Done except for a couple of details (99k cabinet, handcrank)
 

Well, one more project is done! Yay! I've been slowly but surely getting this little cutie pie in shape. I found a 99k in a cabinet that was rough--cost all of $10 at auction, and that was probably too much!

I decided she was a good candidate for a little handcrank experiment. The only thing really left to do is work on the crank a bit and how it fits to the wheel. I notched the original solid wheel using a grinder, but the little arm on the crank falls just short of setting in the notch. A little wad of electrical tape helps, but I'm trying to come up with a more permanent solution. I also need to paint where the wheel was notched to keep it from rusting up.

I ended up stripping the veneer off the top of the cabinet and the front where the drawer is. The top had some gouges, but I think the scrap oak underneath gives it an interesting look. The cabinet was stripped of its lacquer and refinished in shellac, then polished with paste wax.

The machine itself was sluggish and very dirty. A donor plate from another 99k (I didn't like the replacement one's matte finish) was added and everything cleaned up. She polished up very nicely, although now I can see all the little nicks and scratches in her, but who doesn't have a few flaws?

Before:

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After:

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Closeups:

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Wow!!!! Great job! Must feelvery rewarding to you to bring it back to use and beauty.

looks wonderful!

Totally awesome! :) I need to find a donor plate for my 99 as well...I don't like that matte finish on the replacements either!

OH both look GREAT!!

Wow! Night and day differance...nice work.

Great job restoring these beauties.

Wow, both the cabinet and machine are beautiful!! I really like what you did with the cabinet!

Thanks y'all! I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out. I figured I couldn't hurt it, and the newer 99s are pretty plentiful around here if I needed to move on to another one. I can't wait to use it.

Very nice!

What a great day when that machine and cabinet found you!!!!!! Awesome. Great work. Sandy

Love the way the cabinet looks now...how do you flip her inside...do you have to take the wheel off?

That is an amazing transformation! What did you use for the finish?

That's a really nifty bit of work!

She turned out very pretty and I like the two tone of the cabinet. Great Job!!

You did a GREAT:thumbup: job**++

Gorgeous! Your work is stunning!

You did a great job and your creativity on the cabinet is WOW!!!

Oh my, that is gorgeous !!! I am drooling with envy. You did one fantastic job on sprucing it up. Both the machine & the cabinet have been restored to their past "glory". Tks for sharing.

Yes, I have to take the crank off when she's in the cabinet. I have seen conversions where they cut a notch in the cabinet, but I didn't want to do that. I thought about it at first, but then changed my mind. Otherwise, it's just like any other regular sized Singer cabinet.


The original finish was lacquer, and I removed that with a green Scotch Brite and lacquer thinner. Then I wiped on several layers of shellac thinned with denatured alcohol (dries quick, easy for me to use, but not a real "tough" finish). After it had cured, I polished it with Johnson's paste wax applied with a bit of 0000 steel wool and buffed with a soft rag. I did take it apart to do all this, working on the individual parts was much easier than trying to maneuver the whole thing around. :) I have to walk by and pat it every now and then to feel the finish.

Editing: I just wanted to mention that all I did was remove the old lacquer, not "strip" it totally. I didn't have to sand anything except where I removed veneer and the bare wood needed to be smoothed or where I did some little veneer repairs. I have seen cabinets where stain was in the old shellac, not the wood, but this was not the case for this one.

Hehe, someone saw a pic on my Facebook and said it looked "modern." I had to tell them that the 1950s are modern! :)

Ok, here are some pics of the notch and crank that I had a request for more info on. Thought I'd post them here if anyone else was interested.

The notch is a little under an inch wide. It does still have sharp edges, which I intend to grind or file a little rounder and then paint. This should make them not as risky for catching your hand on accidentally.
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Here, most of my tape fix has been removed, and you can see the crank finger hits right at the edge of the notch when folded down. I think I notched it too deep, so the finger needs to be longer to stay in the wheel's notch. I think I'm going to put some heavy tubing around the finger to make a sleeve that goes past the end of the finger and will stay in the notch.
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You can see the notch is just slightly wider than the crank finger. This is also the width of the bench grinder wheel I used to make it.
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I wonder why no one has gotten a bunch of the replacement plates and then plated them. It's supposedly a relatively "easy" process. We could have a decent source for the plates, and not had to rob old machines for them.

Bennett, your machine and cabinet look incredible. That's one lucky lady!

I really like how the cabinet looks! Neat how the different colors of wood look so sharp together. You can replace the handwheel on the 99 with a spoked wheel, and the crank finger will fit much better. You can find them on eBay for about $10, or some other sources. That is what we did to my 99, and it worked out perfect.

There are a lot of places that sell reproduction slide and needle plates. They look pretty good with one exception. Their plating, although good doesn't match the originals. So you can tell at a glance they are repops.
I have one on my Singer 66- .... oh I forget which one, and my Sewmore 404.
If you don't care about the difference in plating appearance, then it's no problem.

Joe

Wow, it arose from the ashes, to perfection!!!! Great job!!!

Are you referring to the flat sort of aluminum ones, or are there some shiny "chromed" ones out there?

I've been told (OSMG) that the main reason that the chromed ones don't look right is that Singer didn't use chrome, they used nickel, but I haven't seen any shiny repros yet, only the dull that look,... wrong.

The DH looked up the process of Nickelplating, when we found our model 27 face plate suddenly needing to be done, and said it wouldn't be too hard to do. It was basically polish, plate, polish again. The process he found didn't use electricity either (which did make me a little skeptical)

I'd love to see a shiny repro... it might be good enough to sell a machine as whole if it's meant to be used, instead of "Here's your machine but you need to go find a slide plate"

Love the cabinet and especially love the why you put the hand crank on. I was just gifted a 99 without a cabinet, I have to make a base for her, but I also want to make her a hand crank. Thanks for the information.

Nice job on both the machine and the cabinet. Love the two-tone look of the cabinet.

Love the work you did on the cabinet. What year was this machine made?

I realized I didn't include her "birthday" info. :) SN EL073188, January 24, 1956 with 50,000 allotted.