Ok, so my friend Scott gives me a call on Saturday afternoon. He says his mom was cruising the pennysaver newspaper and saw this ad "Old 1800's Singer Treadle, needs work, $45"
I had just gotten back from a 6 hour drive to go adopt a 2nd Husky (Nala is soo cool), so I said to him "It sounds cool, but since most of these turn out to be 1920-1940's machines that folks just think are old and I am feeling too lazy to drive another hour each way down to the southbay, I'll pass."
Scott decides he needs an excuse to visit so he says "OK, If you would like the machine, I'll buy it, pick it up, drive up to your place, and you can pay me when I get there". I said fine.
I just posted a set of pictures in an album on my profile
http://www.quiltingboard.com/members...bums18122.html
It turns out that it was an 89 year old Lady who was selling her old machine that she got from her mom. It is a Fiddlebase 1879 New Family (Model 12) A transverse shuttle machine. The drawers were rebuild about 20 years ago by a good friend who "used the wrong wood for the faces, but did such a pretty job.." She used this machine until about 20 years ago, when she stopped sewing. She is now downsizing to a smaller place and needed a new home for her machine.
The "needs work" is that the screw that holds the bobbin winder and front portion of the belt guard was snapped off in the the base. It'll take some careful work, but this will be fixed soon.
I had to read up on how to thread the shuttle (A series of holes in a row that you feed the thread back and forth through as many as you need to for the correct tension) but it sews just fine.
We are now starting to finalize the clothing patterns for our Victorian demo and we can begin sewing them on this machine. The goal is to demonstrate that "these Victorian clothes were made on these Victorian machines".