Getting Down And Dirty With Your Vintage Lady

 

Over the course of the last week I've been taking apart my little Singer hand crank machine to clean and repair it.  I was terrified when I started out, but with a good set of instructions there is absolutely no reason to fear this job!  In the links section of one of my recent posts I told you TFSR has a fantastic guide to completely breaking down, cleaning, repairing and reassembling your vintage Singer machine.  I can't stress enough how complete their instructions are; they show you how to take apart and put back together everything, and they point out what problems you need to look for and how to fix them.  It's intended to help folks clean up machines to send to Africa, but there's no reason you can't use it to help you clean up your own machine.  If you feel so inclined, you can always check out their how you can help page to give back a little.

As for how to go about prettying up the exterior of the machine, everyone seems to have a different opinion.  I followed a few of the instructions here and got decent results.  You can always test out a few products on an inconspicuous area to see what works best for your machine.

I won't be showing you what I did step by step; I'd only be badly repeating the information given in the TFSR guide.  I will show you what the guts of my machine look like, and I'll point out the things that needed a little extra TLC.  So without any further ado...

 

 Bobbin cover plate and slide plate removed, bobbin assembly pre-cleaning

I started out with the bobbin area.  I actually ended up doing this twice; the first time I was too afraid to take the whole thing apart.  I used tweezers and a small paintbrush to get out all the lint and bits of stuck thread I could see, oiled the moving parts and called it a day.  Later I changed my mind and decided to get back in there and do it right.  I'm glad I did!

 

 The second time around I actually lifted out the feed dogs to clean them.  Thank goodness I did, 

because I'd have missed a lot of grunk otherwise!  Look at all that nasty oily lint stuck under there!

 The rest of the bobbin assembly lifted out.  Check out the accumulated lint!  BTW, the red blob there isn't lint; 

when cleaning your machine don't pull it out by mistake.  It's a bit of felt meant to clear out lint from the hook ring.

Next I popped off the pretty faceplate and cleaned under there.  Lots more lint and grunk!  While I had the faceplate off I tried to shine it up with various things, but it stubbornly resisted being prettied up.  I'll have to poke about for something that will do a better job on it.  

I just pulled out all the lint and used a brush and rag to clean things up, then 

oiled all the moving bits.  I didn't end up having to take apart anything in there.

I turned the machine upside-down to clean and oil all the moving parts down there (no pics, sorry).  I moved on to the hand crank/balance wheel assembly. 

The handcrank pulled off the machine and opened up.  

The balance wheel took a little tugging to get off.  Old oil had caked up in all the parts here and needed to be cleaned out.  After I removed all the grunk I shined up the stop motion screw and the silvery part of the balance wheel with chrome polish.  I had my doubts about that stuff, but holy crap did it clean and shine metal parts up well!

 

Stop motion screw half cleaned with chrome polish.  What a difference!  

While the balance wheel was off I pulled off the bobbin winder too.  The guide says you shouldn't take it completely apart unless there's something wrong with it; otherwise just clean it up, oil the parts that need it and put it back on.  Except for an old, crumbly rubber tire, mine was fine.  I ordered a new rubber tire from Sew-Classic (BTW, love them!).  When it came it was as simple as popping the old one off and putting the new on.

 

 Bad crumbly rubber tire

 

 The bobbin winder reassembled and halfway through winding a fresh bobbin.

Before I put the bobbin winder, balance wheel and handcrank back on I cleaned and polished the exterior of the machine.  It's hard to get into some of the tight corners with all that stuff on, so best to do it while it's off.  After gently cleaning the exterior with a little dish soap and water and letting it dry, I rubbed it down with a light coat of sewing machine oil.  I wiped the oil off and tried a little Turtle Wax, but it didn't really give me the shine I was looking for so I stuck to the oil.  Remember to be careful of your decals when cleaning!  

Once I got it all back together I gave the handcrank a test spin and just about had a heart attack.  The wheel had spun more or less freely before I cleaned it, but now it was sticking and starting to freeze.  I was sure I had screwed up royally somewhere.  Turns out I didn't do anything wrong at all; the moving parts were just finally getting around to protesting the little bit of grunk that couldn't be gotten out and the lack of lubrication.  While I had already liberally oiled all the parts that moved, it takes a while for the oil to penetrate everywhere it needs to go.  The solution was to just continue to gently turn the crank so that the moving parts could distribute the oil to where it was needed.  A short while later I felt everything release and the wheel spun perfectly freely. 

The first time I disassembled and cleaned things I didn't touch the upper tension assembly.  I didn't want to mess with it unless I had to.  Once I had reassembled the machine I gave it a test run.  After some fiddling with the tension settings I was able to get a good stitch with even tension, with just one issue.  Every inch or two the stitches would form a big ugly loop on top of the fabric.  

 Ugly loops, but only every inch or two.

I could see the take up spring seemed to be sitting at a funny angle and was catching on the thread regulator every now and again.  Figuring that was the issue, I decided that this time I had to take it apart.  

 

 Seriously, does this damn thing have enough parts?

Sure enough, the spring was sitting at a funny angle because the tension mechanism housing was turned too far downwards.  All I had to do was turn it slightly, then reassemble everything.  

 

 Just needs a little clockwise turn

That completely fixed the issue!  Of course, now I had to totally reset the tension.  Bah.  

 

 Lots of test stitches to reset and tweak the tension.  At least there aren't any big loops!  

When all was said and done, I had a beautiful, perfectly running machine.

 

If I can do it, so can you.

Getting the 411 on Your Vintage Lady: Who She Is, Where She's From, Her Age (GASP!) and More (Singer Edition)

I've officially given up on getting any actual sewing done this week in favor of playing with my "new" sewing machines.  So if you're looking for more on the lattice gown or the leather squid corset, you'll have to wait, because I declare this Vintage Sewing Machine Week here at The Laced Angel!

Whether you have an old sewing machine that was your grandmother's or you picked one up at a yard sale or antique store, you might be in need of a little information on it.  Maybe the manual is lost or damaged (only one of my four came with a legible manual), maybe it came with weird attachments you've never seen or maybe you're just curious about when and where your machine was made.   Through the awesomeness that is teh interwebs, you can often find answers to all those questions and more!

I'll start with the brand of machine you're most likely to have: Singer.  Singer didn't necessarily make the best machines out there, but they had the most effective marketing campaigns.  They sold millions of their machines, and many of them survive today.  Since there's so many of them they aren't worth much, but they're often quite pretty and still useful.  Properly fixed up they will sew for a long time to come, and because so many of them exist it's not too hard to get replacement parts if needed.   Here's my first Singer-

My first pretty lady (pre-cleaning), a model 66 Singer red eye.

She belonged to my great-grandmother.  When I got her she was in a cabinet and had a little electric motor clipped her back.  Unfortunately the manual she came with was ruined and illegible, and I didn't even know anything about her other than the brand.  Thankfully, getting info on Singers is crazy simple.  First, locate your machine's serial number.  It will be on the right hand front corner of your machine bed, and will either be all numbers, one letter followed by numbers or two letters followed by numbers.  In the photo above, it's on bed of the machine just below that large circular gold seal.

The G is hard to read here but you get the idea

Singer has helpfully included a page on their website where you can look up your machine.  Go here and select the link that corresponds to the type of serial number you have (no letters, one letter prefix, or two letter prefix).  It will send you to a page with various charts you can use to look up what year your machine was made and where (mine was made in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1922).  You'll also have the option to download a pdf of serial numbers with models and dates.  Check that pdf to find out your machine's model number (different than your serial number).  ETA:  Since I wrote this, Singer seems to have pulled most of this info off their site.  Go here instead to find when it was made, the model number and more)  You'll need it to find a manual!  Once you've got your model number (mine's a 66), go here to get the manual for it. 

You now know where your machine was made and when, plus you have a model number and hopefully a manual.  If you want to know about the history of your machine or Singer in general, or you're trying to figure out how to use one of the accessories it came with, the International Sewing Machine Collector's Society has a great website with a variety of information on lots of different types of sewing machines.  Go here for their Singer stuff.  I found that the 66 came in treadle, hand crank and electric varieties and had different decals depending on where and when it was made.  Mine features so called "red eye" decals, one of the more common designs.  Red eyes were made for the US market (common European versions featured a lotus design) and are so named for the exotic red eye shapes in the decal pattern.

Thanks to these websites, I was able to quickly piece together information about my second Singer acquisition.  She's a model 99 hand crank made in Clydesdale, Scotland in 1932.  The 99 models are the nearly identical little sisters of the 66 models; they're 3/4 of the size and come in little carrying cases.  They have a less ornate decal pattern.

 

 The little sister to my first Singer, pre-cleaning

 Serial number on the bottom right hand corner of the bed

 

 No electricity for you!

 Sweet little portable case

Tomorrow we'll have a look at a few other brands of sewing machines that don't have quite as large a web presence as Singers.  Until then, here's a few more useful links!

www.treadleon.net-  Great site with lots of information on restoring, using and maintaining vintage machines, mostly treadle versions.  Check out their Sewing Machine Shop section.
www.tfsr.org/publications/technical_information/sewing_machine_manual/-  Dedicated to refurbishing Singer machines to send to Africa.  They've got an amazingly detailed step by step breakdown of how to take apart your machine to clean and repair it.
www.sewalot.com/sewalot_index.htm- Loads of articles covering machine histories
www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/trade-literature/sewing-machines/CF/index.cfm-  This Smithsonian website gives you access to all the sewing machine literature they have in their database (includes manuals, trade cards, catalogs and more).  Keep in mind that they only have literature relating to American made machines.  Most of their stuff hasn't been scanned yet, so many of the entries are just descriptions.  They do have pdfs of many of the manuals I've tried to look up so far though!
www.a1sewingmachine.com/parts.html- They claim that if they can't find the part you're looking for, it's not to be found.  Haven't used them, so I can't validate their claim.  I'll likely be putting them to the test soon!