Brother KR810 ribber fits a wide variety of Brother knitting machines, from some of the vintage ones to the later models, all the way to the electronic ones.
This article is about specifically the KR810 ribber refurbished in December 2023. To learn more about pros and cons of the Brother KR810 ribber model, refer to the article in my Knitting Machine Encyclopedia.
The machine was thoroughly cleaned. All needles were cleaned and inspected individually, first visually and then by knitting on a full bed 1×1 ribbing (in two different combinations to make sure all needles were tested). All knitting tests were great. See a video of these tests on my channel.
The setup (consisting of main carriage, connecting arm and a ribber carriage) moved well and i was able to knit with just moving the carriages with one hand.
The machine knitted wonderfully thin yarns, sock-yarn-weight acrylic yarn and fingering mohair-containing slightly fuzzy yarn.
This machine will come with all assesories mentioned in the manual. However, the reinforcing brackets will not be included for the following reasons.
The original side brackets (that attach to the ends of the ribber) did not come with this machine. So, I borrowed from a KR850 ribber and they fit wonderfully.
Because the KR850 side brackets already have the “tongue” needed to attach the ribber to the table, the original KR810 brackets are no longer needed.
With this setup, the KR810 ribber attached wonderfully to both KH710 and KH970. However, I was able to knit only on the machine with a winder bed (KH970) than with the narrower bed (KH710). A potential reason is a slightly off angle between the machine and a ribber due to the different side brackets and table clamps. Thus, this ribber is sold as compatible with wider-needle-bed knitting machines (such as punch-card-capable machines (KH820 and above) as well as electronic machines (KH900 and above)).
I know some internet sources mention that this ribber is compatible with the push-button machines like KH552, KH710 and early punch-card machine, like KH800. But because I did not have the original side brackets, I could not confirm that this ribber can knit with these earlier knitting machines.
All buttons, dials, knobs and levers on the ribber carriage move freely.
Hard copy of the manual will NOT be included with the ribber but it can be found online for free.
The connecting arm has some rust specs all over it. I gently removed the protruding layer and applied oil for corrosion protection. But the corrosion damage is still visible. However, my tests showed that it does not affect the functioning of the ribber.
The brushes in the under-carriage section are in excellent shape.
Watch my video showing knitting on the double bed, containing this ribber and my wide-needle bed knitting machine. It worked great and the big advantage of this ribber is versatility and compatibility with large varieties of knitting machines.
