Day 6: $&%^#(*$&#

Today was an initially frustrating and then rewarding day of work on Lorene. It almost seemed like Christmas when I got home from work -- my LED bulb, belt, bed cushions and drip pad all arrived! I didn’t get started until later in the evening because of physical therapy, dinner and an errand. I started by chiseling out the remaining bits of the bed cushions. I wonder what those things were made out of, because they really looked like they had melted. Once I got the bits out, I put on the new cushions. Then I removed the drip pan to do some more cleaning of the grease. After that, I oiled and lubricated. I turned the main shaft (the hand wheel was off) and oiled wherever I saw parts moving against each other. I put the new drip pad onto the pan, found new felt circles, and closed up the underside of the machine. I ended up having to remove the drip pan later, but that’s another part of today’s story.

I moved on to oiling the upper part of the machine. I moved the spool pin plate and lubricated the gears. I put oil wherever it looked necessary. After closing that up, I oiled anywhere I could remember from my workshop last May. I oiled all the moving parts that I could see in the needle-bar and presser-foot assemblies (behind the face plate). I removed more lint that was in there, too. I was happily moving the main shaft and listening and oiling, and getting so excited about getting close to finishing so I could actually try to sew.

And then…

I realized something. Sure, the hook assembly was moving just fine, but the bobbin case base was moving along with it. The little “finger” that sticks up and fits into the slot on the needle plate was moving with the hook. I had oiled behind the base so I thought it would move with a little elbow grease. Wrong. I couldn’t get it to move, and Bill couldn’t get it to move. Fine, I thought. I’ll go ahead and remove the hook assembly like I saw in an April 1930s video last week. Someone obviously already tried that, because the screws are pretty well stripped.

I was starting to think I’d never get this machine working again. I couldn’t get to the hook so I could remove whatever thread was hiding behind the bobbin case base. I was trying and trying to make the base move, to no avail. Finally, Bill mentioned WD-40. A-ha! I had read somewhere that it could dissolve little bits of thread that were jamming the machine. I started spraying WD-40 onto the hook assembly. Jiggle the base. More WD-40. Jiggle the base. Swear at the machine. Try to get Bill to make the case move.

Bill told me to give up for the night, that it was like trying to write the last chapter of a book. It’s hard to leave it for a while, but sometimes that’s the best thing to do. I knew he was right, and that a night of soaking in WD-40 was probably a good idea.

Well, sometimes I don't listen to myself.

I couldn’t let it go without one last try, and around 10 p.m., suddenly the bobbin case base moved. It wasn’t moving smoothly, but it was moving! I kept turning the main shaft and eventually, it started to move freely! Success!

I don’t know what was holding the parts together, but it was certainly strong!

It was a satisfying project, to see how frozen and neglected this machine was, and to make it functional again.

Here’s what was on the docket for the next day:

• Take apart the tension assembly, clean, and reassemble.
• Clean the stop-motion washer and faceplate.
• Put a seam-allowance sticker from Sew Classic onto the needle plate.
• Install the belt.
• Put in the new light bulb.
• Clean and maybe wax.

I didn’t know if all of that would be accomplished the next day, but I hoped to be able to try to sew with Lenore the day after that.

I wondered what I would do when this project was over. Actually sew something?

Day 5: Busy bee

I accomplished a lot of little things today with Lenore:

• I tried to remove the bit of thread that I could see, with tweezers, and managed to just break it off right by the bobbin case base. I could see a little bit of it from above, near the feed dogs, but I couldn’t get to it with tweezers. It was too tight of a fit, so I removed the feed dogs to free up some space. The thread was still jammed in there, so I found my turkey lacer (which doubles as a sewing stiletto), and that was sturdy enough to get the thread loose. There was a tail of about 1 inch, which I was then able to grab with tweezers. When I pulled it free, there was about 6 inches of yellow-brown thread! Where had it been hiding?
• I removed the hand wheel and found all sorts of brown gunk, maybe old grease, in and around the shaft. Who would have put grease there? It took quite a few Q-tips to get that area clean. I will also need to clean the stop-motion gasket, which looks like it caught fire but doesn’t smell like anything other than sewing-machine oil.
• I removed the drip pan and cleaned off quite a bit of brown grease. I gently removed some blobs from the lead tubing, trying not to dislodge any of the oxidation. I think it is fairly clean now, although some kerosene would have helped. I’m going to keep sweeping over the greasy spots with Q-tips.
• I started digging out the melted-looking bed cushions. I removed three of the screws (two had to be unearthed from under the brittle rubber) with my husband’s help on the last one. I just couldn’t get it to budge. I’m still digging out the little bits so that I can put in the new cushions when they get here. In the remnants of one cushion, I could see a piece of wire and I wondered what it was. It was a staple! How did a staple get stuck in that rubber?
• I removed quite a bit of lint from under the feed dogs.
• I ordered new caps for the motor brushes. They were more than $10 apiece on eBay; I got them for $2.50 each from Glenn Williams, who sold me the parts for one of my 301s before I sold it.

So, next steps. I need to finish working on the bed cushions. I’d like to take apart the tension assembly to be sure everything is clean. Then, I need to start oiling and lubricating everything. I’ll put on the new belt, install the new light, and maybe then I can give her a test run! The final step will be to do a quick wipe-down and wax. I might do that before the sewing test. It's so exciting to get close to actual sewing!

Day 4: A New Hope

Hope you caught the Star Wars reference...
I apologize for the long time between posts. Believe it or not, I've been done working on Lenore for almost three months! I'm not the fastest of bloggers, obviously.
On day 4, I started by working on the motor. First I tried to clean out the grease tubes. I used a bent paper clip, since the recommendation on the Yahoo FW group was to use a squared-off toothpick. Well, there was absolutely nothing in there! I thought I’d have to remove some yucky brown grease, but the paper clip just went right to the very dry felt at the bottom. So I pulled out my motor lubricant (bought from Nova Montgomery) and filled up the tubes.
Next, I moved on to the motor itself. Upon the recommendation of Yahoo FW group moderator Graham Forsdyke, I removed the pulley again and put a small drop of oil where the pulley shaft meets the motor housing. I also put a tiny bit of oil (not even a drop) on the other end of the shaft. With a little bit of effort, I got the shaft moving easily!! I was also able to move the shaft in and out a teeny bit, which is how it should be, according to David Werther, who runs a Facebook group called Featherweightology, and runs a quilt shop in Dallas. He offered a lot of help with this project via e-mail.

I started to clean the dust off the motor with some wet Q-tips, and then called it a night. When the new belt arrives, I can try plugging in the machine again.

I still need to:

1) Clean the gunk off the parts on the underside of the machine and put in the new drip pad.

2) I haven’t removed the hand wheel to clean and oil the main shaft, so I’ll do that. 

3) I’ll thoroughly oil everything. 

4) I’ll replace the light bulb, and dig out the melted-looking bed cushions to replace them with new ones.

I’m beginning to believe that Lenore will sew again, and soon!

Day 3: Plug 'er in!

Lenore's motor got a once-over on day 3, and the symptoms weren't encouraging. First I checked the motor brushes. The cap on the top brush needs to be replaced, but I was able to remove it using a small knife as a "screwdriver." There wasn't any soot on the brushes, which was a good sign. I put the brushes back in -- with great difficulty on the bottom, since you have to maneuver through a hole in the machine housing -- and moved on to the pulley. I had removed the belt already, since it was frayed. Next I removed the motor pulley itself, to be sure there wasn't any thread tangled behind it. No thread. Finally, I decided I'd try to just plug 'er in and see what happened. I knew that the people at Quota International, which sold me the machine, had tried to run it before selling it, so I was pretty sure it wasn't going to electrocute me. Even with the foot pedal completely down, the motor just barely turned. I didn't want to risk damaging anything, so I didn't try for long. I noticed that with the pulley removed, the motor shaft was almost impossible to turn. I had to use a small wrench with a soft cloth protecting the motor shaft itself. Again, not wanting to damage anything, I left it alone for the time being, and posted a message on the Yahoo group for Featherweight aficionados. And that was it for day 3! Poor Lenore went back into her box for the night. I hope she slept well, because the next day was going to be full of poking and prodding.

Day 2 with Lenore: More issues

The day after I bought machine #6 -- Lenore -- I came home from work and started tinkering (well, after dinner). I took off the drip pan first. The pad was soaked with old oil, and there were bits of lint and old, brown, gunky grease. The pad itself came off easily. I took a picture of it and then threw it in the trash. Then I got on eBay and bought a new drip pad, belt, LED bulb and bed cushions.

I turned the hand wheel, with difficulty, and realized that the belt was actually sliding around the motor pulley -- the pulley itself wasn't turning at all. I loosened the bolt holding the motor to the machine, calling on the manly-man strength of my husband because I couldn't get it to move. This was a frequent occurrence as I worked on Lenore. The screws on that machine were stubborn.

After I loosened the motor bolt, I removed the old, frayed belt. After that, the hand wheel moved very smoothly.

I moved on to the hook assembly and confirmed what several people on my Yahoo group had suggested. Lenore has the original Featherweight hook assembly, which was changed sometime in 1934 (I think). This old-style assembly requires removal of the whole thing in order to remove the bobbin case base and thereby clear any thread jams. I decided on that night that since the thread wasn't inhibiting the movement of the hook and hand wheel, I would leave it alone.

A small digression: I had misdiagnosed the problem. Sure, the hook moved freely with the needle plate removed. The problem started when I had to put the positioning finger back into the slot under the needle plate. Then, nothing would budge. The bobbin case base was stuck to the hook assembly. But I figured that out a little later...

End of digression.

My next stop was inspection of the gears. And, yuck! There was more old, brown hardened grease on the upper and lower gears. In fact, some of the grease had gotten onto the lead tubing that holds the lamp wires, and onto the inside of the machine housing. It must have flown off those gears when the machine was running. Someone liked to use a lot of grease on the gears! I cleaned off what I could and then decided I needed some kerosene to really clean them off properly. Not wanting to buy a whole gallon of kerosene, I placed a request on the local Freecycle to see if anyone would give me a small amount.
I took a peek at the motor next. It was covered in dust, so it would need a good exterior cleaning just for cosmetic reasons if nothing else. I would also need to check the brushes, which I planned to do the next day. I had made some progress on day 2, but not much.

Day 1 with Lenore

After I arrived home with Lenore, I couldn't resist trying to fix her right away. I thought to myself, "It's probably just a simple thread jam. Five minutes of work and she'll be ready for cleaning and oil!"

Wrong.
I started by pulling out whatever bits of thread I could see in the bobbin area. When I went to see the machine, I had had to force the bobbin case out of the machine by breaking the thread that tangled in the hook area. The needle was stuck halfway down, which I needed to deal with, too.
I removed the needle plate and pulled out some more thread. There was also some lint under there and I cleared that out with tweezers. Once I pulled out the visible thread, I was able to get the hand wheel to move!
I could see that there was still some thread caught behind the bobbin case base (there were wisps sticking out) so I decided to try to remove the base. I have done that before, on my 1938 Featherweight that arrived from Goodwill with a thread jam. I removed the gib screw and tried to swing out the gib... no luck. Why wasn't it moving? Was it stuck? I tried to move it but didn't want to risk breaking it. I put the gib screw back in and posted a message on the Yahoo group about Featherweights asking for advice.
I decided I wasn't going to solve that particular issue that night, so I moved on to the face plate. The screw was hard to budge but it eventually moved. Nothing behind the face plate looked unusual, just more lint. I removed the belt, as it was split in two places and definitely wasn't going to be usable.
My shopping list was already forming: a new belt, new rubber "feet" for the bottom of the machine, and an LED bulb.
I still needed to remove the drip pan to see what the underside looked like.
The next day, I would discover exactly what a hassle it was going to be to clear that thread jam.

Meeting Lenore

Ever since I started sewing with Featherweights, I have wanted one from one of my parents' birth years -- 1934 and 1942. Unfortunately, there's no way I'll ever have a 1942 Featherweight. The machines weren't made during World War II. So I had to keep my eyes out for a 1934. The problem is, the first "run" of Featherweights were assigned their serial numbers in November 1933 and probably completed in 1934, so the 1934 machines are among the earliest made, and I figured those would be hard to find, either because people want the "first run" machines, or because they're really old and might have broken down or been discarded. I did read a story on the Internet (which means it's true, of course) that someone found a Featherweight buried in a landfill!

In late August, while scouring the local Craigslist ads as always, I noticed that someone about an hour from my house was selling a Featherweight for $100. It had the blue-lined case from the very earliest Featherweights, and the bobbin tensioner mounted on the front of the machine rather than the top of the bed. The listing did not include a serial number, so I couldn't know for sure that it was a 1934 machine. Also, I already had three Featherweights, and those weren't being used enough, so did I really need to spend a chunk of my Sunday driving back and forth to look at a machine that might possibly be a 1934? Of course! What else did I have to do? Cook? Clean? Who cares about that when sewing machines are begging to be rescued?
I e-mailed the seller and got the following response:

The Vintage Sewing machine has not sold....
I am the treasurer for a women's non- profit group...  Our mission is to help women and children in need and the deaf and hard of hearing in our community.  One way we fund our mission is to set up and run estate sales for elderly and their families when downsizing or have passed. 
With that said we are constantly learning about the items we find.  We cannot get the sewing machine to work.  When we plug it in the light flickers but that is all.
I am responding to approx  25-30 other responders all with the same information.
Do you still want to come take a look?

Hmmm. The fact that the sewing machine didn't work didn't really bother me. I thought (foolishly, as it turns out) that it just had a thread jam or needed oil, and I could fix that lickety-split. But 25 to 30 other possible buyers? That sounded like a good chance that I'd drive up there and someone else would offer more money than me, and I'd lose most of a weekend afternoon. As it turns out, my fears were unfounded. I had decided against the trip, then woke up in the morning thinking it couldn't hurt to find out how many other people would be there, right? Well, there was one lady coming to see it. The seller said she could be available from 1-2:30 p.m. and that was it, so off I went with my 12-year-old along for what turned out to be a 90-minute drive thanks to randomly placed traffic jams on the freeway in the middle of nowhere.
We got there and after greeting the lady who had e-mailed me, I opened up the Featherweight case (missing its handle, and with a hole in the lid), removed the tray and pulled out a very... well-loved, shall we say? ... Featherweight with a serial number of AD55xxxx, which in my mind told me (incorrectly, as it turned out), 1934. The hand wheel wouldn't turn at all. There was clearly a thread jam because I couldn't get the bobbin case out of the machine, and the bed looked like someone had heaved little pebbles onto it. The decals were almost all gone in the front. Someone definitely used this machine a lot.
Who wants a beat-up, possibly nonfunctioning 81-year-old sewing machine? I do! I told the lady I'd wait at the nearby shopping area for the other buyer to show up and decide if she wanted the machine as well.
My daughter and I got something cold to drink, shopped at the farmer's market and waited. Finally, I got a text saying the other buyer never showed up and the machine was mine if I wanted it. Hooray! My daughter had her eye on a silver-plated teapot that she saw at the house and that reminded her of her Grandma Faye, who passed away in 2011, so we bought that, too.
While browsing at the farmer's market, I used my phone to double-check the date of the machine and realized it was actually from that first run, assigned its serial number in November 1933. Rats -- not a 1934 after all! But then I realized, those 10,000 machines were made between late 1933 and mid 1934, and since mine was toward the end of that run of 10,000 machines, the odds are that it was actually finished in 1934. Hooray after all!
I handed over the money, took the machine, and got back on the road.
And a week-long adventure had just begun... 

p.s. The organization that sold me the machine is Quota International. They do important work around the world -- check out the web site of the seller's chapter if you want to learn more about them: http://quotainternationalfortcollins.com

Yes, I name my Featherweights

Fay Bainter

For people who don't collect sewing machines, it might sound odd that I name them. In my defense, I'm not the only one! It's just too confusing when I have some with the same "birth year," so I gave them names.
I still feel a bit sheepish, though, when I refer to my machines by name. I do it because it eliminates confusion for me, and amuses my husband.

I don't name my Kenmores for some reason. Maybe it's because they have different model numbers. So one is the 17741, and the other is the 1500. Or the brown one and the light green one. Or the one in the guest room and the one in the living room.
But the Featherweights have names. My husband loves old movies, and he has the names of all sorts of Oscar winners (people and movies) in his head. So I went with Oscar winners for some of the names. They are:

Fay: She is a 1938 machine, named for the 1938 Oscar winner for best supporting actress, Fay Bainter. I bought her on the online Goodwill site for $101.50. The listing said the motor didn't turn. I took a chance, having wanted a scroll-face Featherweight for a while. She arrived and it took me about five minutes to diagnose and cure the problem -- a thread jam. She is my quietest-running Featherweight.

Luise Rainer

Luise: She is a 1936 machine, named for the Oscar winner for best actress, Luise Rainer. I bought her on eBay.
Dorothy: She is another 1938 machine, named for someone who owned her before me. I bought her on eBay. Inside the top of the case is an address label attached with yellowing tape, which lists the previous owner as Dorothy Dewar of Fort Mitchell, Ky.
But wait, didn't I say I had six sewing machines? Stay tuned for the story of #6, Lenore!

Welcome to my blog!

I have SMAD -- Sewing Machine Acquisition Disorder. Well, to be more specific, I have V-SMAD -- Vintage Sewing Machine Acquisition Disorder.

Others with this addiction will scoff at my claim that I'm one of them, since I own only (yes, only) six sewing machines. There are some among us whose collection (or herd, as it's sometimes called) numbers more than 20. I do actually sew with my machines, but I'm not a sewing addict. I spend a lot more time finding, reading about, tinkering with and occasionally selling machines (usually at a loss). I like the thrill of the chase, finding an unappreciated, neglected old Singer or Kenmore and fixing it up. (I can hear my husband laughing at the idea of chasing sewing machines.) Along with liking certain vintage sewing machines, I clearly love parenthetical phrases.

This is what my favorite Kenmore
looks like. It's a model 158.17741.
I heart this machine.

I don't know how this happened, honestly. Until about 2-3 years ago, I was the contented owner of two machines, which sat completely ignored, probably in my basement. Until my daughter came along, I pieced quilts on those machines. When she was about 10, I realized she was grown up enough that I had a little bit of time on my hands, It could be used for sewing (along with watching baseball and football games). It sort of spiraled from "I should really start sewing again" to "How did I end up with eight sewing machines?" The youngest

of them was 30 years old. I think only one of those is still in my house, my beloved, heavy, all-metal brown-and-beige Kenmore. It replaced the plastic Singer that my parents had bought me for graduation from college. That machine died within six months of regular use, which prompted the purchase of my oldie-but-goodie Kenmore. And that's why I only use old, all-metal machines.

I'll get to the "How did this happen?"  and "Where did those other seven machines go?" stories soon enough. But I'm going to start by telling the story of reviving a dirty, dusty, non-functioning 1933 Singer Featherweight. Her name is Lenore, and her story is coming bit-by-bit in the next few posts.

My 1933 Featherweight looks
a bit like this (photo from the good
ol' Internet) but mine was well
loved. Translation: Mine doesn't
look this good.

Welcome to my blog! I'd love to share your stories, too, so once I figure out this whole blog thing, I'll let you know how to send them.

Ms. Rhymes-With-Tequila, in Colorado