What Kind of Lighting for Your Treadle?
What kind of lighting are you using for your treadle sewing machine? Electric lighting similar to the use with any other machine, or do you use lighting that doesn’t depend on grid electricity like your treadle sewing machine?
I have a neighbor here in Oklahoma that rigged up a generator on his treadle to produce electric lighting while he treadled his machine. A battery can store the energy while his generator is not turning, and LED lighting makes the energy last longer. I don’t remember what he said about additional drag of the generator on his rig, but it sounded like a fun project.
I use natural daylight for a lot for my treadling activities, including sewing outside when weather permits, but once the sun goes down, I’ve got to switch to something else for lighting. I’ve been trying to figure out what would work best for non-grid lighting power. Don’t get me wrong. I DO NOT want to go off-grid! I’m an ex-highliner that worked most of my life to keep the grid on, so I want to enjoy its benefits. But, in a power-outage situation, or if a person is just really into energy conservation, is anyone using some type of solar energy for lighting at their treadle sewing machine at night?
The solar lights that you can put along your walkway have been suggested as a reserve source of lighting indoors during a black-out situation on some survival sites. The lights that have on-off switches are charged during the sunlight time of the day, and then used sparingly in the home during nighttime. I have a few of them, but I don’t get enough light out of them to replace grid-lighting at my machine. They tend to serve about the same as a decent nightlight, but not bright enough for me to see to rip out black thread on black fabric, or any other combination of same-color thread-color sewing situations.
I’ve got a battery-powered gooseneck light on my Singer 31-15 treadle that lights up the needle area pretty good, and a herd of kerosene lamps to light up the room around me, but I’m wondering if there is something better.
Anybody using something better?
CD in Oklahoma