Diversion

I’ve had my eye out for a sewing machine cabinet for some time now. Yesterday, I found this lovely one at a tag sale down the street. It came with a machine that didn’t work.

No worries. I figured I’d take this one out and put my machine right in. My machine is at the shop for its annual tune-up, so I thought I’d just poke around a little and see if I could solve this puzzle.

I peeked inside and underneath.  A little rust, but nothing obviously wrong.

Then I took off a faceplate and found this:

That took a bit of cleaning!

Still the needle didn’t move. The hand wheel turned, but no other action. The belt looked great. I took all of that off and found a washer inside the handwheel was on upside down. The projections meant to engage the next piece were facing the wrong way!

I reassembled the wheel and it worked!

The feed dogs are rusty.

I soaked them overnight in cola and scrubbed them well today. They look much better, but I’ll still probably try to replace this piece.

A new lightbulb went in and that worked too!

The next mystery was why the presser foot lever would not bring the presser foot down. I tightened a screw, tapped on the shaft from below, polished off some rusty bits and still no luck. Eventually I used my screwdriver to gently force a piece above the lever up and back down again several times. Suddenly the lever engaged and the foot came down!

There are more bits to figure out. The next two tasks are to learn how to move the feed dog height lever and how to make the stitch width lever work. It has a knee control instead of a foot pedal and that will take some getting used to.

What a fun puzzle to play with!