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02-04-2026, 10:44 AM

#410

OurWorkbench

Super Member

Join Date: Mar 2015

Location: Denver, CO

Posts: 4,651

February 2026 Colorado Get-Together Part 2

and a couple more of Dianne's fancy stripes

Courtney

Courtney shares about his presentation and some additional hand crank info.

Last month I mentioned that I was going to be working with some of my older Willcox and Gibbs machines at a Science Fiction Convention in Colorado Springs. I took three glass tension W&G hand cranks (1859,1863,1871) and a couple of English automatic hand cranks (both early 1880’s). The automatic machines are a bit less fussy than the glass tension machines. I billed the presentation and working with real time machines. I had about 20 participants from about age 10 to 70 and we made Civil War Housewives (sewing kits) using the U.S. Sanitary Commission instructions. Overall things went pretty well. The biggest problem was that we had to share the machines and we ran overtime. Fortunately, we were able to move to a large open area and finish up. I think most everyone had a good time and I had a couple of rave comments from participant the next day.

I have been having a good time playing around with printing a 3D hand crank I found on-line about 6 months ago. I have designed a base for all of my glass tension W&G machines to make them usable for situations like the above. I have talked about these modifications in earlier reports. I have also talked about the simple modification to a Singer Featherweight to make it usable in a treadle base. I finally decided to make a usable hand crank for the Featherweight. I started with a ¾ plywood base about 8x14 inches and then attached a pillar to hold the hand crank wheel at the right front corner.

...to be continued

Last edited by OurWorkbench; 02-04-2026 at 10:52 AM.

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