Consew CP206RL Portable Walking Foot Machine

Machine was just ok out of the box, easy to thread. Sewing through vinyl was good until you tried to slow down or stop, then it would act erratically groaning (not moving) causing you to hit the pedal harder. Then the machine takes off at almost full speed. The addition of the Sailrite Monster 2 Flyweel helped, but the gamechanger was adding the Worker B motor / controller assembly from Sailrite. Now the machine preforms flawlessly, it's a powerhouse of a motor and starts as slow as I want. At its slowest speed it about 1/2 stich per second or slower.

I gave it 4 stars because of the lack of a good manual and accessories. I purchased it for doing vinyl boat seats. If you are doing basic cushions, then it will do the job but if you want it to do cording or piping then you have a problem. I have not found a piping foot for it so you cannot do piping or cording. I found that some of the Sailrite items would fit but not the cording foot. Someone on Amazon said they found one, but I could not. It is a tough machine and very heavy. You can download the Sailrite manual for a good manual and their videos work well. Good, Low Cost, but not for the person that gives up easily like me. I purchased a Sailrite machine so I can get on with my project.

My wife was very excited to order and receive her leather sewing machine. unfortunately it arrived with a broken belt cover. Part number w050. just a piece of plastic. Also unfortunately, next we reached out to the seller trough amazon. They informed us they do not provide replacement parts at all. and they gave us the information to contact CONSEW directly to request a replacement part. so we reached out to CONSEW directly. guess what? they only deal with their distributers. They will not even talk to the customer about the parts they have. that was their response at first. the gentleman we talked to told us up front. when we explained that the seller Universal Sewing Supply gave us their information and refused to contact them he took our information and the part information and told us he would get it shipped out to us. nothing came of that phone call. so we reached out to CONSEW again to see what the status was. the person that answered the phone this time refused to even hear my wife out. she just cut her off and kept talking over her and telling her she had to contact the seller. When I called back she was a little nicer to deal with. she heard me out and tried to get the information about the seller so that she could reach out to them to try to get this resolved. but there are two Universal sewing supply distributers and you cant get the address of the supplier through amazon. so now we are stuck returning the sewing machine for a refund. luckily it is within the 30 days or we would be totally out of luck. we will never order anything from Universal Sewing supply again. all over a little piece of plastic.

I previously reviewed this machine and stated that it needed more low speed torque, but it turns out that after the break-in period it sews great. To speed up break-in, I oiled everything liberally and ran the machine at various speeds without thread for 8 minutes in 7-8 different sessions, re-oiling each time, allowing the motor to cool in-between (I don't think the motor actually got hot, but it was simply precaution.). You'll notice that the oil run-off will turn grey with fine metal flakes. This is normal for any machine including new cars.The machine has always produced perfectly accurate stitches (2 to four layers of mid-weight leather) and would do so at high speeds, but now it does the same perfect stitches at really low speeds, which is what I needed. In fact, I can now bump the pedal and fire out one stitch at a time, which is great for sewing around tight curves on very expensive leather upholstery pieces.So approximately 18,000 stitches in, I have had NO needle breaks, NO bobbin skips and only about 2 thread breaks which were not the machine's fault, with all the stitches being extremely consistent in terms of both length and spacing.

I got this as an entry level leather machine to learn on before plunging into more expensive models. As is, this is does NOT do acceptable job of sewing leather. It runs too fast and the teeth MAR the leather. I had to make the following modifications: 1) Put a Monster II fly wheel (from Sailrite) on it. This works very well to slow machine and increase torque. Not sure if it will burn out the small motor more quickly though. Only down side is that I can no longer use the bobbin winder due to the need to tighten the hex screws to prevent wheel spinning on shaft. 2) I had to grind down the teeth of the feed dogs and upper feet to nubs and then put a layer of epoxy over them. Works great with only slight marks visible on the leather now and it still feeds well. Oh, and finding accessories (like zipper feet) online is impossible. This is a clone of a SailRite machine, but the SailRite feet don't fit (according to SailRite). However, I contacted Consew directly about this and they sent me zipper feet ($25 each). So, this will sew leather acceptably after making the above modifications. I am sure I will upgrade to a better machine later... probably a cylinder bed machine... which is something I learned by using this flatbed machine to learn on.

Perfect for upholstery

Clutch was constantly slipping and wouldn't tighten enough to get a job done. The handwheel pulley had a wobble to it. Machine bound up at the same spot every rotation with no thread in it. Motor is weak. Machine tips over anytime you pull reverse lever. Tensioner failed immediately. Consew logo rubs off with little use. Screwdriver included warped with a turn of a screw. This machine could be massaged to be usable but consew should do it and not leave it to the customer to work out the bugs. Sailrite does it. Consew should be ashamed to sell this. Profit over everything? Consew be like, "Let's screw a handle on it and call it portable" lol. Kudos to the seller tho.