Spring has sprung

Q. What is wrong with this picture?

I do apologise. That is probably the worst pun ever to appear on this blog in 10 years of writing. But I just couldn't resist.

Unusually for me, I'm not really in the mood for sewing right now. I've come to the conclusion that Butterick 6866 doesn't really do me any favours (it may be the colour), and this combined with The Great Embroidery Disaster, has left me at a bit of a loose end.

Readers with long memories may recall my plans last autumn to restore a 1903 Singer 48K sewing machine. Unfortunately, this got put on hold for a bizarre reason. There is a strong smell whenever I take the case off, and it's not of sewing machine oil - it's more like heavy engineering oil! Whatever inappropriate substance was generously applied, for me it's a migraine waiting to happen. So the 48K, now christened Deltic Elsie in honour of her pungent whiff, will have to wait until I can work on her outdoors.

Be grateful that it's not possible to attach smells to blog posts!

In the meantime, I have been reading up online about restoring old sewing machines, and remembered that the tension on Maud, my original vintage machine, wasn't great. So, as a new sewing project wasn't on the agenda, I fetched her out to have a look.

Maud, a 99K hand crank from 1917

The tension on Maud . . .

Sure enough, at first glance she appeared to be missing a tension disc and the check spring. For comparison, here is the tension on Tilda.

. . . and on Tilda

When I unscrewed the tension nut, I discovered that there was a spring in there after all. Or at least, part of one. The hook end is broken off, and the whole thing is a mess.

Eep!

While looking online for a replacement spring and information on how to remove the original one, I discovered that 1. the spindle on which all the parts rest has a slight crack and 2. while most Singer 99s might look the same, this doesn't mean that they are. I can't comment on other areas, but I now know that the tension mechanism underwent lots of changes in the decades that the 99 was being produced. Some were readily apparent; for example Maud does actually have two tension discs, they are just different sizes from different eras! Others were more subtle - as I found when I bought what looked like a replacement spindle only a couple of years newer.

Yes, I do keep a vernier scale in my workbox - doesn't everyone?!

There was also the discovery of just how grubby the machine is. I had given it what I thought was a reasonable clean when I bought it, but hadn't tried to dismantle anything. Armed with more knowledge, and a lot of YouTube videos, I'm now taking things apart to do a more thorough job.

The bobbin winder in particular needs work

A lot of work

At some point the stopper on the end of the hank crank needs to be replaced, too! A big thank you to Kate for recommending Helen Howes - thanks to her considerable knowledge this, and everything else, is now in hand.

Genuine 1917 sellotape. Or not

But most importantly, I find I'm enjoying all of this. It's fascinating to look properly at something I've used, pretty much unthinkingly, for about 50 years, and get a better idea of how it all works. I'm also amazed that I managed to make a dress and a top on a machine with a barely-functional tension - testament to what workhorses the old Singers were. Anyone who has read this blog for a while will know my views on the throwaway society, and being able to restore a 105-year-old machine fits right in with them.

There is a lot of information about 99s and 66s out there, and lots of parts available. This is hardly surprising; according to the ISMACS database, over 13 million were made worldwide. By contrast, there were only half a million 48Ks made (it may even have been fewer, those were the production numbers allocated). So, I think that cutting my restoration teeth on an 'easy' model before attempting something relatively obscure has turned out to be a wise move - for once, my squirrel tendencies have been useful!