ppquilter

Hubby went to an auction house, less than a mile away and came home with a treadle for me. I will need to do something with the cabnit but sewing machine I haven't tried yet. The book in the cabnit says 15-88 / 15-89 so not sure what the diff is to my 15-91??? AD971307

oldsewnsew

Your 15-91 has the potted motor on back (no pulley)

ThayerRags

15-88 is treadle operated
15-89 is the same machine handcrank operated (portable)

15-91 has a built-in (referred to as “potted”) electric motor

CD in Oklahoma

Macybaby

AND the 15-90 is the same as the 15-89 but with a regular motor (not potted).

miriam

Have you checked the age of it? I have one from 1902 with a big hand wheel that I spent hours fixing up. LOVE IT best of all of the 15s I have. I think it is a 15-30. I encourage you to get her going. The hard part on mine was getting off all the dried up oil.

Macybaby

This one is not a 15-30. This decal pattern was not used that far back and a 15-30 did not have reverse like this one.

I had one just like it (still have the cabinet) and converted it to electric (which turned it into a 15-90 as that is the only difference) and gave it to a budding seamstress. She loves the machine and it sews wonderfully.

I have a 15-30 also, with the tiffany decal pattern.

miriam

I realize it is not a 15-30 - they have a different tension, stitch length and hand wheel. There are other older models as well. I even saw an industrial 15 with a walking foot - the guy welded a handle to make it hand crank as well as a treadle.

Macybaby

there are so many Industrial 15 models - way, way more than the domestic ones. I think that is one reason so many sellers list the domestic 15's as "industrial" since there are a lot of truly industrial 15's.

Sorry I got confused, but if this machine was much older one, and that would make it a 15-30, unless it was even older . . . the 15-30 was made up until the early 30's, and then the 15-(88-91) series was made, with very little variation to the domestic machines in between.

This is a neat list - scroll down to the 15's section and you can see all the different variations of the Model 15 for industrial use.

http://www.ismacs.net/singer_sewing_...sses-1-99.html

miriam

Some of the 15s had fiddle bases, too.

SteveH

I believe that Cathy (Mizkaki) has a Fiddlebase 15