Hi Joe,

Where were you before February 2012? You seem to have so much knowledge and experiece with these older machines, why were you hiding from us?

Joe are you selling the machine and if you are will Kitty come w/it????????

Well, last year a fellow on one of the shooting forums I belong to told how he had a treadle machine and was using it. I remembered I had a treadle in the garage. My #1 Singer 66. I dug it out, put it together, oiled it all up and started playing with it. I started having fun.
From there I dug out several machines we had acquired, cleaned them, lubed them and got them all ready to use. The most difficult one was my Newhome Greyhound. The box had fallen apart so I had to rebuild it.
Then I had to re-wire it as the old wiring was just seriously dangerous.
Each time I started to work on one I'd dig into it and try to find as much info as I could.
Then I ran into a forum called Sewing Forum. I was doing pretty good there, learning much and trying to help as I could when the spammers killed it. The administrator finally had to shut the forum down to clean it out. But by the time he got it back up, it was pretty much history. A couple folks there suggested the Artisan's Square forum as a place to go. So I joined that one.
Then when I was looking for information for my HOTHER they directed me here. I joined and although I haven't found much info about the HOTHER, I've met a bunch of nice folks and am just enjoying myself immensely.
I'm pretty mechanically inclined so sewing machines just seem sort of normal to me. What knowledge I have I learn by searching, reading, asking, and doing.
I wasn't really hiding from you, I was just not here ... yet.

Nagi,
The kitty is Fiona. A rescued kitty we got in October of 09. She showed up at the store my wife worked for ini the back of a produce truck. They opened the door and she came bombing out. Just about scared the guy who opened the door half to death. The asked and then pleaded for my wife to take her. So we got another little fur people to care for. She is very friendly and yet ornery at the same time.
She's not going anywhere.

The machine in the case is an Ideal Automatic. We can't find any information about it, but it's a good machine. Japanese casting, assembled in The Republic of Ireland, for the German market. All the printing on the machine is in German and it came to us still wired for the European 220 volt system. I had to put a new electrical system in it. My wife bid on it because in the pics it looked small. She thought it would be about the size of a Featherweight. LOL, that thing weighs a ton!

As for selling it I don't think so. If I did my wife might do something mean and evil to me.

Joe