Consew 225 Singer 111w155 Compound Feed Industrial Leather Upholstery BAGS Sewing Machine
Sewing leather, upholstery, bags, and other heavy duty sewing, is best done with an industrial purpose built sewing machine, like this Consew 225 that my hubby and I fixed up, for our son, and his wife, who want to sew leather projects.
The U.S. Navy, and other military, used these machines to repair parachutes and other sewn equipment, so their adjusters manual is easy to find online, when looking for a manual to print out.
Heavy duty sewing, of thick, heavy materials, would quickly wear out, or even break, most home sewing machines, and would be much slower, and less profitable, with the wrong machines. Heavier, and dense materials, can be sewn more accurately, quickly, and easily, with what is called a compound feed machine, which uses not only a feed dog system to move the fabric, but also, a two part walking foot, and a NEEDLE FEED system, which "walks" with the center walking presser foot, which provides much more even feeding, and stitching, of all layers.
This first photo show how this Consew 225 arrived, dirty, locked up, with lots of lint, dust, and old, sticky oil, missing parts of the tension unit, missing one of the hinge pins for installing it in the industrial table, and needing a major cleanup, and minor repairs.
It took a couple of days of cleaning, and oiling, to free up the frozen, locked up parts of this Consew 225. I used Qtips dipped in rubbing alcohol, to remove sticky dry oil, then oiled with sewing machine oil (wick areas) or TriFlow oil (metal on metal areas).
A few stubborn areas required a shot of WD40, immediately followed by TriFlow Oil, then left to soak several hours, then my hubby strong armed them free. We flushed out the WD40, and put fresh oil, once free, and ran machine several minutes without thread, to help work oil in, and clean out old sticky oil. After a few cycles of cleaning and oiling, the machine works smoothly, and quietly!
It had a 110 industrial clutch motor, which ran so fast, it could have easily sewn an unsuspecting new sewer's hand to any project, despite the finger guard! We replaced the clutch motor with a 110 brushless servo motor, with the smaller pulley, so it can be run as low as 100 rpm, up to 3400 rpm, depending on how you set the motor speed. (The new servo motor included 2 sizes of pulleys.)
We installed a new belt, tension unit, a new walking foot set (for regular sewing, it had come with a cording foot set installed), purchased new bobbins, a variety of needle sizes, new hingepins, and cleaned and oiled it, working until we got it unfrozen, and functional.
The finger guard was catching on the center walking foot toe, so I had to bend it up, until it no longer interfered with it, since we still wanted the protective guard on the machine, for new sewers.
These industrial sewing machine models do not have built in oil pumps, so you must oil them regularly, if you use them regularly. I use Lily White stainless sewing machine oil, anywhere a wick is used, because the bicycle oil Tri Flow oil, that many of us like to use for home sewing machines, has Teflon, but Teflon does not wick, so could potentially cause wicks to plug up. I still use TriFlow oil on regular metal on metal oiling points, or you can use sewing machine oil.
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| Faux leather clog after mending repair sewn with Consew 225, to test it, with new tension unit, and servo motor. |
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| Consew 225 sewing a patch of canvas under a broken faux leather strap, on a pair of clog shoes my dog had chewed off. Even with the cording foot, it sewed beautifully, size 22 needle. |
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| Test stitches on leather, multiple layers of canvas |
There are many videos (notice they are made by many YouTube channels, not all mine) showing how to clean up, repair, upgrade, thread, and use these heavy duty sewing machines, so I will include links to those videos.
There are actually SEVERAL brands, and model numbers of what appear nearly identical industrial sewing machines, because patents expire, then other companies can copy that product, so extremely good machines are eventually copied by competitors, and even get upgraded, with new features, so I will include several brands, and models here, that you can look up, and compare, to see which features you prefer, for your sewing application.
Newer models are more likely to have reverse, and take a larger size M bobbin, and a horizontal bobbin system, and hook.
Needle system designation 135x17 or DPx17
Consew 225 (smaller bobbin no reverse)
Consew 226 (larger bobbin built in reverse)
Juki LU 562
Singer 111w155
Singer 111-(many versions, Singer created many special purpose built industrial sewing machines, many that are not listed on the ISMACS Comprehensive list of Singer Sewing Machine Models!)
Consew 225 threading video by Coo Deville on YouTube-
BOBBIN HOOK CLEANOUT, OIL, THREADING
6:50 into video shows bobbin threading
Alexander Dyer's YouTube video on cleaning out the hook on the Juki LU 562 version-
Stitch length adjustment instructions start at 10:21 into this video "Consew 226 Everything You ever wanted to know about this industrial walking foot sewing machine" by The thoughtful Woodworker on YouTube. It applies to the Consew 225 sewing machine.
