We don't need no stinkin' gauges

As some of you may know I have an old VW bus in various stages of restoration sitting in my garage( here is the video that inspired me to restore my VW). I dropped the engine out about a month ago and was getting ready to tackle rebuilding it when I decided I better make sure I had all the necessary tools first.  I did an inventory and had everything I needed except one very important tool...a torque wrench.  I was "trained"( using the word loosely) as a mechanic by the army so I knew the importance of a torque wrench but I was thinking I could get without one and do it by "feel".

I realize that this is suppose to be a quilting blog but bear with me.  A torque wrench is more like a gauge for how tight your bolts are.  It measures how hard you are pulling on the wrench to move the bolt and this allows you to set a bolt to a certain tightness.  This can be critical especially when putting an engine back together, but many mechanics don't use them because they have been doing it for years and think they can tell by "feel".  

A torque a simple but vital tool.

Funny enough some body decided to study this and find out if experienced mechanics actually could torque to spec by "feel".  They can't.  The number was like less than 5% of mechanics could torque to spec consistently by "feel".  What was even more alarming is that in many cases what the mechanic thought was "to spec" was not even in with a 25% margin of the actual spec.  Moral of the study, get a torque wrench.

What does this have to do with quilting?  Bobbin tension.  Most long and mid arm quilters do the bobbin "drop test" to calibrate their bobbins.  While many quilters will swear by it efficacy I am starting to think it is similar to those mechanics that torque be feel.  If you go to Superior Threads website you can find this nifty Tension Guide for Mid/Long Arm Machines.  Notice how those numbers change depending on your top thread and I am not sure how much a change of 20 mili-newtons would effect the drop test.

I use to be a drop tester, but I had a run of "tension issues" on my machine and I realized that my bobbin tension was inconsistent.  This can be caused by your bobbin winder or often just wear on the bobbins.  They usually drop tested fine, but my bobbins would vary in tension by as much as 100 mN.  Not a huge difference to be sure, but enough to cause slight eye lashing in the points and a less than perfect stitch.

A gauge every longarmer should own

Everytime I change my bobbin I now check it in my TOWA gauge and 8 out of 10 times no changes are needed (there was issues with the winder that have since been fixed), so I know catch the tension issues before they become a problem.  I find that my machine likes his bobbins set at about 250 mN and then I can run most any top thread with minimal adjustment to top tension, but don't take that as gospel everybody's machine is different.

By using a TOWA gauge to check and set the bobbin tension I remove on more variable from the equation making it easier for a consistent stitch.  Sure I could get by without a gauge, but I am smart enough to know I am not that good.  A TOWA gauge is a $100 well spent for anybody with a quilting machine even if you are one of the 5%.