mpeters1200

Ok...little back history here. I've been away from the board about a year or so as hubby had surgery and sometimes life gets in the way. My mother has I think a 1946 Featherweight. I haven't ran the serial number in a long, long time, but it's from the 40's somewhere. Mom died after an extremely long illness in 2007. My father died in 2000 and he was in charge of her affairs then, but I rescued mom's machine from the trash dumpster. My sister was trying to purge the house of everything she didn't want to look at anymore. Anyway, I knew mom's machine was something I wanted to have even though I had never sewn a stitch before. I didn't really have any interest then either, I just wanted the item that mom made all our clothes on.

Fast forward to 2006 -- I had been bitten by the quilting bug via my MIL. On a visit up north, she looked at mom's machine and couldn't believe it was in such poor shape. Little did she know. Anyway, it jammed up every time the wheel turned and the bobbin casing was missing entirely. I had joined a little quilt club and one of the members does all her piecing on her featherweight. She looked at it and pulled a considerable amount of fabric all ripped up from the underside of it. It didn't jam up anymore. She said the bobbin case had to be replaced and it needed a good cleaning.

Fast forward to 2011 - I managed to find mom's bobbin case. I still have no idea how it got in that particular place, but it did and it was found. I had started reading everything I could about vintage machines after I bought a Singer 66 to quilt on. I was interested in restoring mom's machine but didn't really know where to start.

2013-- Mom's machine is in her case on top of my sewing table that I have to move every time I want to work on something. I want to keep in fresh in my mind that she needs some TLC. I've watched videos and trolled this site and I keep getting confused because 1 - the videos I've watched are vintage machines, but not featherweights and 2- the featherweight threads I've followed on here don't show the spots that mom's needs work on.

So now I post this help request. I need to see if i can find a replacement thread spool holder thing. It's supposed to have a hole on each end where a screw would fit to keep it on. One of the holes broke off so you can just slide it forward and back. If you slide it and look down in there it's all gunky. Is that part something I can find somewhere and purchase?

Also, if you unscrew the bottom part of the machine and take all that stuff out, it's totally gunky down there too. All the grease or oil or whatever is all balled up down there. There's a thing, oil pan maybe?, that sits between the bottom of the machine and the thing you have to unscrew and take off the bottom of the machine. It's been shredded in spots and looks like it needs to be replaced. I don't know what the name of the part is to try a google search to see if I can replace it.

A lovely gal on here suggested at one time that I pick up a FW somewhere and play with cleaning it up before touching mom's machine. That's a great idea. I've been trolling Craigslist for 2 years and this area has an absolute CRAP TON of vintage machines available and I found 2 FW's, but both were in good condition and their owners are on some type of drugs cause they were trying to sell them for 900.00. Sheesh that's a lot of money!

Do you all have any suggestions? I found tri-flow oil at the hardware store and I'd like to start researching everything I can so maybe when NEXT spring comes, I can hang out in hubby's garage and get her restored. This machine was mom's baby and since it doesn't jam up or have any other problems of any kind, I'd really like to get her working. She just needs a SERIOUS cleaning and I have no clue how to do it.

If you all need pictures, let me know and I'll post some.

Thanks in advance for your help. I now own 2 vintage machines, the 66 and moms and I set a goal if I can get moms working, then I'll treat myself to a 15 cause that's the only other vintage machine - so far - I'd like to get.

Thanks,


Melissa