I've been away from sewing machines for a bit, but about 3 weeks ago a gal contacted me to work on her mom's featherweight. She said it wasn't running (hadn't for about 10 or 15 years) and when quizzed further she said it was "the bobbin". In speaking with her more, it actually turned out that someone had removed the hook at some point and it was sitting in a margarine container inside the case.
Sure I said, I can reassemble it and give it a cleaning, etc.
Well, it turns out that the hook was off the machine because the tip was broken off it. My guess is someone disassembled probably due to a thread jam that the featherweights are known for, but they disassembled the wrong part.
When they tried to put the hook back on, they didn't time her and the tip of the hook was broken off in a collision with the needle and she went back into her box.
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I ordered a replacement from Glenn Williams in Florida and it arrived last night. Today, I put the whole thing back together and she sewed her first stitches in more than a decade.
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I do have one question though. Is there any chance that Singer mated these bobbin bases and the hooks to each other? The replacement hook did not fit the original bobbin base. It was way too tight a fit. The base from my painter FW fit the new hook, but with some tight spots. Oiling and basically a gentle lapping seemed to fix it, and the same thing for the original bobbin base in my painter FW's hook and everyone had working bits. The original bobbin base was way tighter than even a "it wasn't used very much" scenario could account for. I was scared I would break the finger off the base if I used enough force to actually turn it.