Kenmore Sewing Machine Repair
What is my Kenmore 385 sewing machine worth?
It is about 6-7 years old, and in need of repairs. I am wondering if I should buy a new one or spend about $75 on the old one. It was a gift so I do not know the original cost. Does anyone know approximately what the buyer would have spent on it originally??
Do you like the machine in general? What’s the repair needed? How much did it cost* to begin with? What doesn’t it do that you wish it did? What does it do that you really like?
*Somewhere about $200-300 purchase price is about where machines become well made enough to be feasible to do more than the most minor repairs. Below that purchase price is where you find the machines that wear out fairly easily, or that you simply can’t find parts for. Since yours was a gift, you may have some vague notion about the generosity of the giver.
What you’ve got is a Janome in Sears clothing (you can tell by the part before the decimal point in the model number… 385.xxxx machines are made by Janome.) Janome is, imo, one of the best makers of inexpensive machines, so your machine may very well be worth fixing. (The actual model is the first four digits after the decimal point…. so 123.4567890 is a model made by a company Sears calls 123 and the actual model number is 4567.)
Another avenue to explore — if what’s wrong with it is purely mechanical, or it’s a purely mechanical machine (as opposed to an electronic or computerized machines), and you’re a little handy, you might consider joining the yahoo group “wefixit”, a group of pro and amateur sewing machine mechanics and figure out how to do it yourself.
If money is not so horribly tight with you right now as it is for many folks, and if the current machine isn’t capable of doing what you want, then I’d suggest heading out to the sewing machine dealers around to try out machines within your budget. Sewing machines are a lot like shoes… sometimes you have to try on a lot of pairs to find the ones that really fit, even though you know your size. See: http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:sPweltML5AEJ:www.cet.com/~pennys/faq/smfaq.htm+sewing+machine+faq&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a (sorry, the original site is offline today).
Then when you’ve tried some machines, you can make a better decision about what you want to do with your current machine.
FWIW, I’ve been doing some research on machines available for a friend who is revising a sewing book — I’ve seen some excellent deals, particularly in the midline machines (ca. $500-1000 new) while I’ve been out taking notes.