The treadle came today!
My friend came to pick me up, and we went to her house to look at it. It was tucked away in the corner of the gallery (they live in a converted barn - very beautiful mediaeval structure converted to interesting house with mezzanine in the living room!), and had been gathering dust there for years.
Let me describe her:
Brown painted oval section tubular metal legs with touch of rust! Cast metal treadle and flywheel Wooden table top with 4 small drawers, each with round wooden knobs and a circular moulding that looks a bit Art Nouveau; there are oval ones on each end. Small 'secret compartment' bit that flaps down at the front, revealing 3 small compartments Plain wooden table top (badly marked, but recoverable), that flaps open Machine head very plain 15-88 type with chrome face plate and inspection cover at the rear. Decals quite worn, black Japanned finish shows signs of having been damp at some point - there's a slight 'bloom' to parts of it, like a black grape! I'm sure I can find out how to improve this!
The poor old thing is very grubby, even though I have dusted it to bits already! I oiled her and turned her over, and removed several hard wodges of oily lint (fossilized!) from the bobbin case and under the stitch plate, and she works fine as far as I can tell without threading her up. Once I have a belt, I shall do some serious cleaning to the machine head, grease the bits that need it, and oil whatever looks like it might soak up a little more oil, and set her to work.
I asked DH if he'd teach me to use the sander so I could sand the table and varnish it, and he said no! It would be quicker to do it himself! I will have to ask him how I can sort out the rust on the legs tomorrow...
I will take pix of the head and the table as I sort them out, and I will do some tomorrow of the state she's in now. It looks much worse than it is because of the dirt and the top looking like it has spent several years under slightly incontinent houseplants!
between 1936 and 1948, in St Johns, Canada. Cathy's grandmother, the original owner, lived in both Canada and Trinidad before settling back home in Lancashire (whence Cathy hales), so this would fit fine. Unfortunately, while the manual and attachments have all come down to me, the original bill of sale has not. It has a JB serial number, and Singer tells me that this series does not have complete records, so there may be no more to glean from them. Alan Quinn's site leads me to think that a date of 1940 would be closer to narrowing it down, but we may never know for sure.
The box of attachments contains a ruffler, a tucker, a bias binder, an adjustable hemmer, and a rolled hem foot, and a screw-in seam guide! Treasure indeed! These all look exactly the same as the ones I have for Spinning Jenny, that came from my mother's 1950's machine, so I have no doubt that we can make them work. They are in their original dark green cardboard box ('slightly foxed' as the book people might put it!).
To get it here, we had to pack it into Cathy's car. To get it down the stairs, I took the machine head out of the table, and we carried the table down. It wasn't going in whole, so we up ended it onto the table top, not worrying about the odd scratch because of the present condition of the top anyway, and unscrewed the legs! The legs/treadle mechanism fitted in the boot, the table fitted in along the folded down split fold back seat, and the machine head went into the passenger foot well. We piled in on top, and brought it here, where I cleaned it as much as I could for now, and put the table back together. I left the screws out for now, as it will all have to come to bits again for restoration, but the machine head is back in place. We had to cut the old belt to get it all to bits, but this is no problem as it was dead anyway, and new belt can be had from Wilf by the mile.
So, while DH is slightly annoyed at the use of space in the dining room,
*I* am a happy bunny tonight! :)I also lost 3 lbs at Weight Watchers, so am doubly happy! Specially as the only exercise this week has been one 3 mile walk, a shopping trip with James to buy school shirts and PJs, and today's sewing machine shaped weight lifting!