The love of my life had a sewing machine when we got together. It was in bad shape over 30 years ago. When we bought this house we had no place to put it and it wound up in a storage building that was very damp. Life happened, he got sick and I took early retirement to care for him. Three years ago he decided he wanted to show it to his brother and insisted I go get it. What I found made me sick and him too. It was so rusted over that you could barely tell it was a machine and I mean completely rusted. He wanted to throw it away, but I said no, I will work on it. If I can do something with it the head, you can help me redo the cabinet and irons. I didn't know what I was doing, but I got all the rust off and made it sew again. The only thing I regret was asking an artist friend to paint it. I should have left it black and I may yet sand and repaint again. It is a Class 15 improved model fiddle back dating to 1888. The coffin top had no back, so sweetie made one that I stained to match. The veneer was bubbled and he refused to let me take it off and re-veneer, instead splitting and gluing it down. He took the irons down to the metal and I repainted them.
My mother's Hudson is pretty rusty, but still had all the decals, so it is in no way as bad as the fiddle back. I am planning to restore it as much as possible but I am saturated with machines now and am not planning on redoing any more rust buckets.