We saw a Singer 66-18 on GW last week that was here in SPFLD. Waited till the last minute and put a bid on it.
We won. I knew from looking it was a Centennial badged machine and since I was looking for a candidate to make a treadle machine with a reverse or back tack feature I thought this one might fill the bill.
We picked it up today. Ugh is that thing filthy! I'll let the pics tell the story.
Front:
Rear:
Bottom:
Spider webs inside:
Serial number:
The machine formerly lived in a cabinet. It still has it's hinges which is good cos those are kind of hard to find. The slide plate is there and there was even a bobbin in it. It also came with a box of accessory feet.
The only missing part is the spool peg, but I have one I'll put on it.
The insides are dry, dry, dry, dry. And there has been more than one generation of spiders living there. At least there's no sign of mouses.
The interesting part to me is the serial number. It puts the machine as one of 35,000 allotted November, 10 - 1950. But that's not the interesting thing. If you'll look close the serial number has been gone over with some sort of milling tool. I've not seen this before in any photo or machine I've seen. I wonder why that was done?
In spite of all this, the light works, the motor works and the machine turns ... albeit slowly. A healthy cleaning and oiling will fix that up lickty split.
To make it into a treadle machine I'll need a spoked hand wheel and an appropriate bobbin winder assembly to match. Oh and a treadle cabinet too. But I might just take one of the other Singers out of it's cabinet and put this one in. We'll see.
Joe