know about on the Machine Knitter's Treasure Chest site, under M/c and accessory shopping, but I cannot vouch for anyone I haven't personally used, so caveat emptor applies here. 

As for pricing, well, it's a difficult one. Personally, I wouldn't pay more than £80-100 UK for a modern *(1980s onwards) punchcard machine, £100 for a ribber, and £200 for an electronic, and that's assuming they are in reasonable condition and mostly complete - I'm happy to replace small tools, but not to replace a vital component eg a sinker plate or carriage. But I can clean the machines up myself so am prepared for that. If you're a complete newbie to the whole machine knitting thing, it's worth paying more and getting your machine from a reputable dealer, so if something does go wrong you have someone to go back to and complain. If the dealer is an honest one they will have refurbished the machine and will have no problem in demonstrating it to you in person. I'd always try and buy in person if at all possible - you can then take the machine home with you and know that it didn't get damaged in the post. 

Now, when it comes to vintage machines (earlier than 1980s), I'm afraid they are just curiosity value now. You'll struggle to get spares and repairs, and if a major item is missing (eg the carriage handle), well, I guess it depends how inventive you can be. I recently paid £20 for a vintage Record machine, it's a glorified peg loom really but makes great garter stitch. Having said that, if vintage is your thing, and you're happy to take a risk, go for it - but don't pay over the odds! 

So yes, it's somewhat of a black art. However, you may not be aware that there's a big machine-knitting group on Ravelry - and those guys are always glad to look over an auction for you, if you spot something suitable. There's a whole list of useful threads here, but if you've spotted something likely, please start a new thread with a "is this worth a look?" or something, and include the link to the auction. As the group is international, it won't be long before someone takes a look and says "Well, I'd only pay xxx for that", "That's a steal, go for it!" or "It's missing the carriage! Beware". There's also a thread "For sale ads that made you laugh", reserved for us to share seriously overpriced or incorrectly labelled auctions - we poke fun internally at them. You can also tell us what you're trying to achieve with a knitting machine, and we'll recommend our favourites for something suitable. 

Of course, if you're lucky enough to have a machine knitting group or guild that meets near you, why not ask them? Groups often have a healthy trade in second hand machines, and they'll be happy to bring you into the fold. 

* For Brother, and for me personally, this would be the KH836 upwards as it has compatibility with other items eg garter carriages. I'm not so familiar with the entire Knitmaster range. 

Bits n bobs; Garter stitch on a vintage Record knitting machine

Life is continuing to be busy here, so I'm not getting on-line much. I've taken up Nordic Walking which is really fun in an effort to sort out my back/knee issues. When I've come back from a session I'm good for nothing except tea and slobbing in front of the sofa, a bath, and bed. There has been some machine knitting - notably, a one day's workshop with Manor House last week on how to produce hairpin lace style strips on a knitting machine - but I've nothing finished to show yet. Almost, but not quite. I'm part way through sewing up another charity sweater, and discovered last night that the second cone of brown acrylic wasn't at all the same colour. Drat. I've finished hand knitting all the parts for the bamboozle cardigan, so need to join the shoulders before I can continue adding the bands. I'm on the last front of the Blusa Queen, but it's slow going as I've got to figure out neck decreases (in lacy crochet). All of this takes time, patience, good light, good sleep, none of which I have in abundance at the moment. The sore knee in particular is disrupting my sleep, because the only position I can sleep on is on my back, and I prefer the foetal position. So I keep turning over and waking myself up in pain :(

Anyway, I made a very simple shawl ages ago, and have been trying to get a decent photo of it ever since:



It's some sort of very fine silky acrylic, and I made it by casting on 3 sts and increasing every other row. Because I had planned to make this with a lace pattern, and because the yarn is pretty much too fine for the lace carriage to handle, I resorted to hand transferring every other needle every 20 rows. It's lovely, light and drapey, and the photo really does not do it justice.

This was inspired by Tony Bennett's introductory talk at Dream Week - wire knitting with beads!



Again, not a great picture - the perils of indoor photography in autumn - it's a fine strand of wire knitted over 4 needles EON and there's a seed bead in every gap, every other row. This is all hand-manipulated on the machine, as the beads were pre-threaded and I couldn't figure out how to handle that plus the carriage - and it's hardly worth threading the carriage for only one pass out of two anyway. The KH950i is one of my favourite machines and not one I want to sacrifice to el cheapo broken glass beads that came free with a magazine. It went surprisingly fast once I removed a very curious cat (who just ADORED the wire) from the equation. It's long enough to make a choker or something and can be moulded a little to suit the wearer. I need to have a dig about and see if I can find some findings to finish it off.

And news just in, the venerable Texere Yarns has gone into liquidation. I'm gutted - I had my eye on some of their Good Fortune cotton but was waiting 'til next month when I'm more solvent. I wasn't one of their biggest customers, by any means - I've only ordered a few cones of Jura (which was lovely!) - but the service was prompt and efficient and they had just about every kind of yarn you could think of on their website. My condolences to the team - not the best time of year to be made redundant :(

---

I acquired a vintage 1950s Record knitting machine on Ebay some time ago - it's a very basic machine, the best description of it is a mechanised peg knitting loom - so no overhead mast and no needles. It can produce stocking stitch and garter stitch, and it was the latter I bought it for. Ironically, a few weeks later a local lady gave me two knitting machines to be donated to charity, and - yes, you've guessed it - one of the machines was another Record. The other was a Brother KH710 which needs a really good clean up and a new bar, but appears to be complete - if anyone's interested please email me! I've emailed TWAM about it and had absolutely no response so I'm rather annoyed about that.

Anyway, we've been having a serious sort out of the garage - himself is planning a man cave / gym / guitar studio - and he really wants the knitting machines out of his space (we shall see! some of them I'm keeping!). But I thought I'd get the Record out and have a play. The instructions are very sketchy - luckily for me, a fellow Raveller has made an excellent video of how to knit on a Meda, which is a mini version of the Record. Thanks Pirvonen!

Basically, you do an ewrap cast on onto a comb with pins, and mount it in front of the machine. You slide the first knob to one side, which makes yarn sinkers pop out between the pins. You lay yarn in the channel this creates, and then slide the second knob to close the sinkers again. Then you pull the knitting upwards and make the stitch (on the first row you have to do this with a small hook, I used a DPN). Then you pick up the comb (knitting attached, hopefully - pull it down!) - and turn it 180 degrees for the next pass. Simple.









I got quite a nice piece of garter stitch knitted - ignore the great big loop on the first row, the instructions said something about making sure you went a few pins past the first pin, but it looks like it wasn't necessary.

I'm not sure I'm going to keep the machine - it'd be great for someone who needs a LOT of 4ply garter stitch. The donated one is so gunked up it's only destination will be the tip, unless someone wants it for parts. But the other one is in excellent working order - although, I didn't try the stocking stitch comb - why would I, when I've a stable of more modern machines upstairs?! :)

Last night I foolishly cast on some more fairisle socks to be finished on the CSM. These are white with a red heart motif. I went for my first proper nordic walk last night and was so tired I didn't get started on the machine knitting until gone 9pm (which included designing the pattern on the PPD), so it's a moot point as to whether I'll have the socks finished for Thursday night. Yeah, I know, forgot there was an annual competition! On the positive side I've finally figured how to get switch 5 (reflection) to create upside down patterns - the KH950i has to be in 990 mode not 999 mode. Yes, it IS in the manual. But who reads those?! :)

Current mood: exhausted

MKKI day, May 5th, 2012

I promised to do a review of the MKKI day last weekend, so here it is. Apologies if I ramble somewhat, as mentioned before, work's been really busy, and the office move has meant extra chaos and stress - printers beeping all day because they keep jamming (because we couldn't locate the A4 paper to refill them), drilling, etc. I'm sure it'll all come together, but it's going to take a few weeks yet I think. Couple that with lots of quotes going on (which is GOOD news, of course!) and it makes for one frazzled steelbreeze with airhead brain. It will take me a week or two to top my sleep back up I think.

The original idea was formed as a result of two things - a meet up last year with various Ravellers, and also the idea of the workshop days that Manor House mk group organise. Bearing in mind that most knitting machine manufacturers are no longer in production, it's rather hard to see a live knitting machine in use (especially the Passap as it is not very portable). My favourite room at Metropolitan is the "museum" room, with all the vintage machines, and lots of the Ravellers have these machines. So, a vague idea formed that we would all meet up with our various machines and have a bit of a play on them. Of course, I would take all of my machines (which is almost in double figures - how did that happen?).

Getting a bit nearer to the event, I checked out the insurance aspects, and discovered that contents insurance  only covers personal possessions outside the home if you damage them yourself. If someone else damages them, forget about it - you are not insured. Then of course there was the electrical aspect of some of the machines - PAT testing would be required. With all the red tape to wade through, I can see why people don't organise more events. If the Guild hadn't kindly offered to let us use their public liability insurance, the event would not have gone ahead at all, as it would have made a loss - I would have been happy to break even, of course. I had to draft up a disclaimer to cover the machine aspects, and I visually PAT tested the electrical items before they were plugged in (which is all you can do for 1980s electronics apparently).

It doesn't take much to disrupt my sleep at the best of times, but worrying about the legal aspects, combined with work pressures and other events meant I pretty much gave up on sleep for the fortnight proceeding the event, only sleeping every other night or only getting a few hours. Still, it meant I lost 8 pounds in weight, and I got plenty of typing done. I rang Covknit in a blind panic, and she kindly offered to help out with the programme and the typing up. Couldn't have done it without her - lack of sleep meant my mind was driven to distraction, so clear thinking went out of the window. Turns out she used to organise events for a rotary club, so she was perfect, and logically thought of lots of things we should pack that I'd not even thought of. The venue wasn't as large as I remembered (thank goodness for measuring it up, and taking photos), and there was a large stack of easels in one corner that we needed to work around. This actually helped me decide which machines I must bring, and which would have to stay behind - and meant I could cancel the transit van I'd booked, because that would have come out of my own pocket, and being a bank holiday weekend would cost me more for the extra day.

So I took Friday off to load the cars and print up programmes and posters. As it turned out, had I gone into work I'd've only got an hour's work done anyway, as I had a dental appointment first thing (two fillings needed! Boo!) and the servers were going down at noon. I spent the day packing the cars and rationalising what I was taking, then making a trip to Sainsers for nibbles and supplies.

By 6am the next morning I was raring to go, and I unearthed the Cog with breakfast (works every time!). We were outside the venue and unlocking just after 8am - and HilaryGermany surprised us both by being there before us (she and hubby drove from Suffolk). I spent two hours unpacking and arranging things as everyone arrived. We had a sales table in the kitchen area with lots of magazines and other goodies.

rmbroo started off with a description of her vintage record machine, which is a glorified knitting loom that does garter stitch. Alas it doesn't work at the moment because one of the feet is damaged - they look like wedge-shaped door stops and control the tension of the machine. HilaryGermany demonstrated her Passap Duomatic, which I think could probably take a whole day in itself, they are such interesting machines. I demoed the circular sock machine, the Hague linker, and the Weavemaster. The latter didn't go to plan as I pulled the wrong lever and the warp came out. Yes, I had forgotten how ruddy fiddly it is - and it's not possible to set it up beforehand, because the machine isn't clamped down and would get damaged in transit, so it's not very portable. Kathy demonstrated her KISS knitting frames, which are very cleverly made modular knitting frames. Martync demonstrated seaming on the knitting machine and navajo plying using an electric spinning wheel. I got my garter carriage working and then tested three others - we couldn't get them working properly because we didn't have the right rails, but they appeared to function correctly so I see no reason why they shouldn't work on the correct machine. Cynthia gave us a short talk on tips and tricks she's picked up during her many years as a machine knitter. Bookishbee brought an MK70 which has a fascinating pulley device for tensioning yarn - no taking your eyeballs out with tension wires.

Of course, it was all over far too quickly. We were packed and ready to go by 5pm, and nipped around the corner for pizza. It was lots of fun, and I think most people enjoyed themselves. Not sure if I want to do it again just yet - I need to let the dust settle, and my brain/sleep to recover - but there's definitely some interest in another event like this. I think next time I would simplify it by having folks only bring one machine, and maybe bring a pot luck lunch.

Trying to set up a Weavemaster - this was before it went pear-shaped.

Demoing the Hague linker

Brother's toy machine - sooo pink, sooo cute!

Lots of knitting machines to play with.

HilaryGermany demonstrating the deco

The CSM in action

More photos here

Current mood: exhausted

More acquisitions...

I really should stay off Ebay...