I've had my Kenmore since Mother's Day, 1978, I've always pulled the thread back through the tension disks. And I've always adjusted my bobbin, and I have an extra one too for speciality thread. CMC, I think the reason you feel a resistence on the thread is you may not have the pressure foot raised. In down position, there is more resistence. My Kenmore has served me so well over the years. A few years ago, I was making three flower girl dresses and a mother of the bride dresses for my Aunt. I got everything late, to help out, so I was running against a deadline. Everything was going pretty well when my Trusty Kenmore decided to mess up. Well, I couldn't figure out what was up with her, so I took the tension disks apart. Let me tell you, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, incase I didn't say it, NEVER take that thing apart. It comes alive and shoots all over the place, bouncing off every surface in sight. There is this spring in there that will pop out without warning knocking you between the eyes and then scoot across the floor and out of sight. If you're in the kitchen doing your sewing, that squirelly little thing will most definately head toward the stove or the fridge. and under there it'll go. After pulling the stove out, I finally found it. It took for ever to get it put back together. While I was making all those uncalled for repairs, there didn't seem to be any lint build up, But then again it probably was planted between my eyes where the spring hit.LOL My problem ended up being the bobbin tension. It was smooth sailing until I surged the center of one of the dresses cutting a giant hole across it. That's another story all by itself. Urban legends, hmmmm I wonder how many of them we swear by without even thinking about their validity. doris=^.^

In between the $300 & $3+ thousand is where my budget was this past summer. I bought a Juki Excel HZL-F600 and LOVE it! Juki is the world leader in industrial sewing machines, and the HZL is their line designed specifically for home quilters. The walking foot is not built in, but no problem to change it. It does have a lot of decorative stitches, but I've found I only use a few on a regular basis. And it has a nice high, deep throat for maneuvering your sewing. The free motion foot came with my machine, and I've just started learning to use it. There are also feet for applique, piecing, zippers and lots of other applications. I bought it because it seems to be the best built machine in the approximate $1000 price range. Kate is right. See if you can find someplace to test sew with one. I found a local dealer and offered to buy from him if he could come close to an online deal I found. Unfortunately, he couldn't but he was glad to get a new fabric & service customer (should I ever need it). This model also has phenomenal buttonholing features. Though that isn't a feature that's of primary importance to me, it's nice to know how versatile they'll be when that need arises. My machine prior to this one was a Kenmore I bought in 1974. I, too, got tired of changing cams, and it was going to need major service work to keep it going. An excellent resource I used to make my decision was the sewing machine section of patternreview.com. You can look up real users' experiences with many, many different models. Kay

Machines that fetch $20.000 are new industrial machines. The very rare collector's item in pristine condition have dollar value, but there are just too many old sewing machines about and way to few buyers for the value to be very high. In the world of sewing machines, only those made prior to 1900 are "old". On the other hand, these old machines have their advantage over newer ones. They are solidly built and with a bit of time and attention you get them to sew again, and they still do a very good job. The quality is often outstanding compared to new low priced machines, and even if they can't do zigzag or anything other than straight stitches they make a perferct stitch and handle most fabrics with out fuzz. That's why they are still valued as working machines. History and age add to their charm. I can't help much with dating, it would take a bit more research. Does it have reverse stitching? When you get closer to 1940 most models seems to be able to do reverse stitching, but not all. In the 50s built in zigzag became more common, but it has existed at least since the 1930s on a few domestic models like Pfaff 130. For comparison Singer made a updated version of model 99 (straight stitching only) until the late 60s.

I was intrigued enough to search the ISMACs site. While I found nothing titled "Mercury", I did find this interesting bit of info: Who made my sewing machine? I heard about machines being "badged", what does this mean? In the 1890 to 1940 period there was a fad with large retailers and mail order houses to sell "own brand" sewing machines. To do this they entered into contracts with established sewing machine manufacturers who would supply standard models but with the name of choice substituted for the normal brand name. ISMACS has records of nearly 5000 such "exclusive" names produced by half a dozen makers during this period. The situation is further confused in that retailers might switch makers at the end of a contract period and the same name would then appear on a completely different machine by another manufacturer. Shortly after WW2 the new Japanese sewing machine industry, funded by US aid, flooded machines into America and Europe. Distributors in those countries gave them various western-sounding names to help sales. In the period between 1890 and 1930 many German companies produced machines with no reference to their origin. This was because of a general mistrust of German engineering and, of course, poor public relations following WW1. Their machines were distributed with non-Teutonic-sounding names. I'm wondering if your "Mercury" isn't a badged machine that is actually another brand. Can you post a photo? Here is a link that might be useful: International Sewing Machine Collectors Society