I’ve written about my years-long love affair with the idea of a long arm. Given that I had no plans of making the level of investment required to get a long arm truly capable of the larger patterns I’m likely to want to do (at least 22″, preferably 26″ neck), and with the still far-too-high costs of the mid-arm range that would limit my options but get me on a frame, I pretty much wrote the idea off and began to focus on all the benefits of stitching on my tiny Bernina domestic. After 15 years of Diane Gaudynski-inspired quilting on a domestic, I’m pretty good. Put my hands on a long arm and it’s as if I’ve never quilted before in my life. Pebbled swirls? Forgetaboutit. It’s easy to talk oneself out of wanting one under these conditions.

But then, in a fateful moment of conversation with my love, the internets did instantly suggest a more-than-affordable full size Gammill on a 14′ frame. The time was 10:33pm. The listing was 3 hours old; the venue was Craigslist. By 10:42pm we had decided to make a cash run for it, and the first email was sent. By 8:41am the following morning, a conversation with the seller did take place. By 9am a Uhaul trailer was scheduled and the 133-mile one-way route was mapped. After days of completely reconfiguring my sewing room to make room for the beast, that Saturday we took off to claim my treasure, hoping that our trusty towing Blazer would make the entire run.

At first blush, I knew she was the one. Her engine purred at high speeds, her stitch quality was infallible. At high speeds the x-y plane shift was less than I’d managed on an old APQS Millenium, but the track system provided a bit more traction than the loosey-goosey new HQ Avante I’ve struggled to control. She was an ugly green beast with touches of not-well-matched paint here and there, with a spray painted steel frame and none of the bells and whistles seen on the newer models. We got introduced, chatted for a few, then we began to disassemble her piece by piece. We would use an entire box of Scotch bubble wrap, marking each part and securing bolts in place before wrapping.  The steel frame boasted an impressive 14′ sheet of plywood that probably couldn’t be replaced without great expense (the pantograph table top), so we laid it on top of the steel bars and taped it all down (with the side and middle cross pieces on the floor of the trailer.

The next day I set her up largely by myself— the previous owner had replaced all the bolts with hex nuts to make assembly easier, as the old girl had been relegated to storage in the basement (garage?) when not in use. Despite the fact that nothing in my 1842 farm house is level or straight, everything panned out to be surprisingly level without any tweaks.

Youtube reminded me how to load a frame. She hummed, she purred. And then we took off on our annual vacation to see some friends on the beach. On that 14-hour car trip I ordered two different ruler feet and a wealth of rulers from Jamie Wallen. A wealth of rulers, I tell you.

Returning home to my boxes from the mail and my loaded frame, I realized my rosy courtship goggles had failed to catch a few key features of my new girl:

• There is absolutely no way to switch out the foot, as the shaft is one with the foot
• It is a “high” hopping foot
• The Gammill ruler plate extension doesn’t exactly fit the machine base

These foot issue makes it rather impossible to use for ruler work, which is my aspiration after so many years of free motion. My local Gammill dealer verified my machine wouldn’t take these parts and offered a refund; the technical support team at Gammill headquarters verified there is no replacement foot available, and no more original feet to be had for modification, and Nolting headquarters (who at least had some ideas for me). Turns out, I’m the proud new owner of one of the first 10 models produced by Gammill when Ken Gammill and Fred Nolting were still partners. Undeterred, I gathered family engineers around the frame for a brainstorming session:

1. A trusted precision machine fabricator will be able to lop off the foot and thread the shaft to accept the new ruler foot (I have both the Gammill open toe foot and the Westalee ruler foot)
2. The high hop reportedly can’t be adjusted. But I can stack two 1/4″ rulers on top of each other with a touch of super glue to create enough height that they won’t slip under the foot (Right?)
3. While we’re at it, we’ll throw on a new potentiometer to shore up my speed control dial (apparently, over time, these get ‘ruts’ in them from use)
4. And why not experiment with new roller feet that run along the track system in case a couple bearings are wore out?

God love ’em. These old machines are made of stock machine parts that every precision machine engineer knows all too well. I do believe she’ll run a hundred years after my my own parts give out!

Do you have a ‘mean green’ Gammill from the mid 1980’s? Would you like to be able to use rulers?