I went thrift shopping this morning on my way to Red Rocks Amphitheater for a stair climb workout. I walked out of the store with 3 sewing machines for $120! Now before you say haven't you got 10 already let me explain that 2 are not for me. This is the trunk of my car on the way home:
My friend Tami of http://tamichaulk.blogspot.com/ said yesterday whilst we were at the fortnightly Green Bag Lady get together that she'd like me to keep an eye out for another cheap Singer machine for her, so when I saw this 401a I thought it might fit the bill and if not I knew that the Green Bag Lady Project could use it. So I got home and oiled/cleaned the machine as per the manual and it was as slow as wet week, the first dud machine I had bought.
So after some googling I decided to take out the motor and follow the instructions on this Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPfCADyz_rE
Here I am you can see the stunned look in my eyes. I couldn't believe I'd gotten this far!!! My husband usually fixes the mechanical issues with my machines but he is in Australia on a business trip atm.
The next step was to actually pull that motor apart! I was a little disconcerted when parts fell out of it as I did that! One of them the video later explained the other one well it mustn't be important LOL!
That little copper bit on the end is the commutator and I had to sand that... easy... but getting the two bits of motor back together again took a while after that, but nothing worth doing is easy right and this is for my wonderful friend Tami who is a fellow Bagette for the Green Bag Lady Project, read about it here:
http://greenbaglady.blogspot.com/ and here we are having some fun: http://greenbaglady.blogspot.com/2014/05/my-colorado-bagettes.html
So it got real messy and wasn't easy but I had a ball, it was fun to challenge myself!
Now that 401a may be the best running machine in my house and it won't be here for long LOL, but I think I'll try this on my 301!
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One of the other machines was a Kenmore 51 for $30. I bought this specifically to get it running and donate it to the Green Bag Lady Project. We have some volunteer sewers who don't have machines or have machines that don't work well, so Teresa the Green bag Lady and I decided a couple of vintage machines might be better than cheap modern machines. especially considering we only need to do straight stitch to complete the bags for the project.This machine is oiled, tension set and ready to go, I even sewed several bags on it to make sure!
So yes there was one machine in the trunk for me, it is a Singer model 15. But it really irritates me when collectable items like this get written on in thrift stores like this:
But I learned recently in a Pyrex collectors Facebook group about these Mr Clean Magic Erasers. I wasn't convinced when I opened the box but seriously these things are awesome look a simple wipe and the writing is gone:
So I used Howard's Restore-a-finish and lemon oil furniture polish on the cabinet to make it shine. Then I began to clean and oil it as per the manual instructions.
But after all that she still doesn't sound right, she makes a nasty grinding noise and I've had enough sewing machine maintenance for one day, so this can wait until hubby gets home next week and we'll solve the problem together.
