Tag Archives: Elna Grasshopper case

An introduction to a Grasshopper – part 2

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OK, having started our general look at the Elna No.1 in the last post, we can now move on to the case.

Elna Grasshopper caseIt’s a very neat pressed steel fabrication, and the picture above shows it open as it looks when the machine has just been lifted out together with the mains lead, which wraps round those two thingies with the green felt on them seen at the top of the lower half of the case.

Elna Grasshopper case - detailAbove is the bottom of the case as it is normally, and below we see it with the front half of the bottom hinged up.  That’s the first step in transforming the case into the worktop, worktable or whatever you like to call it.

Elna Grasshopper case - detail with flap foldedElna Grasshopper with mains lead and open caseThis picture also shows the older-style mains plug which is used on the Series 1 machines and was replaced by a different all-Bakelite plug on later models.  Funnily enough, it’s a lot easier to find a replacement of this earlier plug than it is to find one of the later flat-blade ones, but more about the vexed issue of mains plugs another day.

Elna Grasshopper with case opened outAnyhow, having turned that bottom flap up, we can now lay the case down like in the picture above and flick up those two little clippy things which you can just see on the very right-hand side of the top of the case.

Elna Grasshopper with case opened out and flap overThat lets us turn the rigt-hand top over like turning a page in a book, et voilà – a smooth green work surface!

Elna Grasshopper and case/base showing knee leverNow it’s just a matter of sliding the machine itself into place (with or without the accessory box), lowering the knee-lever, and swinging the knee-lever extension down before plugging in the mains lead and away you sew.

Closeup of Elna Grasshopper worktableLooking at that picture, you could be forgiven for thinking that with all that metalwork, and particularly with that hinge where it is, it all looks a bit iffy from the point of view of snagging material.  Yes, it does look a bit that way, but in practice it isn’t iffy at all because everything’s either rounded off or it has a smooth finish to it.

This particular case will benefit from a judicious bit of bending and twisting in places when I get round to it because it doesn’t quite sit as flat round the freearm now as it did when it left the factory 66 years ago, but that’s easy enough to sort out.

OK … that’s the case done, so I guess we just need to take a quick look at bobbin-winding and threading to complete the introduction.  That’ll be coming up next.

It’s all her fault

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The lady in Georgia, that is.  Shortly after I became disenchanted with the Singer 221/222 Featherweight, I stumbled upon her blog and her write-up on a strange-looking machine called the Elna Grasshopper, about which I knew nothing.

All I really knew about was vintage Singers, which were pretty much wall to wall here and still are.  But apparently this little green thing was the world’s first free-arm sewing machine.  Add to that a quirky design, Swiss precision engineering and the machine’s reputation for sewing a perfect straight stitch, and inevitably I had to have my first non-Singer machine.  So the search began, and before long I was opening a carton and pulling this out of it …

Picture of Elna #1 Grasshopper sewing machine in caseWhat we see here is a steel case measuring 14 x 12 x 6.5 inches which weighs 22lb, or if you prefer, one measuring 36 x 30 x17cm which weighs 10kg.  In other words, it’s much the same size and weight as the Singer Featherweight, and literally half the weight of a Singer 201K electric portable.

When you first see one of these in the flesh, so to speak, it starts sinking in just how different to any other sewing machine the Grasshopper really is – and that’s before you’ve worked out how to open the case.  You do that by pressing in on a couple of shiny buttons, one of which you can see on the left of that picture.  The lid then hinges up towards you, and there she is …

Picture of Elna Grasshopper sewing machine in opened case The machine itself simply lifts out of the case, which you can then do tricks with, but before we get to that, you need to know where I’m coming from, as people say nowadays.

When I first developed an interest in these machines, I was surprised how little there was about them on the internets.  Then I realised that’s not really surprising, given that only 60,000 or so of them seem to have been made.  To put that into perspective, in the years between the World Wars, Singer made far more of each model in their domestic range every 12 months than Tavaro made of this machine in 12 years.  Everybody’s granny did not have one of these.

I’ve still got things to learn about the Grasshopper, but up to a point, a rotary hook sewing machine is a rotary hook sewing machine.  What’s different with this one is mainly the detail engineering, which, being classic Swiss, is in a class of its own.

If you’re more up to speed with Elnas than I am at present, do please let me know if I get anything wrong – and if you’re more in the dark than I am, by all means ask questions.  You can email me or just add a comment by clicking on the speech bubble to the right of any post title, whatever makes you happy.

We’ll continue with this introduction to the Tavaro Nr.1 next time …