A week or so ago I posted a link to a machine I'd been lusting after in the Giggles thread. Well, by the weekend, I still hadn't stopped thinking about it.
A little back story: About 2.5 years ago I picked
this machine up. I fixed her up and she was a lovely piece on the shelf but I had reached a point where I decided the machines I had here should be used, not just looked at. I gave her to my cousin. I've regretted it every day since. (She says I can have it back when she passes... she's older than me but wears me out when we go out together. I think I have a long wait on that one!
) When the machine I picked up this weekend showed up in the buy and sell, I didn't know what the brand was but I saw the similar bones and wanted her. Needed her.
DH called it "righting a wrong" He was disappointed too when I gave "Winnie" away.
On Saturday, we had to go out anyway, so I made an appointment with the seller. He wasn't going to be home, but his wife was. He also told me about the "other" machine that he had for sale, so I checked it out on the buy and sell and decided based on the asking price of that one (a treadled 127 missing slide plate and shuttle) of $295, I'd try to negotiate a little on this one too.
We walked in the door and I just fell for her. I'm not proud of that poker face.
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I love the way the wood aged, the inlay. (This is after a coat of Feed'nWax)
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ETA: I think I have her dated to somewhere around 1903 - 1909 depending on the site you use, and that she's a Frister and Rossman "High Arm Transverse Shuttle" machine or a Class 48.
No needle but the shuttle and a bobbin were there. One of the thread guides is broken, so DH will twist one up for me once I can find him a photo of the original. Bobbin tire was a wreck, so I kludged something for the time being. I think I will try to replace it with a 2460 tire.
After a few hours on Sunday (and a good oiling on Saturday), she's sewing.
I didn't have a 12x1 needle for her but I had some DBx1 needles that had a shank that was too big to fit.
What's a girl to do? Yup. I pulled out my Dremel and modified the needle to fit. Set it correctly and she made her first stitches in probably a couple of decades. There's still some room for adjustment but these are pretty good for the time spent. I will also try to raise the needle a smidge more to see if I can get the shank to not go through the fabric. That ought to improve the stitch.
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I need to figure out how to adjust the bobbin winder because it currently only winds about 2/3 of the bobbin in the center. Many of the screws are a little munged so I thought I'd wait until I found some sort of reference so I didn't try to adjust anything that didn't need to be bothered.
The other thing outstanding is that the shuttle carrier is currently shimmed with cardboard as proof of concept to make it tighter to the side so the thread goes around the correct side of the shuttle. I will need to figure out if the shuttle is worn out (doesn't seem like it) or if I need to adjust the carrier and where.
Now the real question: Do I clean her up and leave her that way or do I try out Glenn's restoration process on her? I'm thinking even to the point of trying to restore some of the gold decal. I have the odd steady day .... it would be a long term project of course.