Shoe-sew′ing ma-chine′.
The
sewing-machine for boots and shoes was for some time made somewhat as the ordinary leather
sewing-machines, but these did not reach the inside of the shoe in a satisfactory manner to sew the upper to the insole, although stitches could be put on the outside which sewed the soles together.
The
sewing-machine in which a device at the end of the jack, inside the shoe, was made to act in concert with the needle, piercing the sole from the outside, seems to have fulfilled the requirements of the case.
The machine of the McKay
Sewing-Machine Association, shown in Plate LX., is the result of more than three years effort and an expense of $130,000 before a practical working machine was put in operation (in 1861). The number of pairs of boots and shoes sewed on the machine in the
United States up to the present time is two hundred and twentyfive millions (225,000,000), according to reports made by the manufacturers.
A large number have also been sewed on it in
England and on the Continent of
Europe.
One or two of the most skillful operators on the machine have occasionally sewed as many as nine hundred pairs in a day of ten hours, and any good operator can easily sew five or six hundred pairs in a day.
In preparing a shoe for this machine, an inner sole is placed on a last; the upper is then lasted and secured to the inner sole, and the outer sole is then tacked on. This outer sole is channeled for the reception of the enchained part of the stitch.
A large spool attached to the rotating horn is provided with thread coated with shoemaker's wax, and the thread, which passes from such spool about guides in the born, to a whirl at the tip of the horn, is heated to warm the wax by a lamp carried on the horn.
The whirl is a small ring placed at the end of the horn, and through which there is an opening for the pas-
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McKay shoe-sewing machine. |
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sage of the needle.
A shoe is placed on the horn, as shown in dotted lines, and the stitching is commenced preferably at or near the shank, and as the stitching proceeds, the horn is rotated and the shoe moved thereon so as to bring it properly under the action of the needle.
The hooked needle, after penetrating the sole resting on the horn, has the waxed thread laid in its hook by means of the whirl, and in ascending it draws a loop of thread through the sole and upper.
A cast-off closes the hook and prevents the escape of the loop, while the shoe is moved for a new stitch, and when the needle next descends it passes through the loop on its shank and draws a new loop up through it, in this way enchaining one loop with another.
Just enough thread is drawn from the spool to form a stitch, and this action is automatic, according to the thickness of the material being sewn.
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Shoe-shave. |
