I had some kind of old hand crank sewing machine when I was about 5 years old until I sewed over my finger. Then mom let me use her Singer FW. I sewed on the dress I wore to first grade. When I got married I bought my own used featherweight. I always had a rather stormy relationship with the FW so when my first son was born (1975) a friend lent me an Elna to do zigzag. AH this was the bomb - no more fights with the tension and the bobbin! So I bought a used one for $275 - this was cheap since it was used. I literally wore it out by 1990. The motor burned out for the dozenth time and my son's friend broke the gears trying to fix it ourselves. That machine has so many scratches and nicks it isn't funny. Friends gave me a basic Viking to replace. It was not the same and I did not love it so DD took the Viking when she married and left me with a FW which again, I did not love it either... I bought a simple used Viking but it didn't do enough for me. I bought a Janome - hated it - really hated it - actually quit sewing because I hated it so much. Then one day a couple years ago, my son found 2 rusty dirty sewing machines in the trash. One was plastic and too far gone to keep. The other one was a Singer 401g. It was covered in dirt and dog poo and what else. It didn't even turn. My sister encouraged me to try to clean it up and make it work. I did - it took over a year. I had to unstick the whole thing - nothing moved. DH cleaned the motor. I made the mistake of putting a foot from an old Necchi on there and messed up the timing. (I learned to fix the timing after that) I learned how to get all the old sticky gooey oil off a sewing machine. I learned how to take apart and clean out the stitch selector and take apart and reassemble a tension. Take off the cam stack, clean and put it back. It all works. All I had to come up with was a cord and a foot control and some accessories. I'm sewing for fun and joy. Between finding that machine in the trash and now - I have bought and fixed up a good dozen of those slant-O-matic machines. I love the slant needle - I can see what I am doing. It has a real nice light shines right on the needle. The bobbin is a drop in and it is in front where I can look and see if it has run out of thread. It does plenty of fancy stitches. It sews through about anything. I haven't had much trouble with the bobbin or the tension.