If you need to take off the tension discs for any reason, here's how. The photographs are of my 1897 Singer 28K.
First, unscrew the nut at the front.
Next take off the spring.
Now the thumb tab.
Now the first tension disc.
And the second.
Here you can see how the tension spring is held in the correct position.
And here are all the parts ready to be put back on again, laid out in the order they were taken off, with the front-facing side facing up.
Here are the tension discs on Maria's Jones Family CS machine. They look very similar to the tension discs on the Singer 28K that I showed in my post about thumb tabs, but there is one important difference. The Jones has no tension spring, the little wire hook sticking out to the left of the discs on the Singer.
On many old machines the tension spring has been snapped off. At first sight this seems to have happened here. However, this machine had no tension spring in the first place.
So, if you are considering buying an old machine with this type of tension discs, always check the tension spring. If it is a Singer and there is none, then it is missing. If it is not a Singer, find out by trawling through google images whether it was likely to have had one in the first place. Most other makes did have tension springs, but this Jones machine didn't.
