Moronic Sewing Machine, or Moronic Sewer?

[gargoyle]

40 wt has worked great for me, hammocks, tarps, chairs, slings/straps, nothing has failed yet.

[tekape]

Thanks for all your help folks...I tried several suggestions and think I may have hit upon the solution...the bobbin tension was too loose.

Things still aren't perfect, but at least I don't have it jamming up every 5 seconds on me.

I'm still going to look at thread weight as well, and I still need to work on getting the balance between the tensions dialed in, but it's working better now.

[NCPatrick]

Glad you're getting it all dialed in.

I had a lot of trouble with jamming thread at one point that sounds a lot like what you just went through. After I bought a bunch of thread from Ray Jardine , I haven't had as much trouble since then.

As with anything, ymmv.

[JohnSawyer]

I had similar problems when working on a tarp... 2-3 layers of nylon were no problem, when I was doing a flat-felled seam, I found a bigger needle and more top tension fixed my tangle problems. Going slow helped too...