Singer 328K (1964) - Another Side Quest

Remember this from yesterday? (Singer 328K)

Well, I didn’t anticipate to be able to report back so quickly on this one. Long story short: I needed a simple zigzag stitch machine for a project I am working on. I ended up grabbing this - a recent acquisition. I have other zigzag machines set up - but I try to use my entire collection.

The underside of my Singer 328K

As with all of my machines, I do a basic cleaning, oiling and greasing before I fire them up. I did that with this one. Some lint build up here and there. Some globby old grease that was easily removed. I plugged here in and this is what happened:

Singer 328K

It was moving slower than a slug. When I purchased it, it was in a treadle cabinet. At one point someone used it in “treadle mode”. This was honestly a cool feature that Singer did. You could drop this model into a treadle cabinet, attach the long treadle band to the flywheel and sew with it that way. But this also had the standard belt on as shown in the video. It is old and most likely needs replacement. That alone might solve the slow movement. OR - or and ALSO - it could be a foot controller issue. Which is super common in general. I don’t have time to do a deep dive on this machine. I wanted it for my collection but didn't have plans to use it frequently. In instances like this though, I make note of the things (parts) I need and the issues that I noted and will swing back around to them when I have replacements or time to invest.

I wanted to share this just in case there is someone out there trouble shooting this machine. Maybe it will help.

As mentioned in my YouTube short on this machine, this and the Singer 403 I was originally trying to use were budget machines. The high end model during this time was the Singer 401. Which is a much more robust machine baddie. I have two of them. :) I personally have only seen two 403s out in the wild and just the 328K you see here out in the wild. But being budget models, I assume that there were a good handful sold and are still out there.

I am glad I went on this side quest because I did end up finding something really fun in the 328K’s manual. It deserves its own post though. Check back in tomorrow!

-Thea