BETTY THE FEATHERWEIGHT

I am posting pics today of my cleaned and freshly oiled Featherweight "Betty".  I wish I had taken before pics, but I didn't.  This machine is the one that will eventually reside in the newly refinished case that I have posted pics of.  For those who are concerned about a good Kerosene soaking, you can see my decals have been unaffected and the yellowing that the black paint had originally when I got Betty is gone.(I think it was old nicotine yuck)

Everything is clean and well oiled.   All I have to do is grease the gears once I find out the proper grease to use.   If you really want to compare,  look at how clean all the screw heads are.  The wiring is still the old wiring but Betty runs beautifully so all is good.

Almost Done!

My case is almost done and I am very happy with the results.  A final sanding an one more coat of semi glass minwax and she will be good to go.  I am sorry I did not include the tray in this process.  It still has the (phew) smell no matter what I have tried.  Maybe if I beg and plead hard enough I can get it done too.....  Hubby has been traveling and then we had the Holiday so it took longer then expected.    However I am not taking it anywhere so who cares!  Here are the pics.  Please leave me comments!  I am keeping the original handle as it is still in pretty good condition.  When hubby is all done I will clean off all the metal parts and polish up.

THE CASE IS STAINED

Yesterday hubby stained the case.  I choose Minwax in the color Espresso.  Now the next step after it totally dries is to put on a matte finish.  I choose matte because I did not want it to look real shiny.  He will probably work on that tonight after he gets home from work.  BTW, the smell (phew) is all gone!  Yeah!!!

DAY THREE REFURBISHING PROJECT

DEAR HUSBAND,

Thank you for spending your entire weekend working on this case.  I know you love it when I give you "special projects" to do LOL.....

Back to my post.  The whole case has been sanded and glued and filled and the only thing left is hubby is going to go over the case one more time with 400 Grit sandpaper.   Remember it looked like this:

Here is the inside of the box.  I think it looks pretty darn good.

and this is a sample of the stain color I want .  It is by Minwax and is called Espresso.  I wanted to keep the box dark, similar to the way it looked originally.  So that is where it is to this point on Sunday evening.  I think I will cook hubby a nice T-bone steak dinner, don't you think he deserves it?

DAY 2 OF THE REFURBISHING PROJECT

Today my husband started sanding on the case.

It took several hours with an electric sander to get the surface sanded down.  It was probably a good thing I went this route.  Once it was all sanded he found the bottom of the box was cracked all around.  I would have been so crushed if my little machine had fallen through the bottom of the box while I was carrying it.  

The only thing holding it intact was the fabric covering and that was rotted out too, and a small portion that had not come unglued,.  There was also a crack in the case on the front about half way up from the bottom.  So he glued and clamped and bonded the case back together.  This is what he got done on day two.  Tomorrow he will tackle the inside.  It is still the same as it was from the day one photos.  

Can you see the beautiful tongue and groove corners?  They don't make things like that today!

REFURBISHING OF SINGER FEATHERWEIGHT 1949

I just recently purchased my second Singer Featherweight manufactured approx Oct, 1949.  The machine was very nice and it sews beautifully but it and the case smelled so badly that since it arrive three weeks ago it has not been in the house.

I tried everything to get the order out of the machine and the case.  After much cleaning of the machine by soaking in a Kerosene bath for two days and spraying WD 40 in every crevice I could find,  I finally got the machine odor free but the case...that was a different matter.

I washed the case down with a solution of colorox and dried it throughly,  I let it bake in the sun, the hot Arizona sun, for two weeks,  I filled it full of Kitty Litter and let it bake in the sun...nothing took away the foul odor

Finally after some research I found it was probably the glue that they used back then to attach the cover and the linings.  It could have been a glue made from animals, it got damp and then molded.

So after searching the web I found that a woman actually too all her covering off (the same reason it smelled so badly), and she found a beautiful hardwood tongue and groove box.  

So I started two days ago ripping off the cover, ugh, a nasty jog.  Make sure if you decide to attempt this, you do it outside.  You do not want possible mold spores in your home.  I did not find any but who knows what we can not see.  Here is how the box looked once I ripped everything off.