Renovating an Imperia circular sock machine

Through one of my fellow members of the Woolly Umbrella spinning group I was asked if I would help renovate a vintage sock machine. The machine is part of the Stanmer Preservation Society collection and they hoped it could be got working for their Heritage Week this week.

Sue sent me a photo of the manual, but with little info on the machine apart from. ‘It worked a few years ago’, I was in the dark.

So today I packed a range of tools, oil and cloths etc and set off for Stanmer not sure what I would find. The machine was in a sad state. Not really bad, and most of the parts seem to be there, but it was pretty rusty. It seems to have been left uncovered and un-oiled in a damp shed for the last few years so had a thick layer of dust along with the rust.

Luckily the instruction manual is with the machine, but there is no maintenance manual. Having used one of these before I know the general points about it, but not the precise specifics. A quick YouTube trawl found some useful videos and it was time to tackle the job.

The rib dial was not attached and I didn’t want to address that in this session. My aim was to get the machine working well single bed first. So the rib dial stayed in the somewhat dusty and rusty spares box for now.

A thorough dusting helped a bit, but there was no air hose or even a vacuum cleaner so it was down to cloths and some blowing and picking the dust out of cracks. I dismantled the top tension and removed the yarn feeder. That was a bit rusty so some gentle fine emery paper was needed to clean it up. Next came removing the spring to allow the needles to be taken out and the dial removed. Most needles were slightly rusty on the hook if not the shaft as well, so I gently emery papered the bad areas and then soaked them in surgical spirit and oil for a while. Two broken and two bent needles were rejected at this point as too far gone to salvage. Meanwhile the cams were now revealed and could now be inspected and cleaned.

Once all seemed OK, if not in perfect condition, I reassembled the machine. Some needles still felt sticky, so it was a matter of replacing them one by one in the jamming areas to eliminate bad ones.

The Imperia sock machine being re-needled

Time to cast on with that horrible little ‘daisy’ claw tool. A job that I hate, but went OK in fact. Sticky latches caused several repeating ladders and miss stitching, but after some use, and easing the latches it began to knit properly. Only one needed to be replaced before the whole dial would work! So satisfying.

I want to get the machine knitting a reciprocating sock heel before I tackle the rib dial, but if that goes well next time, I hope to be able to tackle the rib dial after that. There seem to be some spare needles for the rib dial, but not sure if there are enough. We will see…

I’ve marked the dial into quarters; the half way mark was already filed of the needle truck. So far it’s working for a creating the heel, but returning the needles to work causes holes.

We took it to pieces again in better light, and found that the cam is a little with on one end, but I’m not sure that’s the problem.

https://youtu.be/T-0_rSJCrbw

Spinning fine yarns for machine knitting

If you have seen some of my earlier posts about machine knitting and spinning you might realise that I am keen to put the two together. I was given a fleece that is long-staple, not-very crimped and quite lustrous, but I don’t know what breed it is from. Its also quite coarse with well defined locks. The first batch I stove-top rainbow dyed, and spun from flicked locks. It worked OK, and I got a reasonably fine yarn. I also have a lovely soft, long staple Alpaca fleece, so I worked with the two as separate singles to ply together. This yarn worked at tension 8 on a standard gauge knitting machine.

However, I was determined to get it thinner. I started with the Alpaca, and after hand carding the fibres, spun it worsted using a double drive wheel with the lace flyer and was so pleased with the results. I got a 28wpi singles from the Alpaca which was quite dense, not light an airy, but I wanted it to match the coarser fibre’s density. To prepare the long-staple wool I decided to comb the locks on wool combs. At first I was slow, because although I have done this before I’ve not practised a lot. It was exciting to find I got faster quite quickly and began to get some lovely long slivers coming off the comb. After spinning in the same set up as the Alpaca, I have also managed to get the rather coarser wool to produce a 28wpi singles, so I am pretty pleased as this will give around 14wpi 2ply.

I have plied all of the yarn, and am waiting for the second skein to dry. Meanwhile I have knitted a tension swatch on the Knitmaste SK840 and can get it to knit at either tension 5 or 6. Tension 5 is a nice looking stitch, but the handle is stiff, so I opted for tension 6 instead. I probably should have tried between the two, but when each metre of yarn takes so long to prepare and spin I was reluctant to use too much on sampling at this stage. I will add photos of the fabric once I have given it a wash and steam.

The Knitting Thingamabob – mending a Knitmaster 700 carriage and knitting socks

Replacing the tension dial on the carriage of a Knitmaster 700, some tricks and tips to make this easier. Knitting socks and hand spinning yarn for machine knitting socks.

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Show Notes:

Although an older model, the Knitmaster 700 is a lovely machine. It is a punchcard machine and ball bearings so it slides very smoothly on the bed. One really nice feature is that it will knit intarsia without using a special carriage. Two white levers on the left and right of the carriage activate the intarsia setting.

Whilst knitting the sock, I found the tension dial was unreliable and replaced this with a secondhand assembly and this records doing this.

Follow this link to the accompanying video that shows how to remove the handle, cover, dial and cam lever, replace the dial and cam lever and re-assemble the carriage.

‘The Answerlady and Jack’ on YouTube are life-savers for machine repairs.

A trick for reassembling the carriage when it is difficult to get the tension assembly back into the carriage so that it will turn all the way round.

Never use metal things to poke inside your carriage unless you know what you are doing!

Mend the plastic carriage cover or any other plastic cracks, chips etc with epoxy resin glue. If you leave the cracks, particularly if they are around a metal screw head, they will quickly deteriorate and bits will break off.

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  Inside the carriage handle, around the screw hole

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  Inside the carriage, the mounting screws

Don’t use spirit on the plastic parts of the machine, use a slightly damp cloth to wipe these parts. Metal areas can be cleaned with surgical spirit (rubbing acohol) with a drop two of oil in it. This leaves a film of oil after cleaning. Make up a small jar and keep it with your maintenance tools so that it is always to hand. Use soft cloths and cotton buds to clean your machine.

Keep your machine oiled for the best performance, oil the bed every 100 or so rows. Invest in proper sewing machine oil or knitting machine oil.

Sock knitting on the knitting machine. Not being a keen hand knitter of socks, I revisit machine knitted socks made from wool yarn. Short row heels, short row or decreased toes?

Hand spun yarn for socks. Yarn spun from locally sourced fleece of indeterminant type, but definitely ideal for socks. To save time washing this filthy fleece I used stove-top dyeing to clean and rainbow dye the fleece. The resultant locks were nice to spin, but made a rather hard yarn.

Spinning yarn for 4.5mm standard gauge knitting machine on an Ashford Traveller, semi-worsted or maybe semi-woollen?

Use a waxing disk when working with hand spun on a knitting machine.

Combining commercial spun wool with hand spun wool when knitting a sock.

Top-down knitting

Today I finally completed a top-down jumper I started last December! I bought the main 100% wool yarn in Hereford, and the stripes are worked in two odd balls, one Noro and the other Icelandic. I’m looking forward to hearing it next winter.

Long Buckby machine knitting club talk

Today I had a lovely day with Long Buckby Machine Knitting Club. They had asked me to come and talk about my book Translating Between Hand and Machine Knitting and gave me a wonderfully friendly welcome. This meant talking about my experiences as a machine knitter was like sharing with friends.

I met so many interesting people who have interests in common and was pleased to see some younger faces on the audience.

Janet Collins, Chair of the Knitting and Crochet Guild was there and spoke to the meeting about the recent amalgamation of the Knitting and Crochet Guild and the Guild of Machine Knitters. She also gave an impassioned plea for members to encourage younger people to become members. She told me that if the Guild is not offering what young knitters want, the way forward is to find out what they do want and make this an aim, otherwise the Guild will dwindle. As there are 1,500 members this would be a real shame.

I’m now on my way home feeling a warm glow from the kind words and the opportunity to meet genie machine knitters with so many skills.

“This book ought to be mandatory reading for every new machine knitter!”

I came across this review of my book, ‘Translating Between Hand and Machine Knitting’, and would like to share some of it with you.

“This book needs to be on every machine knitter’s manuals shelf, in pride of place, no matter if you use Silver Reed or Brother!”
“Where was this book when I was desperately trying to learn how to design lace/translate lace cards between Brother and Silver Reed?!?!”

This book is absolutely essential equipment as far as I am concerned!

The pictures will blow you away and they only get better.

The details are absolutely in depth and extremely easy to understand with stupendously clear focused pin-pointed and highlighted photography and exemplary diagrams that compare every aspect of stitches, fabric, mechanics, of hand and machine knitting. 

It isn’t a how-to… it compares them and shows some GREAT visuals of them on and off the needles. Refer to your manual for specifics on how-to cast-on and cast-off. Basically, this book compiled most of the answers to questions I have asked in the past, questions I have hunted down answers to, and questions that I hadn’t even thought to ask. It is utterly fantastic.
Buy it! Buy it NOW!
I can not say enough how much you need this book! How much I needed this book… now if I can just convince her to write one on Passap…
No! I have no affiliation with the author… I wish I could say I know her.’

Thank you to B. Newson on Amazon.com

 

Machine Knitting workshop, Brighton TAG

Today I ran a workshop that introduced members of Brighton Textile Art Group to machine knitting. To give a wider experience both a Knitmaster and a Brother machine were used, one standard and one chunky gauge. The chunky was particularly popular once it was found that it can knit handspun yarns.

Techniques explored included shaping, fair isle, single motif fair isle, knitwear (again great for hand spun), holding and short rows and simple, manual lace transfer.

I took along a little circular machine to demonstrate the difference between the two machine types, but the real interest was in the flat bed Japanese machines.

After the workshop response were really positive; people who had thought they would hate it had great fun, and those with machines were enthused to go home and get them out. Unfortunately the workshop clashed with the East Sussex Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers meeting, so another workshop had been requested in the Spring or Summer of 2020.

Recent reviews of ‘Translating Between Hand and Machine Knitting’

About ‘Translating Between Hand and Machine Knitting’.

‘An outstanding read’

‘Here’s a new hardback book that’s packed with all the information a machine or hand knitter would wish to find.’

‘You’ll have no regrets, as this will be your best ever buy as a machine or hand knitter.’(Guild of Machine Knitters newsletter February 2019)

 

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‘Vikki Haffenden outlines the necessary knowledge, especially of stitch construction – the basic necessity for knitting by all methods’.

‘Throughout the book the author uses very clear diagrams and photographs to explain stitch patterns, techniques and equipment’.
(Annec Cartwright in Slipknot, newsletter of the Knitting and Crochet Guild, June 2019)

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‘I cannot tell you how much I adore this book’

‘Thanks to your work my eyes are open to the possibiliites of working on fresh and modern projects without having a background in fashion or textiles’
(Turtlemelon crafts, via Instagram)

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About Translating between Hand and MachineKnitting…

‘Hi, I’m Barbara from Italy and want to thank you for writing “Translating between hand and machine knitting”. It’s just great, I can now understand the differences between silver reed and brother. I have one of both but got frustrated trying to use the silver reed, so just stopped working with both… now I have the chance‘

Thank you Barbara, its great to hear your feedback.

From fair-isle to football boots

This was a talk that I gave at the Textile Institute. In it I discussed seamless knitting technologies, their historical roots in hand knitting methods, and the potential the ‘new’ technolgies are bringing to commerical knitwear and knitted outputs. The audience had the opportunity to handle samples produced on flat-bed Shima Seiki Wholegarment and Santoni circular seamless machinery.

This was in 2014, and since then mass produced knitted footwear of varying degrees of sophistication has become common on the high street (and it is so comfortable).

I recently purchased a pair of hi-top elastic knit trainers, with flechage (short row) shaping on the ankle and other technical knit structures on the upper and toe, for a very moderate sum. In 2014 they were still expensive and quite exclusive – so we can see the impact on footwear without looking further than the high street (or online shopping of course).

I recently heard of a business in the US that knits custom made climbing boot uppers, fascinating!

Follow this link to my media page to read more about the talk.