Friday night, I saw a Bernina Serger go from $80 down to $20, on Facebook Marketplace, in my local area! I offered $20, she accepted, my hubby wanted to pick it up, before she changed her mind! Yes, it was DIRTY, and missing the thread tower, but had the pedal and cord, no guarantee it worked, but at $20, I didn't care if it worked!
Bernina 800D after UNFREEZING it, deep cleaning, oiling, and retiming, with stitch samples. The white thread was the chainstitch still in the serger, when I purchased it, which told me that it had been working properly, when it was left with the needles in the lowest position, then left to rust, for years. Usually, the secret to whether a serger is going to be fixable, is - did it have a thread chain still attached, even if the thread cones were no longer present? If it did, it is more likely to be fixable.
After repairs and oiling, test stitching, shown with 4 different colors of threads, shows that it works correctly, that the timing is right. Note, I had not put the front door back on, after timing it, when I sewed this stitch sample, and took this photo. I did put the door back on, afterwards.
My hubby helps me fix sewing machines and sergers, it is how I have good sewing machines, that I couldn't otherwise afford!
Lint is the enemy of sergers, left inside your serger, especially if you live in a humid environment, it will cause rust to form. Lint absorbs the oil and lubricants from the metal, and then holds moisture it absorbs from the atmosphere, causing rust. Time, of course, also causes the old oil to dry up, and turn into a lacquer, or glue, which can also freeze your sergers and sewing machines, into solid blocks of metal. This isn't actually a large amount of lint, it looks so nasty, due to the rust! This is before I cleaned it out. For a $20 serger, you kind of expect this kind of mess. (I paid $30, just because it was a Bernina and had the pedal and cord, even though we had no idea if it ran at all, and turned out to be frozen solid.)
These are photos of the Bernina 800D serger, with all of the plastic covers stripped off, it shows you the MANY inner working parts, which require oiling, to keep it running for years. There are 2 separate videos, showing the inner metal parts. Normal serger manuals do not give you instructions for a deep oiling, like you would normally pay a service technician to perform for you. (Some techs charge $100 to $200 for this kind of a service, but considering the hours that can go into cleaning and fixing a machine in this deplorable condition, is definitely worth it! Notice that while this serger was assembled in China, for Bernina, it is all metal mechanical working parts, inside. Plastic is only used on the exterior of the serger.)
After deep cleaning, repair, and oiling, I show a video of me serging with it, showing that it is correctly timed.
We picked it up, right before bedtime, and the next morning, I set to work cleaning the dirty plastic exterior (I can't stand working on a dirty machine, lol, so I clean before I repair, lol!), using paper towels and Simple Green. I may bleach the yellowed plastic, maybe, but this machine had clearly spent a lot of years sitting in an open box, in a shed or barn, or storage area in hot, humid, North Carolina, collecting dust, and rusting itself SOLID!
Despite the visible rust, this is after hours of cleaning! PB Blaster is what I finally had to use to clean off the majority of the rust, but then I had to remove THAT, and oil it, run it, to work in the new oil, and help remove more rust. Several cycles of rust cleaning, oiling, running, cleaning, oiling, running, eventually had it running very smoothly, despite some remaining visible rust markings.
I removed the plastic covers, except the front cover, it was trapped by the takeup lever, due to being frozen with the needles in the lowest position! I had removed the screws, but until the needles were able to be raised, I had to leave it in place.
Upper looper bearing was rusted, and frozen solid, so we had to remove the timing screw underneath the lowest point of the upper looper, but it still wouldn't budge, even after hours of soaking with TriFlow oil, cleaning, and rust removal, using PB Blaster! (My first time using PB Blaster) My hubby, Rick, a college trained mechanic, recommended it, and used a C clamp to carefully, gently, force the upper looper up through the pivoting bearing, so I could clean off the rust and dried oil.Notice, that with the front door cover removed, and the plastic bottom covers, we could fit the C clamp through the opening in the frame of the serger, to screw the clamp so it could push the upper looper, up from the bottom, by slowly turning the screw on the C clamp.
Rick sprayed PB Blaster into a spare lid, for me to dip my Qtips in, to apply it to all the rusty, frozen parts
Even with the pliers, and a rubber protective cover, I could not get any movement out of this serger, due to both old sticky oil, and rust, FREEZING IT SOLID!
Rust often forms where old lint sucks all the oil out of the metal, a good reason to CLEAN YOUR SERGER, after sewing, before storing your serger for long periods of time.
This Bernina 800D serger needed a new light bulb, of the narrow base screw in type.
Side view of lint buildup
Front view of serger as we received it
Rear view of dirty serger, as we purchased it
Simple Green and paper towels allowed me to clean most of the black and brown ick off the outside of the serger. I am not sure if I will try the developer, to bleach the plastic back to it's original white. The differential feed adjustments, stitch length adjustments and stitch width adjustments were all functional, despite the main linkage of the machine being frozen, along with the needlebar bearings and the upper looper bearings
PB Blaster did a very good job of removing most of the rust, but there are some marks remaining, where the heaviest rust had been. This is after a lot of cleaning and oiling. We ran the serger for several minutes, to help work the oil in, then cleaned off more rust, then oiled again, to try and remove as much rust as possible, and to allow oil to get into all of the working, moving parts.
Bernina 800D Serger, from frozen, to fixed! (NOTE- I am NOT a professional sewing machine mechanic, I am a hobbyist, so please use your own judgement in following my blogposts and videos of fixing my sewing machines and sergers. ) Oil isn't always enough, to free up a completely frozen serger. Because there are so many functions, which need to happen simultaneously, when a serger is allowed to sit for years, or decades, without being used, especially in a non temperature controlled environment, like a barn, she'd, or storage building, for years, or decades, the bare metal mechanical linkages can rust in place, as well as the oil drying out, becoming a lacquer glue.
Alex Askaroff, one of my online vintage sewing machine collector buddies, made a YouTube video, explaining that the needlebar bearings, and the upper looper bearing, are the parts which usually seize up, and those indeed, were the main sticking points, preventing this Bernina 800D serger from working at all.
Worse, the needles were in the lowest position, so it prevented me from removing the front cover, to be able to unfreeze the needlebar, despite adding oil, and even WD40 (which I don't usually use, unless oil doesn't free mechanical parts)!
I had to have my husband loosen some of the tightest screws, which included the needleplate screws, and the upper looper timing screw, because the upper looper bearing seemed to be the rustiest, frozen part. He had me clean rust off, with OPB Blaster, which I've never used before, he sprayed some in a lid, so I could dip the Qtips in it, to apply to all the rusty points. PB Blaster did an excellent job removing rust!
We finally resorted to using a C clamp, to slowly get the upper looper moving, after loosening the timing screw. The C clamp was a safe way to slowly move the upper looper rod, through the pivoting bearing, enough that I could begin clearing out the old sticky oil, and rust, and finish removing the front of the serger. The upper looper bearing was one of the rustiest parts. I continued cleaning with PB Blaster, then cleaned that off, with TriFlow Oil.
I repeated the the cleaning process on the needlebar, it has two bearings that the needlebar must slide through, to create every stitch. The main mechanical parts are all metal, steel, brass, and stainless steel, so clean off as much rust, and old sticky oil, as 0ossible, before adding fresh sewing machine oil, or TriFlow oil.
Using 4 colors of thread, to show detail better, I tested to see if the timing was correctly set, after we retimed it. The upper looper must catch the back of the lower looper thread, on the upper looper's way up, and to the left, as it goes in front of the needles. The needles come down, inside the curved "scarf" of the upper looper, and catch the thread of the lower looper, locking the stitches, as the lower looper carries it's thread back to the right, where the upper looper catches the thread off the back of the lower looper, and repeats the process, for every stitch. This is my very first time retiming a serger. Usually, I just have to clean out lint and thread, dried oil, small amounts of rust, and then oil the serger. I sometimes have to replace light bulbs, belts, electrical cords and pedals, but this was the first time we took a frozen serger, and completely freed it up, and had to retime it, after having dismantled so much of it. SUCCESS!!! HALLELUJAH!
