singer from 1886
 

Hello! I have a really old singer. The serial number is telling me it was made around 1886. Thing is, this poor girl is in rough shape. Lots of grime, the needle doesn't move, foot doesn't seem to move. The hand crank spins beautifully, but nothing else seems to move. Id love to have it restored to working condition.

Does anyone have suggestions for where I can go to learn how to see if its worth the trouble? I'm afraid to open or clean it, in case I cause more damage. Im willing to take it to a professional, but it will be difficult to do, so im hoping to find some info and clean it up/assess it a bit, before carting it to someone. Sadly, most of the gorgeous painting work has been rubbed away, and there is just a ton of grime (i think maybe oil? its clearly been used a lot)

Also, I have a singer 501 and I'm wondering if anyone can tell me how I can determine its limits, as far as sewing heavier material. I've tried two layer heavy canvas, and it took it fairly poorly, though I'm a novice and it may just be my lack of skill. Thank you!

Yheard,

Welcome to the QB forum.

The Singer from 1886 will be fairly simple to refurbish. Most likely it will need lots and lots of oil.
The H/C moves but nothing else does?
Try this: Tighten the stop motion knob on the hand wheel. It's probably been loosened to wind a bobbin then not tightented up again.


The Singer 501s are the top of the line machines for their vintage. They are very flexible as to what they can sew through.
They are however maintenance critical. They are oil hogs and need grease in some places too.
Other than the smoke they can be related to the old steam locomotives.

On your machine start by opening it's manual to the maintenance section and read it thoroughly. If you don't have a manual go to Sears ...... "groan", I have no bookmarks set up yet so I cant post a link. They have free .pdf downloads that print out very nicely.

Joe

I have been working on refurbishing an old machine that was totally frozen up with rust. Nothing at all moved even a little bit.
Dosed it liberally with sewing machine oil all over both in any space that it looked like oil could possibly drain into and all over the finish as well.
Cleaned off lots of rust with a soft cloth.
Soaked base overnight in a tupper with a bottle of transmission fluid per suggestion here on board. A few things started wiggling but still locked up.
Next step was PB Blaster sprayed only on the underside. Let set awhile and eventually with gentle rocking of the hand wheel it is now moving freely.
This is my first venture into refurbishing and I'm finding it fascinating and a combination of frustrating and rewarding!

Good luck on your adventure!

Did you discover what part was rusted? I bought a Singer 66 (1924) that was rusted, and was just thinking that perhaps there's a common problem area (that is, maybe there's a part that rusts first). Took me about 30 minutes to find it: The needlebar was rusted on to the mounting (the bottom one).

I used WD40 on mine, after reading about it (can't recall where: May have been on Muv's youtube video). CSoak it, leave it, free it up, dry it off and follow up with oil (or tri-flow). Worked very very well. If I'd suspected the needlebar first of all, it would have saved about 20 minutes.