Singer 66 Fixes: Finish and Bobbin Winder

 

 

At the moment I have this 1928 Singer model 66 up for sale on the Raleigh NC CraigsList.  I usually do an accompanying blog post full of exhaustive details in an attempt to stun the customers and lead them to buy the machine just to make me stop talking about it.  I did that this time too, and you can see that post here.  But I had so VERY much to say that I decided to take pity on the customers and break out some of the details about the restoration process that could only be of interest to my regular readers, you, the vintage-sewing-machine-obsessed. 

 

The vintage sewing machines that have come to me here have arrived in all sorts of conditions.  Residue of old sewing machine oil, enhanced by dust and lint, may have clogged the mechanism.  Exposure to the elements, especially moisture, may have resulted in rust.  This one was not rusty but quite dirty and sluggish, and once those issues were addressed it was functioning perfectly.  But the finish looked truly dreadful.  The photos above show it after I worked on it.  I managed to make it look quite a bit better and I've been wanting to talk about this for a long time.  I've got one or two things to say that I haven't heard anyone else say.  I hope it will be helpful.

This is where a "before" picture ought to go.  If I had one.  All I have though is a distance shot of the setup in my studio as I prepared for the Repair Cafe TV workshop.  I have plenty of "during" photos that you will see below though.

First it helps to understand what is going on with the finish.

When the machine was originally manufactured the paint was baked on and it is quite thick.  I know because I have stripped them down to bare metal more than once.  Decals were applied over the black paint.  Some were gold, some were beautiful designs in multiple colors.  Over top of these decals a clear coat was applied.  I'm not going to comment on what it was because I only know from hearsay.

Much of what I "know" is hearsay, btw, because there is no authoritative source of information about all of this gathered together in one place.  But if I hear reasonable accounts over and over again from people I have learned to trust, AND if it corresponds with what I have observed directly, I usually trust it.

Anyhow, whatever it was, it wasn't modern polyurethane.  And whatever it was, it has broken down considerably over the last 92 years.  Where it has worn away completely the paint underneath is still black and glossy.  In some places it has bubbled and resembles a textured finish nicknamed "Godzilla" by vintage Singer fanatics.  In other places it looks brown and rough.

There is no way to fix this without destroying whatever is left of the original decals.  I won't be surprised if this definitive statement is disputed by someone in the comments, but I think I am right after ten years of messing around (technical term) with these machines.   You can, however, strip off the old clear coat and decals, apply new reproduction decals (and the gold ones are of a decent quality, the full color ones not-so-much), and then apply a new clear coat.  Time consuming and expensive.  But an option.

Not an option for me without pricing this machine right out of the limited market.

So my only goal was to get it clean enough so that it wouldn't transfer dirt on to the owner's sewing projects.  I cleaned the surface with GoJo non-pumice hand cleaner, which risked damaging the decals further.  But I guessed correctly that enough of the clear coat was left over the decals to protect them. 

 

All of the explanations you are about to read below are purely speculation.  

This is what it looked like AFTER I cleaned it with GoJo.  I'll never forget the first time I saw something like this early in my restoration days.  I thought I had ruined the machine.

Speculative explanation:  Cleaning added moisture to the decaying clear coat and made it more opaque and therefore much more visible.  And made it look much worse.  But I've been doing this for 10 years and I knew that this would abate as it dried out.  And by the next morning it looked a little better.

Next I used TR-3 auto cleaner and polish, applying it with cotton balls and rubbing gently.  More dark stuff came off, but I knew that this was just old clear coat and possibly some of the paint beneath, and not more dirt.  In my very early years of doing this I kept at this process over and over and over and over again and the black stuff never stopped.  That's how I figured out that I eventually got down to the paint.  This time I was just aiming for a slight level of protection for the finish.

 

This also added moisture, which brought out the "bloom" of bad finish again.  There is an easy and simple solution to this. Slather the puppy in sewing machine oil.  I applied it with a toothbrush.

Speculative explanation:  the sewing machine oil displaces the moisture.

This makes the machine look fantastic, as good as it possibly could.  An unscrupulous seller could use a photo like this to advertise the machine. They could top it up right before they showed it to the customer.  And in a day or two the customer would wonder what happened.

I let the sewing machine oil sit overnight and then wiped it off thoroughly, and I do mean thoroughly.  I don't want to sell a machine that would contaminate any sewing projects.  And the finish looks a lot better than I thought it would.  Over time as the volatile components of the sewing machine oil evaporate it may not look quite so good.  But it won't go back to the "crud" stage unless you use cleaner or auto polish on it.  Counter-intuitive, I know.  It has been a week now and it still looks like the photo above.

 

I promised more photos of the decals in the sales-oriented blog post, so here they are.  Except for the typical bed wear and the top of the arm they are in nice shape.

The only problem that I had to fix was with the bobbin winder, and I'm going to go into lots of detail here.  So if you are a customer and not a vintage sewing machine addict, feel free to stop here.  Actually I am surprised you made it this far. 

First, let's take a look at the way the bobbin winder works.  In photos.  I will be providing the customer with a manual.

 

 

 

As the toothed wheel turns, the forked arm swings back and forth and distributes the thread evenly from side to side.

First, the bobbin winder tire had disintegrated over the years.  It's possible that this was the original one from 1928 but I have no way to know.  

 

Replacing this is a quick and easy fix, although I did have to remove the hand wheel to do it.  Also quick and easy, at least if the screws aren't frozen in place.  They weren't.

But the new tire, although the same size as the original tire, was not flabby and deteriorated.  And it pressed so hard against the hand wheel that it made the hand crank almost impossible to turn.  There is a simple adjustment for this.

 

 

The photo above shows the location of the adjustment screw.  When you loosen this up it allows you to adjust the position of the bobbin winder tire to be slightly closer or farther away from where it rides on the hand wheel.  

A regular screwdriver wouldn't fit in here, I had to use one with a right angle bend to it.

You don't have to remove the screw entirely to make the adjustment, but I did remove it later for another reason (coming soon).  Notice that the hole the screw goes through is oval rather that just exactly the right size of round for the screw to go through.  This oval shape allows for you to slide the piece and adjust its placement.

 

In the photo above, and with the bobbin winder off of the machine, you can see what I am talking about.  The screw hole marked with the yellow arrow shows a hole exactly the right size for the screw.  The one marked with the red arrow shows the oval opening that allows you to slide the piece into the best alignment.

The next problem was a bit more challenging, but that's the fun of this hobby--figuring things out. 

The teeth in the round wheel must mesh with the grooves above it in order for the bobbin winder to guide the thread properly.  You can adjust it up or down with a screwdriver. There was a gap between the teeth of the wheel and the grooves above and so the bobbin winder was not working properly.

I could adjust it upwards so that the teeth met the grooves, but it kept slipping downward again.  There was no way to fix it from the front side so I had to remove it from the machine.

The nut shown above is holding the bolt in place.  It was this nut that needed to be tightened.

While I had it off I took an aluminum wire brush to the un-painted parts to clean them up a bit.  The grunge wasn't affecting performance, but this made it look a bit better.  I also used some 400 grit sandpaper to clean up the front facing parts.  The photos above at the beginning of this bobbin winder discussion show the "after".

This was a two-handed operation, holding the bolt on the front in place without moving, while tightening the nut on the back with the other hand.  And the third hand held the camera, lol.  (Actually in this re-enactment the needle nose pliers holding the nut are just propped off to the side.)

With all of these repairs/adjustments in place the bobbin winder is now working perfectly.

• Replace bobbin winder tire
• Adjust placement of bobbin winder tire riding against the hand wheel
• Tighten the nut holding the toothed wheel adjustment bolt in place
  

The last problem I fixed wasn't a problem with the machine, but with the funky base that I put it in.  I'm running out of stuff as the pandemic progresses and this was the best I could do.

In order for the bobbin cover to slide open it has to clear the hinge mechanism on the base.  It was sitting too low and the bobbin cover wouldn't open.  I've had this happen before.

The fix was to add a strip of self-adhesive weatherstripping felt to the base.  The felt was too wide and I cut it in half lengthwise.

That raised the machine high enough to clear the hinge and now the bobbin cover slides open.

That's it, another epic from DragonPoodle Studio.  I absolutely love this machine now and kind of hope it doesn't sell.  But if it does I have another old 66 that I haven't restored yet.