29/06/2014

A sewing machine mystery


Someone sent me a question the other day: did I have a manual for a Husqvarna Triumf?

I don't, but the question made me look at it again - it has just sat there as a nice "décor" piece for years.

And I found I couldn't figure out how to thread it. To improvise, I took the thread over the, hm, "castle"?, behind the needle bar, and on down through the tensioning discs. It works, but can it be right?


I compared it to the Victoria, which has two thread guides, loops, that appear to be inserted into the casing:


There are no unaccounted-for small holes, no screws appear to be missing. There is one screw in roughly the right place, but it is a countersunk screw, flush with the casing. On the end piece, there is nothing looking to be missing, either.


(click to biggify)

Googling gave nothing.
Is there anybody out there who knows about these old Triumf machines? Someone having a manual?

(There are a few more pictures of both the Triumf and the Victoria here)

08/06/2014

Multishaft counterbalance looms


...and some "different" configurations for the tie-up of horses.

I stumbled on Sue's blog the other day, and found some astonishing CB pictures.
I don't know Sue, but she has informative and picture-heavy posts about travels in India and Turkey. Because of the many pictures I will first link directly to the one I found most interesting, and then to the actual post. All links will open I new windows.

This picture is from India.
I have never seen this arrangement before: the horses are at the top, the pulleys underneath. It makes great sense, though! Here is the blog post.

Now two pictures from Turkey. This one shows only 4 shafts, but it also shows that our obsession with measurements probably is overkill...
Blog post here

Sue writes that this loom has 24 shafts (but only 12 treadles). What can we say? That we are hopeless wimps?
Blog post (with a couple more pictures of the same loom) here