The ultimate transverse shuttle machine – Singer 48K

This has to be one of my favourite straight stitchers – the Singer 48K.

The machine came to me in a very well cared for condition. Much used, much loved, well maintained. It was obviously in use until recently – the oil didn’t have the time to thicken yet. I was pleased, of course, but wondered why the original owner never swapped this “unpopular” “obsolete” and “old fashioned” model for something more fashionable. After all, they had 116 years to think about it. 🙂

The reason for sticking with the 48 became apparent as soon as I threaded her up: the sewing. Yes, the eating of the pudding still works as the ultimate proof! 🙂

The mechanism

Singer 48K is a modernised version of Singer 12 or 13 – the machine that got the world to sew. Singer 12 came out around 1865 and was copied by everyone the world over. It is the ubiquitous transverse shuttle machine. It uses a long shuttle that runs from left to right (and back). After some 40 years of dominating the market, this design started to fade in popularity in early 1900s as new round bobbin designs were introduced – so much more fashionable! Oh human nature, so fickle… 😉 Except for Germans, of course, who kept making and updating transverse shuttle machines all the way up to WWII when everything stopped.

Singer introduced model 48 in 1900 but only produced it for 13 years, and only in Scotland, then moved on to more fashionable things.

In my opinion, this must have been a purely commercial decision because the design and performance were both excellent, and much better than similar machines made by other manufacturers.

In summary, Singer 48K has the following imortant improvements:

• The shuttle resembles the “bullet” shuttle of Vibrating Shuttle machines – it’s got a large tensioning spring and takes the same, larger, bobbins.
• The needle is now the “standard domestic” 15×1 type, not the old 12×1 (now extinct), and the needle clamp is modern too.
• The thread tension unit is improved, and there is a convenient release button, although still no automatic tension release when you raise the foot.
• The foot pressure assembly is upgraded to the modern type with a strong spring so that the maximum foot pressure is now greatly increased.
• The machine is larger than Singer 12 with a bigger harp space – more like Singer 13 “Medium”.

There’s a good article about it at singersewinginfo.co.uk with further details.

The transverse shuttle machines have old style feed. In my experience it is a lot less powerful than the later design that we see everywhere now, although on the face of it, it delivers the same action. The feed of new design allows to sew in reverse and feels much stronger and much more consistent across different fabric types. And much better? That depends.

The sewing

It depends on what you are sewing. You cannot sew saddle leather on a domestic transverse shuttle machine – the feed is nowhere nearly strong enough. And neither is the machine! Don’t be silly.

This gentle feed is excellent for delicate fabrics and guaranteed not to chew them up, like many other machines love to do (may be we should feed them breakfast first?).

Oh dear! 😦

The Singer 48K feed works fine also for all medium-weight fabrics all the way into coat-weight wools, but I haven’t tested it on dense felt. It works wonders on loosely woven or knitted fluffy and floppy fabrics – no chewing at all, and it feeds remarkably smoothly, so no gathers either. But you do need to change foot pressure for the different fabrics to get consistent results – the feed is sensitive to fabric type.

The feed dogs on Singer 48K are the same on most other Singer machines of the time: they are left-handed, that is there is only one long strip running on the left of the needle hole.

This means you can’t use wide symmetrical feet because there is no support for the foot on the right, it drags and hampers the feed. More importantly, it means you can’t use right-sided zipper feet because there is no feed dog strip on the right! But, in all fairness, zips had not been invented yet back then, so the problem did not exist. 🙂

But it is so noisy!

Beautiful sewing, but what’s with all the noise? Surely, this was the loudest machine ever! This can’t be right.

And it wasn’t. Upon investigation, the noise appeared to come mainly from the head – not from the shuttle as I first thought. The 48K still has the old design of the take-up lever – it is threaded through the needle bar and is raised by a spring.

Works fine, no problem, but it hits the upper end of the slot in the needle bar and then the roof of the head with a loud clank. On every stitch. The faster you go, the louder. 😫

Which is why originally there was a felt inserted just there to dampen the noise! But it perished in the meantime. So I installed my own ultra-modern synthetic sponge noise dampening system:

Not inserted into the slot in the needle bar – it wouldn’t stay there – but just threaded onto the take-up lever.

Not as pretty as a nice fitted felt, but hey – it does the job and is hidden behind the face plate anyway!

35 years on: the contender

Frister & Rossmann have always produced fantastic sewing machines. Their transverse shuttle models were advertised as “Improved Singer” and when Singer filed a court case about it, Frister & Rossmann won because they were telling the truth!

Frister & Rossmann advert, 1888. Click to read the article at sewalot.com.

Although they were not allowed to use that particular phrase in advertising any longer, they also didn’t have to pay any damages either – read this fascinating article at sewalot and another one at fiddlebase.

So when I came across a 1938 Frister & Rossmann* model D – their most advanced transverse shuttle machine – I grabbed it immediately. How would it compare to Singer 48K of 35 years before?

Of course, it wasn’t made by the original Frister & Rossmann because that firm closed in 1925. It was now being made by Gritzner & Kayser, who bought F&R.

This machine has the same improvements as Singer 48K, plus it has a modern tension unit with automatic release. The body is 3/4 sized, so a little smaller than Singer’s. This machine used a popular size and shape of a 3/4 vibrating shuttle machine – the “family” size – but because the transverse shuttle mechanism requires more room to the left of the needle, the needle to column distance here is smaller and the harp space is more like in a 1/2 sized machine.

The F&R mechanism itself though is exceptionally smooth – already introduced in early 1900s for the traditional transverse shuttle machines. The transverse shuttle cradle is sliding along a round bar rather than a square one like on Singer, and is smoother for it.

This machine is really lovely and I even considered keeping it for myself instead of Singer 48K. And then I decided to swap the bobbin.

Although F&R shuttle is not quite the same size as Singer’s, the bobbins looked identical to the naked eye, so I popped a Singer bobbin into the shuttle. After all, this is what I do with my vibrating shuttle machines – the bobbins are interchangeable, and I mostly use modern reproductions anyway.

The Singer bobbin seemed to fit the F&R shuttle well enough, but when I started sewing, I kept having trouble with bobbin thread tension – it was way too high. 😦 Then, upon a closer inspection, it transpired that the Singer bobbin was getting stuck when the shuttle was in right-most position, so the resulting tension was too high. Swapping the bobbin back to the original F&R one immediately solved the problem.

Modern reproduction bobbins had the same issues as the Singer one – they are all just a fraction wider than the F&R bobbin.

So with all its beautiful improvements the 1938 F&R model D proved less useable than the 1902 Singer 48K due to its non-standard bobbins and a small harp space. Singer wins again.

What took them so long?

The first improved German transverse shuttle machine with a bullet shuttle was introduced by Pfaff in early 1900s, pretty much at the same time as Singer 48K. I read on the all-knowing Internet that the 48K was Singer’s response to the German improvements. I also read however that the 48K was first and Pfaff copied it. It could be either way, I guess, or it could be that both manufacturers had the same basic idea to use the bullet shuttle and to modernise the head design in line with their VS machines. I am not aware of any other manufacturer using a bullet shuttle in their TS machines besides Singer and Pfaff that early on.

The other German transverse shuttle machines started to receive modernisations in mid-1920s, and were only “complete” like this F&R model D by late 1930s, essentially reproducing – with adaptations – the improvements that Singer and Pfaff made around 1900. Why such a delay, I wonder?

Singer 48K was only produced for 13 years, and at that time, and it didn’t take off.

Could it be that the fickle human nature is to blame here again? People that liked new things, moved on to the exciting round bobbin machines; people that preferred old and proven technologies would rather stick to the familiar Singer 12 design; and the rest who were curious about the novelties yet not daring enough to ditch the long bobbin, could move on to the vibrating shuttle machines. Could it be that simple? No niche for a modernised old favourite transverse shuttle? I wonder.

Well, my old girl was clearly appreciated by its previous owners, and it is being appreciated by me too. Black sheep gather here. 😀

Buy me a coffee 🙂