I'm not against it. I don't particularly like the idea of drilling the column to mount the crank but I don't think it's cosmetically good enough to be of interest to a collector either. If I was a serious collector I would hold out for one in better condition. I do have a 99 that needs a motor or a handcrank. I could put one on that but it still leaves the question of what to do with the 27. Maybe I'll just mount a spinner knob on the wheel and call it good. No mods to the machine that way and Jim showed one the other day that would be easy enough to make.
I don't know the history of this machine. We have a local indoor swapmeet and I bought the machine from one of the vendors there. My daughter told me the girl running the stall that day looked like she wanted to run away when I started talking about the machine. Apparently my enthusiasm gets out of hand sometimes.
I just hope her boss isn't mad at her for the price we set. I suspect it was less than they paid for it.
Rodney
*EDIT* CD you got your reply in while I was typing. The spinner knob is probably the way I'll go. Sometimes I make things more complicated than they need to be.