Several have asked about my little handcrank Featherweight, that I named “Hurkie”. This little Featherweight has led a rough life. It came out of Mississippi, and it’s one of those “finish is rough, but everything works” on-line auction items. It has been submerged in water sometime during its life. The paint is bubbling off of the aluminum, the steel gears and shafts were rusted tight, and the electrical components were ruined. Hurkie is short for Hurricane, because I think he may been through at least one and maybe two.

With the motor in such bad shape, and the paint in need of replacement, I decided to make him into a crank machine for the time-being, just to have something to play with. I was able to free up the rusted shafts and gears, and I had heard of a guy on the big auction site that had designed a little crank that replaces the handwheel clutch knob on a Featherweight, so I bought one. It’s not like any other handcrank that I’ve seen, since it has no gear reduction to provide the normal ratio of 3 stitches per revolution of the crank. With this crank, you only get one stitch per revolution, and while that’s not extremely efficient as far as the labor goes, it will sew a stitch without requiring any electricity.

I also plan to make a pin cushion to fill the area where the motor normally goes at the rear of the pillar, but I haven’t gotten that done yet.

CD in Oklahoma

wow, cool!!

Whatever it takes to make him sew:)

Very cool.

That is pretty cool.

This is definately re-cycling at its best. Now all Hurkie needs is a new fancy paint job. How about sparkly purple?

Love how you turned him into a handcrank machine :D:D:D

great recycling!

Great job on making a FW usable again.

Really cool - cool story, too!