Originally Posted by
Lee in Richmond
I just took this machine to a guy who has been servicing the old ones forever, and learned some stuff. He says needle length has not changed in these old domestic machines (my imagination at work, I guess), and all the old ones sold around here in the 60's were made by Singer. In his little shop he actually had the exact same machine - model number and all - that he took as a trade in! He has the actual manual, and I am going to try to get him to sell me a copy of it - hope that's not a copyright issue. Oh yeah, he says the adjustments I need are the usual ones and I'll get it back later today.
Needle length: He's probably refering to the fact that 15x1 was pretty much adopted as the "standard" size needle quite some time ago. There have been many, many different sizes and types of needles over the years.
AFAIK Singer never made a Montgomery Ward sewing machine. Maybe he meant that Singer was the originator of the 15x1 needle size, but lots of companies made them, even back then.
Technically the work is under copyright but if Ward's doesn't make it available I'd do what I had to do to use my machine.
Do you have JA/JC numbers off the bottom of the machine? We could probably tell you who made it from that. It is probably Happy.