Meet Brenda Brighteyes
 

Here is my newest addition to the vintage group...But I have a question about her very dark needle plate and bobbin cover, I'm thinking the chrome is ALL gone and this is bare steel, not shiny at all like her lil sis the 99 I got a couple of weeks ago. Any suggestions, I have cleaned with metal, and chrome cleaner, and paint remover as my husband thought they had been painted over....made no difference at all. If I want shiney, should I just by new ones??? Thanks for looking and your input. Brenda Brighteyes sews like a dream.

Colleen,

Nice red eye. I'm in serious like with that Singer decal design. And the model 66 series as a whole.

It's possible they are worn enough that the plating has mostly rubbed off. Is there Singer part numbers on the bottom of them? Were that my machine I'd just clean and oil them and leave 'em right there.

Joe

Thanks for your response, Joe, I've scrubbed on them enough, and polished enough, and finally put them back in the machine, and I don't remember seeing any part no. on them, but in the "what do you know" dept. When I scraped all the rust off of the bentwood case key, there WAS a very tiny part no. on it. Made my day. Still can't decide why these plates are so dark unless someone washed them in a dishwasher. I have some aluminun knives that got dark that way. BTW...we just moved this year from Quad Cities to sunny (hot) south for the rest of our retirement. Loving it.

The slide plate that came with my 99k is very shiny. The replacement slide plate (a reproduction) for my 99 hand crank is dull metal(not dark though) and doesn't exactly mesh evenly with the throat plate. Try to get a genuine vintage part for the shiny look? FWIW.

Very pretty! We have a red eye treadle but haven't tried her out yet. We've been too busy accumulating a herd and haven't had time to clean up the ones we have. Please let us know how you like sewing on her.

How do you guys get all those parts looking so silvery like new? I've used chrome polish on parts and they just stay looking dirty gold-ish. Plus I put so much oil on the machine that the decals should have floated off, but they didn't. I think the camera flash makes stuff look darker & shinier sometimes than the machine really is too.

Wahhh - how come my stuff doesn't look like everybody else's????

LOL @ BlitsyOne. I am having the same problem. I have my grandmother's 1907 model 28 treadle, and I know for a fact that she has many, many miles on her. All of the chrome, or whatever it was, is worn off of the wheel, as well as the throat plates. I've cleaned, scrubbed, polished and anything else I can do to make them shiny. I've reached one conclusion-it is not going to happen. I think the original finish is worn off. I can either replace them with new parts or use it as is, and remember how my grandmother looked, sitting there, treadling away with her latest creation. The machine is just not going to be shiny. After all, she's 105-which is about the age my DGKs think I am!

I have a couple machines with 'black' chrome and some with worn off chrome from too much cleaning.

kinda looks like it's down to bare metal. i read somewhere that replacement parts are sometimes darker metal and won't match. i think i'd let it go and just enjoy using her.

The ones I found aren't shiny and bright - kind of a brushed type finish