The Orion Electric Knitting Machine

Maggi Bloice
5 hours ago
2 min read

As described in the literature, a hand knitting apparatus Model 2

This lovely machine was donated and the reason I was interested was that it came with a dedicated motor and built on table, this is very unusual with vintage machines of this ilk.

It’s a good job my grandson was visiting as getting this machine upstairs to the first floor of my old Breton barn was no easy task, I have seen the day when this would not have been a problem but time marches on.

The Orion Electric Knitting Machine Carraige

I already have this machine in my collection but it was severely affected by my move but this model is in fine condition and when it was set up with the motor and plugged in, it worked first time. The Orion came in its original box with all tools. I must confess to not being that interested in vintage double bed machines as they basically all work the same way, however this one has a couple of interesting features. It is a double bed with racking, it can also be separated to knit as a single bed and it can be joined to create a longer single bed, I have only one other machine that does this and that is the Rapidex. Oddly enough a Rapidex instruction manual and tools came with this machine. Another surprise was that there were 2 motors provided.

The lady who owned this machine left plenty of notes and included loads of dedicated Orion patters from the era. The Orion has a bed in a metallic blue and is made of Duralumin with a gold painted carriages. The dedicated stand is attached to the machine so that the motor can easily be attached along with the row counter (must admit it is the easiest motor ever to fix to the machine). There are 2 handy trays placed either side of the machine for tools etc. I just plugged it to the main motor then to the foot-pedal and voila, it operated. Even setting the travel distance was a breeze. The one caveat is that the yarn holder which is attached to the carriage only holds one ball of yarn would need constantly watched as in my experience motors use copious amounts of yarn. Its now up and sitting in the barn and looks as though it belongs there – yet another fine addition to the collection.