Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Domestic Knitting Machine Maintenance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGElV8FPc9A&t

 

Have you got hold of an old knitting machine that you want to get up and running? Maybe you've bought a secondhand knitting machine or inherited one and you want to get it ready for knitting or you've got a knitting machine that you've been using that isn't quite running smoothly.

Maybe it's making some weird noises or isn't quite working properly. Or you just want to get to know how your machine works better and give it the proper maintenance to keep it running well for years to come. The good news is that you can tackle the basic problems yourself.

In this step-by-step video, we'll show you how to maintain most parts of your machine, how diagnose and solve problems and get things working smoothly. There are a couple of areas where you'd need specialist help, which we'll explain in this video.

This video is based on a Brother standard gauge domestic knitting machine. The model we're using is KH881. The rest of the Brother range works in a similar way. So this video is applicable to those two. Although the cover is different on the digital machines. Jones, Knitking, Empisal, Genie, Defendi, Creative, and Taitexa machines work on the same principles as Brother machines. For Silvered, Singer, Toyota or Knitmaster machines, most of this will be applicable apart from how you open the casing of the carriage and of the main bed.

Full Video Transcript:

I'm George from Knit Works London. We are a specialist machine knitting studio founded by Tim in 2014. We sell machine knitting yarn online and in our East London store, teach machine knitting classes, and have uh domestic and industrial knitting machines available for hire in our studios. This video is a complete guide to knitting machine maintenance. But if you've got a specific issue you want to solve today, you can jump straight to the uh any of the chapters I'm about to describe by clicking through the interactive chapter links in the description below. So, let's take a tour of the machine. This is the carriage. This is the part you move left and right where the yarn is threaded into. In chapter one, Tim will show us how to safely remove the carriage and put it back into place. In chapter two, we'll look at how to remove the carriage if it's jammed as you're knitting without ruining your knitted work. This metal part of the carriage is the sinker plate. If your machine is making weird noises or is very stiff to use, the sinker plate might need cleaning. Chapter 3 explains this or it might need adjusting as explained in chapter 4. In chapter 5, we'll look at removing the knitted carriage handle casing and cleaning inside to make sure it's all working in there. And in chapter six, we'll look at cleaning and oiling the underside of the carriage. These buttons on the carriage do different techniques. Chapter seven, we'll look at how to fix them if they seize up. This is the needle bed. Under the needle bed is a sponge bar which sits on top of the needles, pushing them down slightly. The sponge bar perishes over time, so it doesn't push the needles down properly, so the carriage will jam straight away when you try to knit. This happens all the time when people have got an old knitting machine that hasn't been serviced. In chapter 8, we'll show you how to replace the sponge bar. In the needle bed are the individual needles. If they're damaged, you can change needle. Chapter nine shows you how. And chapter 10 shows you how to check the needle bed for damaged needles that you'll want to replace. Chapter 11 shows you how to clean the fluff out of the needle bed and lubricate it so that needles move smoothly. Items or fluff can get stuck inside the machine casing. Chapter 12 shows you how to remove it and clean inside. This is the tension mast. The yarn is fed through this into the carriage to give it the right tension and control. In chapter 13, we'll show you how to clean it to make sure it's working efficiently. And in chapter 14, we'll look at supplies of parts and services for your machine. So, when we're knitting, we can always remove the carriage from the needle bed. We have a little dial just on the top right of our carriage, which we turn to CR, which means carriage release. Then we can safely lift it using the handle from the needle bed. We can pop it back the same way. We must lock it in before turning the dial back to normal lace. And that will lock it back onto the needle bed. Just move it left and right to check it's in the right spot. Now, it can be a bit difficult lifting it off and putting it back safely. So, if we look underneath, there's a little metal ridge that needs to line up to this metal lip above the needles. We need to line those up. And then it should lock into place. And then we turn that handle to normal. And that is firmly locked on the needle bed. Then, now we can take the carriage off both edges of the needle bed, either the left or the right. It's always good to practice this in case you need to take your carriage off when you're knitting big pieces. But again, we have to be able to safely put it back. So, if we see this little plastic ridge at the back of our carriage, that lines up with that piece. And that same um ridge need to line up with the little lip above the needles. And it should slide on quite simply. I recommend you practice this just so when you're ever in the piece of knitting, we can safely move the carriage.

Now, if we're in the middle of some knitting and we need to remove the carriage, say it gets jammed, what we'll need to do is remove the sinker plate first. So, undo the little screws that are holding the sinker plate to the carriage. Now, pull those off. Sometimes the needles get caught, so just you might need to wiggle it a little bit, but we're going to remove the main carriage the same way, turning it to carriage release and lift it off. Okay. Now, if we do have knitting on, we may need to unravel a few stitches. We may need to kind of catch a stitch or whatnot. So, we do that when the carriage is out of the way. Then, we want to put the carriage back on the same way. Attach the sinker plate with the screws.

And then I always recommend pushing all the needles fully out so that uh we know it's going to knit normally when we start knitting again. Removing threads and fluff from under the sinker plate. So quite often threads like to catch around the cogs and brushes under the sinker plate. So we want to know how to uh safely take those out. We're not going to use the main carriage for this. So we've removed the sinker plate onto a cloth and we need a good screwdriver set. So I'm just using a little flathead to remove the screws. So, I'm working along just undoing all these little screws, putting the screws just into the tray section of the sinker plate so I know where they are. It can be a little bit stiff, so get yourself a good trusty screwdriver and uh take your time. Now, some of these are plastic and can crack, so we need to be really quite careful. There's even some ceramic pieces on some of the brushes and cogs under here. And I like to just lay them out so that they're in order. And then I can check underneath what's what's happening really. If there's any fluff, threads, yarns. It's quite easy for yarns to get caught under here. So just work your way along. I've had to use the end of a needle. So just brush out all these little spokes on our brushes.

If you haven't done this for a while, you will find quite a bit filled up and often floods coils around, and I like to check both sides. The rubber ring, these ones have little ceramic discs. So, I'm going to pull those out and just check there's nothing in there all the way along.

Again, checking the brushes with the hook of the needle. just pulling anything out. These are quite new brushes, so they're still kind of smoky out. Um, but yeah, that's all we need to do. Give it a rub with a cloth, just a dry dry cloth underneath. This is just a little duster just to make sure there's no residue of fluff underneath where we're going to put them back.

And then we reverse the job. But I always like to put the cog on the middle first, followed by the brushes and then the little rubber discs. And the reason being the cog, the plastic cog in the middle actually sits underneath the other two. So they always want to go on top. And then by hand, I'll put the screws back.

can be a little bit fiddly. But using your fingers first just lines everything up and then I will tighten them with the screwdriver once they're all in place. Now, they're designed so that the screws can be as tight as can be because they can um um untighten as you're knitting with the kind of movement and the mechanics. Uh, it sometimes wobbles them loose. So, tighten them as tight as you can because they don't actually stop the wheel from turning when they're super tight. So as tight as possible, but you do want it to be able to unscrew later on. But I like to just do it as tight as I can get them. any

just check everything's still moving and doing what it's supposed to. I'm just checking everything's kind of attached properly. And then I'm going to do the weaving brushes. So the weaving brushes are on the top. We need to undo these screws. They're a little bit fiddly to get at. So, I like to just undo them and then they will almost fall out inside once we remove the screws. There we are. And then we will just do the same. Get a little hook, a broken needle or whatnot to scrape out any fluff that's caught in these. Working our way along. Again, these were cleaned not long ago, so they're pretty good condition. But these often catch threads and yarn debris, so just work our way along cleaning them out. Now, this is something you want to do after any big project or like every 6 months just to make sure we don't have too much thread caught in them because it can prevent them from working properly. If you discover you're doing weaving the weaving technique and you're getting mistakes happening, check your brushes. Make sure they're turning properly. Um, you can always buy replacement pieces and uh replacement brushes if they get too mangled and damaged. Um, but just a good clean regular usually keeps them in good check. Checking they're all doing what they're supposed to.

Nice. So, we'll reattach that back to the carriage.

Slide it back on and then tighten the screws. Now, the best thing to do is always just check if they're working and moving and doing what they're supposed to do. So, push out a few needles, knit a few rows. Jobs are good in.

Now, we're going to adjust the sinker plate. So, sometimes we may accidentally bang or drop or catch our sinker plate and it may unalign our cogs and brushes and things. So, it may start grating even though you've cleaned all those brushes and cogs from threads. In which case, we might need to just adjust the sinker plate. Now, there's six little screws in front of all those cogs and brushes. We need to loosen them. We're not going to take them all the way out. We're just going to loosen them. That will allow us to move the sinker plate a little bit. Once they're loose, you'll see it just wobbles slightly. I always like to pull them as far forward as possible. And then I'll tighten the middle screw. So that kind of holds it a bit in place

as far forward as possible. Tighten the middle ones and then I can hold in position and tighten the others. So if we ever accidentally drop a sinker plate or carriage, this might bang out of position. So just knowing how to do this can be helpful.

Nice. So, that's all adjusted and securely back in position again. Pop it back onto the carriage. And then we'll just test. It's in a nice spot. It's not causing any friction against the needle bed, and it's making a nice sound. Okay.

So, we're going to remove the carriage cover and just check everything inside the machine. This is working as it's supposed to. We're going to give it a little spring clean. So, we'll need to take off the sink plate mostly out of the way. And then we'll take off the carriage as we now know how. Make a little bit of room because we need to be able to get in to remove the handle from the carriage. So, we'll need a Phillips screwdriver, quite a a pointy one because there's little screws in the side of the handle that we need to turn and really get in. It can be a bit tricky. They are fiddly little screws. But once we've taken one out, try not to use the handle to move it because now we've only actually got one side screwed in. So, we need to be a little bit delicate with it. Take our time. This is actually weirdly fiddly getting these screws out. So a good screwdriver set is essential when taking a carriage apart. Once those little tubular screws are out, we can pop a handle out the way. Now, make sure we keep hold of those screws. Again, these are quite a rare shape, and difficult to find. So, make sure we keep all these pieces in a place we know where to find them.

Now, we're going to remove the tension dial. Pop with just a little screwdriver the top off the center. And then we'll need to unscrew Oh, unscrew there.

Nope. And I discovered that we needed a flat head here just to get that screw out nicely. A lot of the screws can take cross or flat heads. And sometimes you need to just try and see which works best. We can then safely lift out the tension dial. Then we want to turn it over because there are two screws we need to get at to be able to remove the plastic cover. And there are these two golden screws that on the left and the right. This one we do need a cross head. So I'm removing those. They're kind of a brassy gold color. So they're quite different to all the other screws. All the rest are silver. So this brass or gold colored screw comes out on both sides. And this is what's holding the past plastic cover to the carriage. When we turn it over, be careful now the carriage isn't attached. It will just lift off.

And then we've got the internal workings of the carriage, which a lot of people don't ever get chance to see. So, carefully take out the dials and the little handles, little holding lever, and little plane lever. Now, I like to keep them just next to my machine so I know which one's which and how to line them up. And then just check make sure there's no lumps of fluff in there. Make sure there's nothing caught, no threads, nothing's untowards with anything inside. So, I like to use just the little brushes that come with usually come with the machine. They're really handy size and shape. And we'll work our way around the carriage. Just gently brushing, not too vigorously. We don't want to be disrupting any of those springs, moving anything that shouldn't be moved. So, just a light dust. I'm not going to get any polish in there. I don't want to cause anything to seize up. I don't want anything to catch too much or interfere with the mechanics. So, just a light dry brush is what we want in there.

A little wipe on the little buttons, pushing them in to get to the sides.

Checking there's no fluff causing any friction between them.

So, if you don't feel comfortable doing this, you can always send them away to be cleaned and serviced for you. But if there's anything complicated, I re highly recommend you send them away because that's what I do. I can clean, I can add uh springs and things like that, but anything more needs a specialist. We'll put that information below. So, we're just inspecting the springs. I like to just use a needle just to check they're all attached as they're supposed to be. There's quite a few little springs in here. So, just check they're all still attached.

Now, we're cleaning the plastic pieces. So, that is the holding lever. Just checking it's nice and clean and fits in nicely. Nothing's cracked or come off. And the same with the little plane reset lever. Just checking that goes back in nicely and it's doing what it's supposed to.

Now I removed that dial on the top right corner and it was on a angle to be carriage released. So I must make sure I put that back in the same spot.

Just checking it's in the right place. Nice. Give that a little dust and wipe. Any oil, any dust or anything on there, we just want to clean, make it look nice. But it's all cosmetic at this stage, dusting all these pieces.

Now, with the plastic pieces, you could use a cleaner of some kind. Just be careful not to get it onto any of the metal parts. Now, at this stage, I'm going to put the brass gold screws back, but what I did realize is I left it on hold. So, the little hold lever is actually getting in the way of me screwing this down. And I was wondering what was going on. Uh, so you'll notice I'll turn it over now and I just put that back to normal. So, taking off that whole lever. So, whenever you're doing this, just check that you haven't left the whole lever on. So, it'll make it easy for you to be able to screw that back.

Make sure they're nice and tight.

And our case is back on the carriage. Just quickly check. There's nothing worse than putting it all back together and something's not quite back in the right spot. So, just check all the dials. All the buttons are doing what they're supposed to. We haven't accidentally put something back wrong. Yep. Put the dial back. Now, you might need to turn it around a few times just for it to sink into the right spot. You'll know what the feeling's like when you give it a try. But at one point it'll sink into its groove properly once you've turned it around a few times. And then we need to put its holding piece back and screw

the screw back. Now, this can be a little bit fiddly.

So line up that hole.

Now that holding metal black piece does have a little notch at the front. Now that needs to be straight down because that's what's going to be holding the guide of our tension at the bottom. So the little red dash lines up with that. You see? So we're going to put back the handle. The handle needs to have the little notches at the back. Now, they can be a bit tricky to to uh screw back in. So, try and line them up as best you can. Put one of the screws in, but you may almost need to push it down slightly as we screw and then it'll eventually line up nicely.

again. Once only one screw in. Be careful with the handle.

And then the other one. Again, these want to be nice and tight. If you ever have any issue with these screws, sometimes a little bit of WD40 will help if they're a bit too tight, but do be quite sparing with that. We don't want it to go too much on any of the mechanics because it can strip out some of the grease and oil that we want to put on our machine sometimes.

So, that's our carriage put back together again. Just checking everything's okay. Putting it back onto the carriage. Carriage release. Line it up and lock it in place. Sinker plate goes back on. We've just checked and cleaned inside the cover of the carriage.

So, we need to remove the carriage from the machine. Again, turning the little dial for the carriage release safely. Lifting it up. And I've just turned it over. So I can see all the channels, all the levers, all the moving parts underneath the carriage. And I'm just with my finger checking each one is springing back as it needs to. So when we were cleaning inside the carriage before, we saw all those little springs. Those springs are attached to those moving parts. So, if something's not springing back underneath, one of those springs has either either come loose or un broken off. In which case you'll need to get that seen, too. But we're just checking things are springing back because maybe actually a bit of fluff or grime has caught is catching that mechanism and stopping it from moving properly. So, I like to just clean things out. I've just got my little trusty brush again. It's really narrow. It moves through those channels really well. It's designed for kind of fitting into those kind of little needle channels underneath. And so I like to just take it through and catch any tiny bit of fluff because a lot gathers underneath here. It feels quite therapeutic as well kind of going through all those little channels and starting to understand how the needles pass underneath the carriage when it knits. Now, I have a little pot of oil. They come in little handy vials. And they're kind of well designed for just putting a tiny little blob of oil. Now, this is a sewing machine oil, so a really fine grade oil. And you'll notice I'm just putting a little blob and all the little mechanics that move. So, I want these little levers that move up and down and spring back to be well lubricated so that they can move very smoothly, don't get caught on anything. And just prevent any friction and wear and tear from happening. I'm also going to slightly oil the channels that come into contact with the needle bed. So those bits that we have to line up when putting our carriage back, they have direct contact with the needle bed. And so I'm just putting little blobs of oil in those areas so that those parts are lubricated as well. So I'm just checking I've got all the parts. And now I might even put some on the needle bed. So that little lip at the back and then that ridge at the front. A little blob of oil on there. so that those contact points are going to not cause any friction. They become a little bit smoother when we knit. I'm going to pop that back onto the carriage. And then the best thing to do is just move the carriage left and right. Try a little bit of knitting and just see that everything feels better. It should feel much smoother. It should glide that little bit easier.

Okay. Now, I like to check that all the little buttons and levers are bouncing back and doing what they're supposed to. So, simply pushing in those buttons and levers. I'm just checking everything clicks back to where it's supposed to. It's a nice little health check for the carriage making sure everything goes in. So when we come to do a technique later, it's not going to accidentally not work as well as it should. Now, this one a few weeks ago, the multiolor button wasn't working particularly well, so I had to give it a little bit of a clean, a bit of an oil, and now it springs back properly. So, whenever I was canceling it, it wasn't really bouncing back, but now it does. So, what I like to do to make sure and clean those little buttons and levers and things is take off the sinker plate and just check behind each little button and if there's any fluff in there, I get again my trusty little broken needle and I just scrape out and just check there's nothing behind the mechanism. So, I found a big buildup of fluff behind my multicolor button, and so when it was getting clicked in, it was almost like lodging itself in place and not sliding back properly. So, there was a big ball of fluff behind there. So, I got my little trusty broken needle, scooped out as much of the fluff as I could, and then it was working properly again. Now I'm just again just checking all those little oiled levers are doing what they're supposed to and all the buttons are interacting properly when I press them. So you'll start to see what's actually going on when we press these buttons. Again, if they're seizing up, you want to press put some oil on there and keep pressing the buttons, checking everything's doing what it's supposed to. Sometimes they might get jammed when you push in the button. It might spring back normally, but there's something going on when we push in that button. So to do a really proper health check, I like to really make it do what it's supposed to. And I'll press it in quite a lot of times. Like you see now, I'm almost like forcing it to do its action every time. And that will the oil that I put on earlier will start sinking in and lubricating those areas properly.

Okay. So, we're going to clean our needle bed. So, we first need to take out that sponge bar. Now, the sponge bar sits on top of the needles. You'll see them pop up as I remove that sponge bar. And this sponge bar is actually a little bit old. So, I think it's about time we change this one. Now the sponge under pressure starts to deteriorate and and deform. And so, this one has been in probably for about a year and it gets used very regularly. But, I have a brand new one. You can see the difference in the depth of the sponge. The new one is brand spanking new. So that's its full depth that it's supposed to have. And the one below is the one that I've just taken out. So you see it's almost about half the thickness it's supposed to be. So that can cause issues with our needles being too high.So yeah, we want our needles to be fully pushed down and really held held in place. And to push our sponge bar back, it needs to sit on top of the needles. So you'll see I'm holding down

the needles as I push in the sponge bar. I'm just going to check that my needles are moving normally with that new sponge bar in place.

So we're going to change a needle. Now, what I like to do if when I'm knitting or before I even start a project, I might check my needles. So here's a needle that has a little bit of a bend in it, the latch is kind of a little bit sticking. So, I'm going to take out my sponge bar. So, we need to remove that bar to be able to access our needles. Now, I'm just going to pull it out to the length of where it releases the needle I want to change. So we can follow the needles bouncing up. Now to lift the needle out, if you push it fully forward, you'll notice it should pop up at the top. So we can grab that butt of the needle and pull it, sliding it backwards out of the top of the needle bed.

Now I've got a new needle. I'm going to turn so the hook is facing towards us with the latch. And that'll slide down forwards into that empty slot. Once that's in place, we always tip it up so that it'll slide back into the mechanics of the needle bed. Now again, I need to hold down those needles to push that sponge bar back in. Doing a few at a time. I'm just using my hand to hold down the needles. You can use a comb or something though if you don't want to touch them with your hands or you may even want to wear gloves. So, I'm going to check my needle bed. So, before any big project, you might want to check that your needles are doing what they're supposed to. None of them are bent too much. None of them have a stiff latch because there's nothing worse starting a big project with an expensive yarn and uh a number of the needles aren't knitting properly. So, I'm just checking that things aren't bent. They aren't disaled. If they are, I just like to move them into a position where I can just check they're all doing what they're supposed to. Now I'm just going to brush the latches, which sounds weird, but what that does is it'll find if there's any of these little latches of seized up, if any of them aren't closing properly, because that might become an issue when we're actually knitting because the latch opening and closing is part of the mechanics of the needle working. If any of them are stiff, we might want to change that one, too. So, I found two bent ones quite in the middle there. That's the area that usually gets used the most. So I'm just going to also open them. This is quite a nice little trick of just using the tool just to slide along the latches again, closing them and making sure they're closing fully. Sometimes they might get a little bit locked. Now, a little needle is quite handy for just sliding in. It's the right measurement. And I'm just making sure they close nicely. So, I would recommend doing this before any big project if you're knitting big pieces. It's quite a nice thing to give your needles a little bit of TLC. Now, if they are a bit stiff, you don't necessarily have to throw them away. You could put them in a bag of oil just to lubricate the latch, making sure it's uh it starts moving properly again. You can always slightly bend your needles back if you've got some good pliers. There's no no reason just to throw away a slightly bent needle. If it is a bit too bent and you can't get it back to the right position, I always like to put them in my kit so that I can use them for a lot of the little jobs that I've been using broken needles for. I quite like to have a little stash of needles to use to clean and use as little tools. So, I've identified a few little dodgy needles. There's a couple that aren't the latches aren't opening and closing particularly well at the end. You can feel them when I am touching them. So, they must have caught on something, got a little bit bent at the end. So, I'm going to change those two. And then there's a couple in the middle. And one on the left that are just a little bit bent, the ends. So, I'm going to replace these again. Pushing out that sponge bar. We can watch the needles bounce up as the sponge bar is pulled out. I've left the broken needles fully pushed out, so they'll pop up. Now, I'm going to pull those out the top. Just put them aside. Like I say, if they're slightly bent, you can get a pair of pliers and bend them back into place. Or if the latch is a little bit stiff, I can put them into like a little stash, little plastic bag with a little bit of oil on that mechanism. We just have to make sure we clean that oil out. Now, this is a good time also to clean our number strip. So, these has our numbers of needles. Always really useful. And it's just quite nice to give that a little wipe. Again, I'm using my trusty brush. I'm going to use my trusty brush to slide underneath the needles. Now, it's perfect uh proportion just to fit underneath. And I'm just going to give that a little bit of a dust. So, put back our little number strip. Let's slide under. So 100 is at both ends. And I grab a couple of needles just from the end just to fill those central gaps.

Now I need to get some more new needles just to fill fill those empty spaces at the end, but for now I'm just going to steal the end needles to fill in the middle. I very rarely knit full bed, so a couple of needles missing at the end isn't going to be too much of an issue. And now the sponge bar goes back in again. Holding it down as I push holding all those little needles as I push it down.

Then we have a little broken needles. Now, these will probably become part of my kit. I like to have quite a few at hand at all times.

I'm going to give the main needle bed a little bit of a clean. So, again, my trusty brush. We're just brushing any fluff off the needles and the channels, things like that. And with my duster or cloth, we want this to be dry. Now our needle bed is metal. So any liquids any water based things can rust up our needle bed. So need to be really really careful. Now it might sometimes look clean but when you just wipe a cloth along it you'll notice there will be a bit of grease. There will be a bit of dust. And now we will clean out our needle channels. So, we need to take out our sponge bar. So, a lot of these maintenance things, we need to take out the sponge bar first. So, it's worth practicing that a few times. And I'm going to clean out the center of my needle bed. So, I need to remove the the middle 80 needles. If it was a big deep clean, I would clean the entire needle bed, but just for now, the center is a little bit mucky. It's the area that gets used the most. It's the area where I do most of my knitting, so it's actually got a little buildup of fluff in there. So just to show you, I'm taking out the middle needles, about eight needles in total, and uh taking one by one all those little needles out. Just popping it into our area, but it's going to get a bit full, a bit quickly, so I'll move them onto our cloth on the table.

Try and keep your needles all in the same direction just to speed things up when we come to put things back. Now, this will take a bit of time. And remember, these needles are sharp, so we don't want to catch our hands. So, just take your time. Don't rush it. Try not to do too many at the same time. Some people are really skilled at this and do chunks, but, yeah, I'll just like to do one at a time, so I don't want to catch my hands.

You can see my fingers are already got quite dirty. Again, they don't look super dirty in themselves, but as you start moving and taking needles out, you'll notice there's a lot of grease and a buildup of dust that tends to congeal.

I'm constantly in a state of messyness, so I'm always changing broken needles. Uh, giving things a little bit of a clean.

Sometimes it can get a bit tricky changing the needles where the row counter is just because there's a few little obstacles in your way. So just again take your time. You might need to wiggle the needle a little bit in that area. I had a bit of an issue just as I was doing it. I often forget that the uh road counter bits stick out and get in your way.

So, I'm just taking out the number strip because I want to be able to fully get in in the needle channels. Now, with a little old broken trusty needle, I'm going to just hook into the channel that had the needle in the little hole because sometimes there's quite a bit of buildup of fluff in here. If you can put your little uh broken needle in and pull out a lump of fluff, there's often, sorry, there's often a few little kind of dust gremlins in there, like balls of fluff. So I'm just putting in my needle, hooking in, checking there's no buildups. You'll find quite a bit in in the area that you knit the most, to be honest. A lot of the yarn will gather, not the yarn, but the fluff from the yarn will gather inside the needle as the mechanics of the needle pull it inside it. You just tend to get quite a bit of a buildup in there. So, I'm just going right along, taking my time.

I just found a little bit. So, I'm just turning over my hook so I can get in a bit better, get lower down. It can be oddly satisfying finding a big lump of fluff. And I'm trying to pull it through. Often they're quite long, thin bits of fluff rather than a ball. And so, I'm just having to pull it through a few of the little gaps to get it fully.

But things like this can actually impede your needle running smoothly. So, if you've adjusted your carriage, cleaned your carriage, but you're still finding quite a bit of resistance when you knit, it might be that you need to uh clean out your needle bed because there might be such a big buildup of fluff in there. It's positioning your needles into slightly the wrong position. They might not be running as smoothly as it should do. So, just giving it a spring clean like this will make it work and run so much better. Now, I probably don't do this as often as I should, but yeah, I'd like to say try and do this at least every year, every 6 months. If you're doing some lots of big pieces at the same time, a good clean will stand you in good stead.

Nice.

Now, I can see there's still a bit of fluff in there. So, I'm going to get my Hoover. So, we have a little Henrietta Hoover. And, uh, it's great for getting all those fluffy bits we've just pulled out, but then also running it over the top of where the needles were because there might be some fluff further back. Now, they sometimes come to the surface. You can see it starting coming to the surface. So, just really hoover in those areas. And if you start seeing anything come through, hover it in that area for a longer time and move it around. And that'll encourage it to come through. Again, it's quite therapeutic when you do this, kind of seeing all the fluff come through. But it's a good sign of a wellused machine. you're using what the machine was intended for. So, I really it feels quite a happy little job cleaning something that you've made some wonderful pieces on.

Little circular motions again just to encourage any fluff coming through to fully come through the top. And there's a few bits that are starting to come through, but not properly. So, I'm just getting my needle to hook those, hooking them up, and pulling them through. And then Henrietta can hoover them properly.

Now, I've just done a small section in the center of my needle bed, but I recommend every so often do the full bed. But for me, these machines mainly get used for smaller sample pieces. We have other machines that we do more full garment pieces. This is this is one of our class machines. So this gets used a lot in our classes in which we knit a lot more smaller pieces. So that's why I'm focusing on the center.

So we've removed all that fluff and so now I can safely put back my needles. Now, if these are particularly oily, we can just give them a little wipe as we put them back.

Just a tiny little clean, but I'm going to just generally put these back.  I don't need to wipe them all again. Sliding it in the top, pushing all the way forward, and then tipping it back to push back into its proper place. It'll take a little bit of practice to do this. So, it's actually really good when you're first learning to change needles to give it a little clean so that you've got quite a few to practice with and then you'll become really confident when you're actually just generally changing needles and doing things like that, there's nothing better than practice.

And it's just helpful that all the needles are in the same direction when we take them out, so I'm not having to just constantly turn them all over. Again,

remember these have got sharp little hooks and little delicate latches. So, be quite careful when you holding them. We don't want to catch our fingers. And like you can see, my fingers are a little bit mucky now, so I'll need to wash my hands properly afterwards. Just a bit of soap and water will do. Now, you can buy replacement needles pretty easily. We'll leave the the details uh with below with the video and

they're easy to change, easy to get replacements. Don't worry if you break or bend them, like I say, if they do get a bit bent, you can try and bend them back, but if not, always have a few spare needles on hand  just in case. You don't want to be in the middle of a project and then you've actually broken a few needles.

Nice. Going to put back my number strip again. It slides underneath the needles. A little clean.

Bit of a wipe. This is invaluable when you're doing a project just to know where you are. And my new sponge bar I'm going to slide back in again, remembering to push back down the needles so that the sponge bar sits on the top.

And now quite often people forget to oil the needles. Now I like to just put a little blob of oil along the top, that will just catch on the little butt of the needle and it'll slowly work its way into the mechanics as the needle moves and gets used. So, the best thing to do push out the needles into working just so that they're going to engage that oil and knit a few rows. So, there's nothing better than making your machine work to lubricate itself. So, you can see I don't have my sinker plate on. That's not that important, but I'm just knitting every needle that I've just oiled. And as I knit, that oil will move along that needle. And I'm pushing it back into out of action. And I'll just give it a slight wipe. So any of that excess oil that's on the top of the needles I'm just removing. So the oil we want is on the needle and any excess we just wipe away. Removing the casing from the main needle bed and cleaning inside. So there a few little screws on the plastic back section. I've just using a flathead screwdriver to remove the one on the left hand side. the one just off center on the right. And uh just unscrew these. Keep this the little screws safe because they're quite specific. And then the two that are just behind the punch card slot. Again, these ones are a little bit longer and they're very specific, so keep a good eye on these. So, I like to place them all in a row in order just so that I don't get them mixed up and accidentally try and use the wrong screw. There's also a few little buttons and latches that we'll need to catch. I need to get a small screwdriver here to be able to pop off the little locking lever on the punch card section. Just checking all of these little ones on the knit leader on these ones. The little green sliding buttons need to pop off before we take the back off.

The end section removes quite nicely. Just put that to the side.

Now, this one I did actually miss a screw. And there's a screw right in the middle of that green section. So, just take that one out as well.

Now, this one can be a bit fiddly to take the plastic off, mainly because we have the little catching levers of the row counter and the knit leader. So, I'm going to slightly move it and then just slide those little little bits to the side so you can take it off. And that comes off quite easily once you've moved those out the way. So, now the back is exposed. You can probably see lots of bits and pieces in there. I'm always losing punch card clips, little needles, sewing needles, transfer needles, things sometimes just slide in. There will also be quite a bit of fluff. A little pair of pliers sometimes make it easier to get get little bits and bobs. So, that was actually a little crochet hook from beading that accidentally slid in. I'm just checking around making sure. Uh, I'm always losing punch card clips. So, you often find uh a few dozen in there. There's actually a needle that slipped in, it can be a little bit like operation surgery. Going around seeing all these different things. So, yeah, there was a punch card clip in there. And then just with a a paintbrush, obviously a nice clean paintbrush, I just like to rumage around and get any fluff that's in there. So yes, so with a paintbrush, I just like to go around all the different areas and make sure that I can catch any big balls of fluff and I can brush out any bits that might impede any working mechanism. I'm finding a big ball of fluff there. I'm going to actually use two paint brushes together. Bit like chopsticks to grab that out.

We don't want those big balls of fluff in there.

So, just take your time. Any part you can see, any fluffy bits we can catch, we'll try and get.

It's also a good time to just check that everything looks like what it's supposed to. Nothing's broken. The punch card belt hasn't unattached. Everything's moving as it's supposed to. So, looking at the punch card reader, just giving that a little dust with the paintbrush as well. So, we don't want any fluff getting in that mechanism.

There is quite a lot of mechanism due to the knit leader built in on these KH88 ones. So it can be difficult to get underneath, but there's little holes we can get in. And I think I've just found another little ball of fluff in there.

A nice fluffy brush usually catches any flossy bits. They can be fiddly when they're in little holes and things like that.

Just take your time. Work your way around. If you spy any fluffy bits, try and catch it.

Now, these are just cheap paint brushes that I bought from a little craft store. They were in a big pack, so I like to use these things for getting any fluff. And then I'm just using some needle end pliers to get in. Just so I can grab a pair of tweezers will do the same thing. Uh, just to get those awkward to get balls of fluff that are trapped in there. So, once I've cleared out all the fluff, I just want to check that all the little buttons, all the little levers are doing what they're supposed to. So, I just check everything's in place. Lift things up, turn things, make sure mechanisms are turning.

So, anything that moves, we want to see that it's doing what it's supposed to. But whenever I just anything any cleaning, I like to check that the mechanisms are working. All the little pieces are ticking over as we go past when we knit. So, you can create that mechanism movement by hand. And just look underneath. I like to just use a needle, a spare needle. Again, they're just such useful little tools. So, keep hold of all your little spare, broken or bent needles. It allows us to, you know, poke in and see that everything's doing what it's supposed to. Now, to put them back, this uh you can see actually on the left hand side, the back of my carriage has got a bit of a dent in there. So, it can be tricky to put it back. That little dent really does push out the cover in that area. So, I just have to be careful as I put it back. 

So, I will try and put the end piece in. And it slots in over the top. You'll notice on the join it just sits high. It must push in at the end first. Now, I don't realize it at this moment, but that little dent at the back has actually pushed  mine out of alignment slightly. But I'll put my little screws back in as best I can. And now I've just noticed that my little alignment isn't right. And that's because the dent on that right hand side, sorry, that left hand side is stopping it from getting in the right spot. So, I need to take it off again and realign it. So, these things happen. Uh, you just have to be careful as you put them on and off. Try not to force anything that doesn't want to go in. And what I'm trying to do here, there's a little lip on this cover that needs to go into the back left side, but it's that little indentation at the back. I haven't noticed it just yet. I'm wondering what's going on. But clearly from seeing the video above, you can see that indentation at the back. That's just the bang it's received over the years from working hard.  I just hadn't realized it was stopping that case from clicking in properly. So, I'm just giving it a little go again, seeing what's happening, and then I will notice in a second. And I think that is my Eureka moment. So, I'm just getting a screw in there and slightly bending that back out just so that my case now goes in as it's supposed to.

It's quite good to have a check all around making sure these things are doing what they're supposed to. you will find those little trigger levers from the row counter and the this inbuilt knit leader can be a little bit fiddly. So, uh yeah, a little screwdriver to pop them into place.

And again, make sure the lip on the right hand side of this one pops in. And then the little button from the uh punch card reader uh is popped through. And then we can put in our screws. So there's that central screw that I forgot at the beginning. And then the two little small screws. I nearly popped it into the [laughter] into the tension mass hold, which would have been a bit of silly mistake. But the tiny little screws that are on the cream back section, I'm going to put those in first. locking them in place

and then put those little green slider levers back where they belong. So laying them out roughly in the order does become really useful. Now the two longer screws that are over the punch card section holding that end piece on I'll put in. I'll take a bit more screen with them being a bit longer. But we want this all to be nice and secure.

This hopefully will be work a bit nicer now. It's all clean inside. There isn't any of that fluff to accidentally get in any mechanism.

Yeah. And now I want to put my little  locking stretching lever on my punch card section. It can be a bit fiddly, but they slide on. And then I'm going to give as a little little TLC bit of a clean just a nice dry  dust cloth rubbing all the uh plastic cover. Now, we don't want to really use any kind of uh liquids on our knit machines too much. You can a little bit on the plastic sections. But I think just a little dry cloth, something that's abrasive like a dust cloth or one of those microfiber cloths are usually really good for wiping these things down. It's usually just grease and almost like oil from your hands and things that marks the machines. So, we'll just go along giving everything a little bit of a wipe and making sure everything is dustfree as best we can. I particularly like the discoloration. These machines were probably a lot lighter when they were new. Or they were a lot lighter when they're new, but over the years that kind of plastic has discolored into kind of quite a retro cream color, which I really enjoy, and I particularly like this model of machine because of that green banding which is on the carriage and on the the main bed. It looks really retro, which I really like. And so, yeah, giving it all a nice little wipe.

My little row counter has popped in again as I've cleaned it. Just pop it out. And there we are. We've opened up the back, got rid of any fluff from inside, and given it a good little wipe. Now, it's always important again just checking everything is doing what it's supposed to. Checking the row count is rowing rolling as we take our carriage across. All our needles are doing what they're supposed to and any fluffy bits are out the way. The carriage is on. We're ready to knit. The last important section of our machine to clean is the tension mast. Now, these often look on the outside to be quite thread and fluff free, but I'm going to just show you how we can check any of the mechanisms and not working properly. We can get rid of any fluff and whatnot. So, first of all, I'm going to remove the the takeup springs. I like to think them as the kind of the bouncy antenna really, they just slide out. You pull the clips at the bottom of those and they slide out. So you can easily replace those. I'm just going to go around the head of the tension mass and check that nothing is in there. Now with quite a pointy Phillips screwdriver, I'm going to take the end of one of those springs. So the little cream dial on both sides, they'll see you'll see a little screw at the end. And if we take that one out, and you'll also notice there's a tiny little almost concave disc holding that in. If you pop that out,

yep, that pops off, then the little cream dial will come off. And sometimes you'll find little fluffy bits in there. So if you get a pliers, a little needle that nose pliers in there, you can get a little buildup of fluff. Now yarn's passing through that tension piece it releases lots of fibers which can get caught in there. It can affect the tension. So if you've noticed one of your tension dials isn't grabbing or gripping your yarn as it normally would, it might be that you've got a buildup of thread in there. So, just opening up both sides. Again, needlense pliers in there. We can get any fibers and any buildup out. Now, these aren't too bad, but there still is some in there. So, it's always useful to give this a little bit of a look every so often. Again, my trusty brush to kind of brush out any of those fibrous bits. Now, you'll notice I'm not taking the whole piece off just cuz it can be a bit tricky to put it back together. So, I like to hold it in place just so it doesn't all pop off and then become difficult, just brush out that little tension piece that will slide back on.

And just check that it is working. the little concaved disc I slide back on to that mounting again. That's all good. And then the last disc piece we want to line up just so the little arrow is pointing the right arrow. But you'll notice I kept it on the screw so that I can slightly adjust it as I put it back. I'm holding it in place and I'll have turned that dial so it's on the middle setting. So when I'm putting it back on the uh on the tension dial, uh I can line it up, but it can be fiddly. So I've lined it up and I'm holding it in place with my finger, checking it's in the right spot. You can move the dial around, but I've just lined it up so the center point lines up with the center point. There's a little arrow that should point to each other.

And just check it does all the points. It's not. It's supposed to. If it doesn't, you can just loosen it up and move that little disc dial again. Do exactly the same on the other side. So unscrew.

Oh, mine just popped off there. So just be careful again making sure we keep all those bits where we can get to them and we know what order they're in. Take that piece off. Now there's a bit more fluff in this side. So get my little pliers, but you can use some tweezers, things like that to get out that fluff.

If you're doing a project, particularly with fluffy yarns like mohairs or wools, alpaca, you might need to kind of give it a little bit of TLC after a big project. I know sometimes if I'm making mohair pieces, all those fibrous fluffy bits like to get caught on these tension dials. So, uh, they'll sometimes need a bit of TLC after those bits. And sometimes you even get fibers that almost shed bits. I've got some tinsel yarns uh that sometimes as you knit and you're knitting fast, it'll release tiny iridescent kind of fibers every so often and those bits can come off on your tension d. So just be careful. Tension mast. Sorry. Sliding back on the little cream piece. the plate that locks in on top that's concaved. It can only go in a specific way. So,  that's easy enough to put back on, but it is the end piece. That's the fiddly piece. Before I kept the screw on. This time it had popped off. So, I'm just going to try and line it up first and then slowly put the screw in, but it is all a bit difficult. So, I'm holding it all in place with one hand and then trying to line it up. Now, some screwdrivers are magnetic. Unfortunately, mine isn't. So, I'm going to have to get at it with my fingers. I'm going to have to put it down there cuz my hands are full.

Now, it's a bit silly to be doing this over the top of my machine because things can fall inside. So I'd recommend doing this just on a table. Uh there's our little setup we've got to record these demonstrations. So it's why I'm working over the top of my my machine.

I'm using the table to hold it for me. I can then screw it back a bit easier. So yes, work on a table, guys. If you can lightly screw it, adjust that little  guide. And there we are. Check it's all in the right spot and we're good. They're all moving as they're supposed to. Doing what they're supposed to be doing. Just checking all those mechanisms are moving.

Have a little tidy up so I can put it back together.

Give it a little dust first though. Again, these can get quite oily, especially if you're using greasy yarns. Lots of wools are treated with an oily grease. So, all the oily grease can go on your tension mask as well. And any dust we're just removing with our cloth. Now, there is a few little fluffy bits that are caught in the in the little V grip on the tension s on the stem. So, I'm going to try and get those out as best I can.

So, cleaning all the different bits and even the uh takeup springs or the uh springy bits on the tension mast, the antenna. Give them a wipe.

If these ever get bent, you can also try and bend them back at this stage with some pliers. But then putting them back in is quite simple. They simply just uh it's almost like a little paperclip end. You just need to concave that so it slots in. And if you want to take it out, you decompress them to get them out as well. And that slides onto the stem. Now, if any of these be pieces ever crack, the little plastic pieces, the cream plastic pieces, you can now get 3D printed sections to replace them.

There's some really good 3D printing websites that are producing a lot of levers and buttons and things nowadays. We'll leave  the details of one that we found and you can get people either to print them or you can print them yourself. And that is a tension. Chapter 14, supplies.

We don't sell replacement parts or service machines ourselves. If you need replacement parts, go to andeeknits.co.uk. They sell replacement parts, any cogs, brushes, sponge bars, and needles that you might need. Some of these are model specific. If your machine needs an expert to fix it, we recommend knittingmachinerepairs.co.uk. There are also a number of people selling 3D printed plastic parts if you can't find what you need elsewhere. We get a lot of inquiries about fixing machines. We focus on teaching machine knitting and supplying the best quality yarns, and we don't fix other people's machines. 

So, we've made this video for you to show how you can tackle these problems yourself. We don't have the capacity to advise people individually, but there are Facebook groups and a Reddit forum you could go to for further help uh if your question isn't answered in our videos. So hopefully you found this video useful.

If you'd like to learn more about machine knitting, we've got a range of uh classes in our East London studio or online garment and accessory making projects with patterns and videos and an extensive range of luxury machine knitting yarns in an incredible array of colors and types. So check out knitworkslondon.com for more where you can sign up to our newsletter for updates.