The Mechanics of a Serger Sewing Machine

Video Transcript

"On behalf of expertvillage.com my name is Neal Jones and I’m with A Perfect Fit Alterations, 102 Main Street, Burleson, Texas and our phone is 817-447-3522. Just to clarify some of the things that we have covered on the serger there’s a couple of areas that need a little more focus. Some of the mechanical adjustments that are on the machine need to be understood just a little bit better, now of course it will vary depending on the kind of machine that you have, the brand this particular one has features on it but generally speaking most of this stuff is going to be very similar, there’s going to be a cutting knife, there’s going to be little devices to do this and that. We use some basic tools to when we’re operating this machine, these tools are not necessarily to service the machine, these tools would be used as a normal way that you would have to use them in order to operate the machine. This is a small Allen key which would be used to operate the two little screws to put needles in there and as we’ve seen by looking at the cards there are times when we need to remove a needle and put a needle back in. The needles that we use in the machine in this particular machine are just regular ordinary sewing needles so that’s a big advantage, if you’re going to buy one of these machines just check and make sure that the pieces the normal wear pieces that you have for the machine are easily available. These needles would be able to be used in your sewing machine and your serger so that’s a big plus right there you don’t have to run around looking for needles. We also require a small screwdriver, now the small screwdriver would be used to remove the two screws right here which would change our plate at the bottom, now for different stitches with the machine you may get several different feet and you may get several different plates, so for a particular setup the setup may require that we change the plate so that would be a normal way of doing things. Now as we come to the inside of the machine there are a couple of places things that we would need to do, when the setup would require we would then push this lever on this side and that will allow our cutting knife to be pushed and to drop down out of the way that will enable us to do decorative stitches without cutting or trimming the edge of the fabric. We also in the setups will require that we don’t use the little arm that has the feet that has the width of the stitch involved, it would make a narrower stitch with this out of the way and it’s a stitch called a stitch finger and it has a little narrowed edge to it right here and it is spring loaded and enables you to pull it and to drop it down out of the way so it would be out of the way of the mechanism and those two things would be things that you would normally use when you’re operating this machine being guided of course by whatever the instructions are on the particular card that you would be using. So then we’ll replace our cutting knife up here this is the moveable knife and as we mentioned before there is a fixed blade behind that one which would never have to be moved only under a service situation."