Here's one Grandma must have beat to death, had it 're-furbished' and then beat it to death some more before it was abandoned in a wet basement. This one is not a candidate for French Polish. This one has nothing left - no finish at all - it was pretty rusted up when I got it. Yes it sews. Yes it moves freely. Walter loves it. Guess what? This one took the beating & got back up and it keeps on sewing:
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Glenn says I can do something with it to make it look good. I'm thinking I may just put shellac on it and leave it 'natural' - Crazy I know. I don't want to lose the refurb decals.

As to the arm-mounted pin cushions (that cause the pin rash) are concerned, I nearly always remove them on machines that I get having them. One exception was my 1944 Singer 29K70 boot patcher. I’ve had it and have used it probably an average of once every couple of weeks since 2007, and never thought to remove the pin cushion for some reason. It’s home-made out of thin leather and what looks like a piece of an old wool saddle blanket. It’s sort of “saddle-maker-looking”, so maybe that’s why I’ve left it as-is. It’s laced onto the arm with leather lacing. It has always had pins sticking in it, but I seldom use pins while using it, and also had added a chicken-shaped pin cushion to the machine a couple of years ago that rides in the lattice of the Needle Bar Driving Lever across the top of the arm in case I’m ever pulling pins on a project. The chicken doesn’t have any pins in it yet.

Last week when I was sewing sports patches onto the sleeves of a school letter jacket, I snagged the back of my hand on a pin sticking down under the arm. I had to halt my sewing project to make sure that I didn’t get blood on anything, and got to feeling around on the saddle blanket part of the pin cushion, and found a whole bunch of sharp points sticking out, but no sign of the heads. The cushion had rotated down around the arm over time that placed part of the wool under the arm. Since I had time while waiting for the bleeding to stop, I carefully removed the cushion without damaging it.

When I opened the cushion up to look at the side that had been against the arm, it was just full of pins and needles that couldn’t be seen from the outside. I saw that I had been lucky that I went so long before gouging myself, and commenced to removing pins and needles. I didn’t count them, but I probably got 25-30 pins and needles out of there, including 3 machine needles.

Once I was sure that I’d gotten all of the sharp things out of the cushion, I laced it back onto the arm for a decoration and went back to work on the jacket.

CD in Oklahoma

CD you might have to go to the recycle place with all those pins...

Since I tend to shop in the bottom feeder price range most of my machines show at least some wear. I don't mind the wear. It means the machine was actually used by the original owners. I like the history that represents. I like the ones that look brand new too but I always wonder why they didn't see much use.
Rodney

I like the ones that look brand new, too. Don't get me wrong. But I like the way the old beaters work better.

I’ve got so many ugly machines that I can’t decide which one is the ugliest. I like beater machines, and being an “opportunistic collector” and somewhat of a bottom feeder as a buyer, beaters are about all that I come up with. But, I do actually prefer a machine that looks like “it’s been there and done that” and is ready to do it again.

I don’t really have any need for a machine that is just “pretty”, and have always felt that they may not have ever been used to their full potential, which is a shame. Of course, I’m the type of guy that can’t wait to get the first scratch or ding on a new pickup truck so that I can relax and put it to work. Not that anything should be abused, but life is full of bumps and dings if you do anything productive. Beater machines look to me like they’ve been productive tools and worthy of my respect.

CD in Oklahoma

CD you have a way with words - where's the poem?

Maybe you can do better:

Grandma nearly beat it to death making dresses,
hemming overalls and fixing torn up messes
That machine went down kickin'
and came back up tickin'
and someone like me it still blesses.

Since this thread is about Grandma’s machine, I’ve always had a question in my mind about my Grandma’s 1906 White VSIII Treadle machine. She got it second hand as a wedding gift in 1928 and used it until buying a Singer 404 in 1960.

The cast iron White treadle frame has the letters “White” cast into both end frames, and ever since I’ve had the machine (since 1982), the letter “T” has been missing from the right end, and the letter “W” has been missing from the left end. They’ve both been carefully cut loose from the frame. I don’t know if they went missing before my Grandma got the machine, or while it was in her possession, but I’ve always wondered who the heck “T.W.” was......and why was he beating up on Grandma’s machine?

CD in Oklahoma

I've gone over that machine with the French polish again. I can't get a picture of how it looks to turn out how it looks. The finish is smooth and looking as good as I can do. What I still see is bald metal under there on the bed and lots of pin scratches but they are smooths scratches... LOL But I feel like that machine will go another 50 or 100 years.

HM another mystery - you must have gotten the gene though...

Your words are excellent Miriam. I can’t improve on that.

CD in Oklahoma