h a l f b a k e r yThe embarrassing drunkard uncle of invention.
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OK. How can I explain this? I just
bought
a sewing machine.
Let me expand on that a little. I'm
building a tree-house (this is a long
story), and it's basically a tentish
structure
on a platform (up a tree - hence the
term).
The tentish structure had to be made,
hence the purchase
of a sewing machine
(along with 23 metres of waterproof
ripstop camouflage fabric).
So.
It was, let me tell you, a revelation. As
cool machines go, a sewing machine is
about as manly a contrivance as you
could
wish for. There are rotating things,
precision-ground metal things,
dangerous
bits, intricate mechanisms - and (get
this)
it even has an accelerator. I was stuned!
However, there are some drawbacks. For
one thing, it's fairly quiet (though in a
precision-mechanism sort of way). It's
also easy to lift, and has a case of white
plastic. Finally, it comes with an
instruction booklet (rather than owner's
manual) which is couched in mystical
terms such as "gather" (which apparently
means "bunch up") and "pleat" (which
means "fold"). It is obviously aimed at an
exclusively female market. The slightly-
too-long look given to me by the
salesperson from whom I bought it
confirms this.
So.
I have a proposal. We need to create a
Real Man's sewing machine. In fact, we
can start with the name - it's a Real
Man's
Fabric Technology Platform. It needs to
be considerably heavier, of course, and
something has to be done about the
sound - more agressive, though without
sounding as though it's struggling. The
needle has to rise higher and be more
accessible to careless fingers, and the
threading operation needs to be made
more complex and require substantial
force, a special tool and the tightening of
eight bolts in the correct sequence with
a
torque wrench.
Then there's the styling. All the Fabric
Technology Platforms I could find look
the
same - rather like 1960's food
processors.
We need something which is angular,
with
mysterious louvred vents. Overall, it
needs to be lower and meaner. I'm
thinking somewhere between a stealth
bomber and an Alien. And, obviously,
the
built-in light should be one of those
bluish halogen bulbs that dazzle you if
you get the angle wrong.
For sale at the man mall
Man_20Mall
shameless plug [Voice, May 26 2008]
The Secret Life of the Sewing Machine
http://www.secretli...ewing_machine.shtml
Tim Hunkin's take on the technology at large. Note the squirrel-shaped one. You can never go wrong with squirrels. [jutta, May 26 2008]
Hello Kitty Sewing Machine Transformer
http://www.kittyhel...-kitty-transformer/
Kawai! (Fiction.) [jutta, May 26 2008]
Spencer machine
http://www.speedace...spencer_antique.jpg
much to my liking [xenzag, May 26 2008]
Map showing Manly
http://www.whereis....nly?id=AC6CA30F4AE0
I'm sure you can buy a sewing machine around there somewhere. [pertinax, Nov 09 2010, last modified Nov 11 2010]
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Annotation:
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Dude, there are some industrial sewing machines, like for sails and tents, which will sew your hand to the fabric in a heartbeat and have very technical, but reachable adjustments. If you need more butch, try adding a feed mechanism to a triphammer, like my Little Giant 50 lb. Which would "sew" wire through light gauge sheet metal if you set it up, and this is a tiny triphammer. You could run it on an exremely loud diesel engine and sew together sculpture or small boats. |
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//industrial sewing machines// Why was
this not brought to my attention before? |
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Dude, what do you take to get stuned? |
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Stune: vb. tr. To stupefy with unexpected
delight ("At this eleventh hour, as the mist
lifted, the half-frozen men were stuned by
the lights of the distant yakkeepers hut,
promising warmth, food, life." - Trent
Byshe-Pergola and Michael Pancreas, 'Early
Surveys in Northern Kazakstan', vol. 13.
Doubleday, N.Y. 1954). |
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//structure on a platform (up a tree // |
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//waterproof ripstop camouflage fabric// |
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Bowhunting or photography, Max? Sounds like a pretty complicated blind to me. Never understood the attraction to blinds, but they sure are popular. |
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You know you can buy off-the shelf, right? |
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If you were a real man, you'd use a hand stitcher for all 23 metres. By the time you're done, you'll have calouses you can use to bend steel, and enough puncture scars you could convince the average layman that you were a crocodile handler. |
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//Bowhunting or photography// Beer
drinking. Actually it's for my daughter -
it's a treehouse, not a hide. However, it
already makes a very nice spot to sit and
have a beer. Sadly, off-the-shelf
wouldn't really work. |
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purchase an old Singer, circa 1920-1930... they were still targetted to wimmen at the time, but they look cool... no fiddly plastic, just metal and wood. Seriously heavy and comes in treadle-operated, too. Bonus points for running it from a small steam engine's PTO. |
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... or fold over the edges and glue them, then rivet it where strength is required. |
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I love sewing machines, I've had some good time making hooded cloaks, saddle bags, backdrops, a tank bag for my motorcycle, etc. |
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I learned on an old Singer treadle, but, like Dylan, I've gone electric. |
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I thought I saw a Druid on a bike at the civic theater. That was you? |
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The powerplant should definitely be an air-cooled 2-stroke engine, maybe even a tiny 40cc V-twin, with a recoil starter..... should look like a model engineering lathe, lots of graduated handle-wheels, and places to put oil in ...... a grinding wheel to resharpen needles ..... [+] |
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Knurling. I feel it should have knurling.
And forged titanium*.
(* More expensive models could have real titanium) |
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I'd go with a good knurl. Also, vital
components should be held in place with
those recessed hex-head machine screws
that they put around the rim of filler caps
on expensive (and now on cheap) cars. |
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Jutta - link appreciated. However, I'm not
sure it's going entirely in the direction I'd
envisaged. |
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//vol. 13. Doubleday, N.Y. 1954// |
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My edition has 'stirred'. Perhaps there should be an apparatus criticus. |
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You have a daughter? Sounds like you need something that will be able to stitch titanium chain through armor plate if you're going to make something to keep her safe around your place. |
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I do, but I have no intention of keeping her
safe. I've removed the detonators from
some of my more unstable experiments,
but in general our family believes in
survival of the fittest. |
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// I've removed the detonators from some of my more unstable experiments // |
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<Waves hands frantically> |
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Oooh ! Oooh ! Can we have them ? Please ? We have some unstable experiments of our own and we can always use more dets ...... |
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There's a coincidence. I was wondering if I
could use some of your larger experiments
as detonators for my smaller ones. |
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Excellent. I'm just making a velvet
dustcover for one of the more elegant
devices - I'll be in touch. |
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Living in London is great for
treehouse-building. I built a playhouse for
my children entirely from wood (and nice
Victorian casement windows) taken from
skips. |
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Ah, the joys of skipping. My first laser
came out of a skip. No, really. |
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Ah, those happy explorations with lens, diffraction grating and collimator ....... |
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Ah, those long summer afternoons with
digital camera, servo-assisted mirrors,
tracking software and ants. |
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One of these days, MissBuchanan will survive to the imaginative age of nine, and the old man's det cord will start disappearing. Just a tree house isn't going to cut it, I think. |
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My nascent physicist of a daughter has
already made it through nine, and still has
all her own fingers and eyebrows. |
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Yes, but does she have anyone elses as well ? Check in all the cupboards for worrying-looking items in jars of formaldehyde, and under that loose tread in the staircase - a champion place for concealing trophies and prized posessions. |
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I've told her, no bodyparts in the house
unless they've been properly dried or in
formalin. |
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read this in the morning! - marked for tagline |
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+ Bravo! The instruction booklet on the one I bought made me feel kind of like I was dreadfully undereducated in the art of sewing. |
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I bought one to turn my kids holey dress pants into shorts. |
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(This is so cool - I wrote this anno on my phone!) |
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You could call it the Reaper. |
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Yeah, you would have liked the one they had at camp. I worked at a Boy Scout camp that used lots of canvas tents to house the kids and had a MOTHER of a sewing machine to fix them with. Forget fingers, this would sew your forearm to the canvas. |
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Oh and forget titanium. Real tools are made with cast iron. Maybe make it an accesory for a milling machine. |
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walrus penis and 1/4" hemp rope. arrrrrrrrrrrr |
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How do you persuade the walrus to get that close? |
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female walrus hormones along the "stitch here" lines |
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I never understood why my dad (engineer, ex. army) was into sewing. He explained that it was "just engineering with cloth". |
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The last fashion design project I wrote for
my students was called wysiwyg - what
you sew is what you get. |
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Ok. So a brushed gunmetal casing, added whirring sound effects, and exchange the traditional bobbin for some kind of magazine. |
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Furthermore, rather than the needle rises and falls vertically it could move on an arc-like path (until it gets close to the material to be stiched, by which time it will be entering and travelling perpendiculare to the cloth). It would look lie a terrible claw! |
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This I can go for. I particularly like the
entire needle-swooping concept, and
the thread magazine is irresistable. |
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I think also that we need to make the
entire thread transport system into
some sort of disposable cartridge
(magazine-loaded, of course) for quick
change. I'm imagining a pre-threaded
cassette with a disposable needle and
bobbin - just expensive enough to be
build solidly, yet cheap enough to be
throwawayable (think toner cartridge). |
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Also, I'm fairly sure that a multiple-
needle head will give a closer seam than
a single-needle one. |
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You need an Overlocker - look it up, you'll
like what you see. |
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needle armature mounted directly to the steam or stirling engine piston. Waste heat and steam irons the fold and pleat. |
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//magazine-loaded, of course// Belt-fed, shirley.
I feel also that there is more room in this idea for sintering.
I have no idea what sintering is, but many manly things have sintering.
And anodising. |
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Two words. Carbon. Fibre. |
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Manly devices have more writing on them generally and this writing is more likely to be in heavy, italic sans-serif typefaces and there to remind you of the device's technical specs - e.g. "2500rpm", "800W", "Turbo-boost", "Quantum sewing mode" |
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Never saw this. Very Nice [+] |
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Have we overlooked the necessary 'safety' equipment
needed to sew? (And shouldn't that verb really be
changed to "SO WHAT"?). Needle-proof kevlar gloves
(really heavy ones), some kind of face-shield, shirley,
for the flying pieces of broken needles, a fire-
retardant suit...just for starters. |
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Just because a great idea comes along and gets
22..make that 23 buns, doesn't mean our HB work is
through, does it? |
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I have a vintage cast-iron Singer hand crank that has been converted to electric. Very manly though I say so myself. Bakelite switches, knurled adjustment knobs and all. |
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Seems like Fathers are the Mothers of Inventions. |
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//Is there an attachment// |
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A turret head will easily accommodate this. |
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Does it then say "#%&&!, )&@%!~?" |
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...needs more cowbell, baby. |
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Isn't this just a reversion to how sewing machines used to be (without the lighting effects, obviously)? I remember my mum's old sewing machine was just like this. Chunky, loud, dangerous and great fun to play with. Plus it was on a cast iron frame and powered by a treadle, so you had to put a bit of grunt into it at the same time. I sewed lots of things to other things in my youth. |
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Protective gear should be prohibited from the activity of manly sewing. |
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If you can't get killed doing it - it's probably not worth doing. |
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//Protective gear should be prohibited from the
activity of manly sewing.// |
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You don't *use* the
stuff, you hang it in the sewing room (garage). Why
do you think they make protective gear for other
manly stuff like saws, welders, etc? It looks cool. |
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