Hi Thomas,

My wife and I bought a new chinese industrial machine off of
EBAY for ~$300. We were doing a couple of covers out of
Sunbrella, and her hi-end Pfaff machine was not cutting it.
Fifteen years ago we completely reupholstered our old boat
using her Singer machine, and it was not as good as the Pfaff.

The industrial machine will sew practically anything you can
feed through it. When we got it we experimented and were up
to over 8 layers of heavy Sunbrella without even making it
breathe hard. BTW, we are using Tenara thread which is a
heavy Teflon thread (impervious to UV). We could never get
the Pfaff tension set right for this thread, and finally
gave up and bought the industrial machine. Believe me, it
was not for lack of trying. Also, the Pfaff motor was
really working hard punching through four layers of
Sunbrella, and pulling the heavy thread.

The chinese machine is not nearly as nice as the Pfaff in
terms of fit and finish, but it sure can sew.

YMMV

Don W.

Thomas Wentworth wrote:
I have been reading Don Casey's book about repair, and upkeep of sailing
yachts. He recommends getting a sewing machine so that sails, covers,
dodgers, etc can be repaired, made etc by the boat owner.

I don't know anything about sewing machines.

Where would I get one? How much should one cost? What brands are good? Is
this something I can get on ebay?

Any help ?

Thanks,