Last night, I saw a posting for a 31-15 in the local buy and sell.
Needs TLC and a tune-up. Motor Works. Hasn't been used in 30 years.
Nope. I've sworn off machines for me, and I don't need it or have the space for it. I don't need another machine. I'm still trying to pare down what I have already. I'm still prepping for my talk in April, I don't have time to work on it.
LDOMS (Little Devil on my Shoulder): But it's an Industrial... You've wanted one forever... think of all the fun things you could do with it...
Me: Like what?
LDOMS: You know,... things!!
Traitorous me: Like those E-reader and Tablet covers and the some of the denim projects you've been thinking about....
Me: *sigh* No.
Today, I'm still thinking about it.
I finally email then call the seller. It belonged to a friend's nephew, he tailored suits and shirts with it. She'd offered to sell it for the friend. She'd taken the machine to a local shop for an evaluation and they'd said that the round thing was seized and that it would cost about $200 to tune it up and get it running right. It's rust that's seized it, a lot of work, etc etc. She told the friend what the shop had said and the friend said she could have it or try to sell it in Kijiji or throw it in a dumpster for all she cared, or something to that effect.
I get there, and we start chatting about machines and such. Yup, the handwheel is seized solid, but the machine is not in bad shape at all otherwise. There's not much old dried oil or anything and most of the paint is intact. I figure what the heck, I pull my bottle of triflow and my screwdriver out of my purse and show her a magic trick. 5 minutes later, the machine is freed up enough to try to test it out.
She's stunned and starting to think maybe she'll keep the machine. Oops. I tell her that even though I got the machine freed up, it still needs a fair bit of work, but (jokingly tell her) that if she wants to keep it I'll just charge her my service fee.
She's still thinking about it, and says she'd love to see it run. I let her know I want to do a few more checks first to make sure it's safe to run.
There's a hard spot. Turning the wheel, it gets harder right as the needle is in the fully down position. Looking closer, the needlebar is hitting the presser foot. Hmmm....
We also discover that the bobbin case is missing. No, she says, it's here somewhere, I'm sure it was here. She looks everywhere, including in her car, because she'd taken it to the shop yesterday. No bobbin case.
I check the timing, and without a needle in it, it seems pretty close.
I pull a pack of industrial needles out of my purse and...
what? You don't carry this stuff in your purse? I had a belt with me too!
I put the needle in, and turn the handwheel slowly. clunk.
The needle hits the hook.
Timing of some sort.
The machine is already plugged in, I remove the needle, check that everything looks reasonable - other than the timing - flip the on switch and the motor roars to life. Slowly, I push on the pedal and the machine starts to move for the first time in 30 years. It's almost a weepy moment.
Yeah, I'm a SM geek.
It's noisy, but that can usually be solved to some degree.
We get about 10 seconds out of it before the belt snapped, but that's long enough for the old man to worm his way into my heart. You know I he's coming home with me, right?
She wanted me to look at her other vintage machine while I was there, and discovered she needed a belt for it. You should have seen her face when I pulled THAT out of my purse! She might have called me Mary Poppins after that.
Yes, I have another project.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]469136[/ATTACH]
And here's the motor I questioned in the giggles thread:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]469139[/ATTACH]
I took the truck (and machine) back to DH at work and was about to head home in the car when she called me. She'd found the bobbin case. It was on the floor of her garage. She'd almost run it over. I went and grabbed it on the way home.
I'll order him a new needle plate, this one is cracked and has needle strikes in the most impressive places. He'll get a new bobbincase - this one looks like it's been modified - and a belt at the same time, and I'll figure out why the hook is rattling and has play and why the needlebar is hitting the presser foot.
I guess now I get to find out why so many shops here send out their industrial sewing machine repair work to one particular guy in the city. Besides the motors, they don't seem all that different. You know that means I must be missing something, right?
Then I have to figure out how he's going to pay rent here. I guess the neighbor has been asking me to make covers for things since the quilting frame arrived despite me telling him several times that a quilting frame has nothing to do with a cover for his bass amp.
No rest for the wicked, or for the people with little self control around sewing machines.
