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!