Woof!

When it comes to dogs, bigger is definitely better. More umph. Better bite and firmer grip. Wider moul. Comes with bigger feet.

Feed dogs for vibrating shuttle machines, from left to right: early Singer 27/28, Clemens Müller’s Veritas VS2, Bernhard Stoewer’s VS3.

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I am talking about sewing machine feed dogs. 🙂

The photo above shows three interchangeable feed dogs for vibrating shuttle machines – they all have the same mount but rather different teeth. They come with their matching needle plates, so look carefully when you need a replacement. Later Singer feed dog is even wider than Stoewer’s, for example. And there are many more variants out there!

The middle feed dog belongs to my main straight stitch machine – Clemens Müller’s Veritas VS2. It feeds well enough, but my little Stoewer VS3 feeds better and can use modern wide and long feet while Veritas can’t – it gets stuck. Since I mostly use Veritas because it’s a bigger machine, I decided to investigate whether I could upgrade its feed dogs.

Yes! As long as the mount fits, and you have a matching needle plate that also fits, you can replace the feed dogs! (Is it dog or dogs? I never know!)

So Veritas is not going to rob Stoewer but it’s getting a later model Singer feed dog with even more teeth. 8-D

 

6 April 2020

Two years on, and I got more VS machines and more experience with feed dogs. Bigger feed dogs still make for a more powerful feed which is a good thing in most cases, except may be when sewing very fine jersey – it gets stretched out too easily. I swapped feed dogs on Veritas just as I intended to do, and I found that a stronger feed was not necessarily a blessing for jersey. Notice also the shape of the teeth on those feed dogs – the Veritas original has less pointy teeth that are tapered to the back more than the other two feed dogs.

After some testing and fiddling, I restored Veritas original feed dogs and set up the machine for jersey. I chanced upon a Stoewer VS2 which is now my main straight stitcher, set up for fine and dense woven fabrics. I also now have a Jones Medium CS machine that has even larger two-sided feed dogs – that one is set up for loose weave, thick or heavy materials where large feed dogs really help.

And what of sewing the finest jersey? The answer is Singer 48K. It has small one-sided feed dogs, even smaller than the left most one in the photo. But most importantly, it has old style feed mechanism that is much softer than the new style found in VS machines (and all later machines up to the present day).