Caroline S

Wonderful Cathy. The sewing machine appears to have been well taken care of and loved. Congrats.

Wintersewer

Beautiful....good find!!

SteveH

Absolutely done at the factory. the MOP is applied before the japanning, then sanded for 20 + hours by hand to re-level.

Macybaby

Rodney thought maybe it was a hack job someone did many years later. I think it just looks that way because all the decals are worn off. I've seen some with very little MOP, and others just covered.

After all, I've got a source for MOP veneer sheets and plan on putting some on my little White "Peerless" that was repainted (poorly) and converted to electric.

SteveH

also yours was one of the earliest MOP's attempts. the process and quality was refined over the years.

Farmhousesewer

Hi Cathy,
Congratulations. I have this same cabinet and machine. Missing the drawer though. Sits proudly in my dining room. I notice the manual in the drawer is for a 66-16. This is a Singer 12. I know you have quit a collection, so am sre you know that. If you need a few 12x1 needles, let me know. I don't mind sending you a few.

Macybaby

Thanks for the offer, I've got to check my needle collection, I don't recall which one, but the 12x1 is the same as one of the Boye sizes that came in the case.

I laughed when I saw the 66-16 manual, but in this case the seller didn't think that was what they had. I bought a nice white FW at a great deal one time - because it came with a manual for a 66 and the seller, while smart enough to research the value of a 66, wasn't smart enough to realize that the machine in the manual wasn't anything like the one in the case. Well, they did both say "Singer" on them.

It's kind of scarey how often that happens . . .

jlhmnj

Think Singer used some power sanders and buffers connected by line shaft back then and perhaps the final finish work was done by hand? 20 hours of sanding a sewing machine sounds like cruel and unusual punishment

Jon

SteveH

They did have and use those, but the MOP machines were done using a different process. The JDA documents I have read indicate that hand block-sanding was done up until the 1880's at least.

jlhmnj

Is there a link to the JDA documents? I'm curious as to how this process was done.

Thanks