Serendipity, Redone

Hello to you all!  I haven't anything in particular for the Smalls SAL this month due to something else distracting me entirely.  I suppose I could shoehorn it in because it certainly had a lot of small and fiddly bits!

This is about Miss Serendipity, the Singer 201-2 I found in the trash in 2015.  She hasn't been seen nor heard of since February 2016, when I last tackled the tension assembly and front face plate.  This year I was determined would be The Year I finally got around to ordering and making use of the motor rewiring kit available through The Project Lady's eBay page.  Other people sell similar kits but she does enough work on Singers and posts helpful info about them so I figured I'd stay loyal.

Kit acquired, I dove into the disassembly using this tutorial.  I really wish that blog was still active!  It's a phenomenal resource about the older machines.  First up was removing the hand wheel (the thingy that turns on the machine allowing the needle bar to go up and down) and seeing about the state of things in there.

shiny little worm

Not too bad!  There was quite a bit of old grease spattered everywhere but I tackled it with my army of Q-tips and careful application of isopropyl alcohol and had it looking reasonably shiny in there.  The after image is actually after I started to put things back together as it would've been impossible to properly clean that worm (the spiral gear-looking thing at the bottom of the large circle).  Then I moved on taking apart the actual motor housing...

motor housing - before

Eek. This is the sign of someone doing naughty things to a sewing machine. :( This is supposed to be clean and oil free! A bit of carbon dust is okay and to be expected, but not this sticky black mess. I almost cried when I saw the state of this and thought I would never be able to fix her because it would meant the commutator could be too damaged to save.  I scouted around for "worst-case" Singer scenarios and found that the housing at least could be cleaned up okay and the carbon brushes could be removed from the inside.

motor housing - after

It only took about five million Q-tips!  And my hands were completely black afterwards.  Don't even think about under my nails, yuck~  But, so far so good.  The next part was not so good.  In fact, it was terrible and I'm impressed the machine ran at all.

copper is very important

I am still not 100% sure this is even "acceptable" but it was the best I could do.  There is no way to disassemble this thing entirely and give it the cleaning it really needed and I couldn't just dunk the whole thing in alcohol due to the wiring.  It's also one of the single most expensive parts to replace on these machines as it is absolutely vital to an electric motor!  But to make that bottom part shiny copper again was a really neat and satisfying experience -- I simply stuck the end in our drill, tightened down the chuck, and held a thin strip of VERY fine sandpaper over that part.  It just polished right up!  (This was not my idea; it was detailed in the rewiring post mentioned up top. Told you it was a very handy resource!)  Next up was doing the actual rewiring which it needed, badly.

soldering and heat shrinking!

My soldering skills need a bit of work but they are tightly bound together with not a whole lot of solder.   And covered with heat shrink tubing which I just love to work with hah.  I got to make a fancy underwriter's knot to take pressure off the motor if the wiring gets pulled.  I also replaced the little rubber grommet as this is what the original looked like after poking around:

this is supposed to be a circle

Not really anything left of that little rubber thing!  The rewiring kit comes with this little doodad as apparently it's expected to crumble into oblivion after 60+ years of life.  Drama done!

nice and tidy

Everything tucked neatly into place while I reassembled the motor housing.  Once I put that commutator back in and got the spiral worm held back in (a process I don't look to repeat hah), I started tackling the old bits that just... get old.  And then it's time to reassemble and squish grease everywhere it's supposed to go.

new vs old, ewww!

The rewiring kit also came with new grease wicks and she most certainly needed new ones, yuck!  They weren't even soft anymore.  Just dirty and crusty little things that luckily came off the springs with no drama whatsoever.  I got them back into their little hole with their clip and then stuffed that hole with a goodly amount of plain petroleum jelly.  The greasing done, I then turned my attention to reinserting the carbon brushes which required another order, this time from Sew-Classic, a popular place for (new) vintage sewing machine replacement parts!

new vs old, part two

This was the problem and while I don't know the story behind the life of this sewing machine, I am going to guess someone didn't realize the tubes for these little bricks of carbon should never have anything other than those little bricks in them.  Ever.  The screws themselves are made of bakelite, which was an early edition of plastic.  They are incredibly delicate.  One of the two original screws was chipped down to that little nub and by some miracle, I was able to put a teeny tiny screwdriver in the hole (which was not a slot, it was actually a hole!) and verrrry carefully unscrew it.  The replacement screw fit perfectly in the cleaned tube to cover that little brush with the spring attached.  Whew.  Now what?

little black tire for a winding bobbins

Because I had needed to order the replacement screw from Sew-Classic, I also ordered a few more little things to make her Even Better.  This included a new spool pin (the machine was found with only one), an LED bulb upgrade (so I don't burn my hand off; the original bulbs get hot), the pre-made rewiring cord that runs from the machine to the foot controller, and a new bobbin winder tire.  I don't have a specific "before" picture of the old bobbin tire but it's just visible on the first images of this post as the little grey rubber thing on the left side of the big circle.  What a fiddly little part!  I adjusted the winder so it actually engages with the hand wheel to actually do what it's supposed to do -- wind bobbins, what a novel idea!

I kind of wish I also had pictures of rewiring the foot controller but I was so overwhelmingly relieved to get the dang thing off the table I just dove right in and rewired it.  At one point I was fully hanging on the controller trying to get it off the little clamp on the underside of the table!  After what felt like infinite wiggling, it finally just slid off, easy as you please.  At least I don't have to worry about it falling off.  Ever.  My goodness.  But now, everything is done.  Done!  DONE!!

YAAAAAAAAY! :D :D :D :D  I cannot express my absolute excitement when she first turned on and did what she was supposed to do!

new plug!

I had to do one more order from Sew-Classic.  When I was playing around with things, I found that the light would still occasionally flicker and the motor would cut out.  This isn't good for motors at all and at first, I thought it was due to the commutator being in such bad shape.  But I found it's actually the cord that plugs into the machine and connects to an outlet!  Where the cord enters the part that you attach to the machine, it is very loose and you can actually hear a little crackling noise if you wiggle it (while not plugged in; it's not sparking thank goodness).  Unfortunately, there is no way to open up that end on my particular cord and repair the connection.  I wish I had known this before the original order as I had to pay for shipping again, alas!  The new cord has a polarized plug which will make things better for everything.  But I cannot be done...

a purrfect cat trap

Because I will not be standing nor kneeling at the machine, I needed something to sit on!  The thrift store angels seem to like me a little bit and I found this box for $5.  It's a sewing bench... Or rather, sewing ottoman!  I have no information on it at all, no maker, no hint whatsoever of what it was used with.  The seat part itself was cracked and no longer functioned as a seat.  I bought a small piece of quarter inch MDF board and my husband cut it to size and added the rounded corners.

all fixed

This was done quite a long time ago, while we were still at our previous home.  I don't have very many pictures of the process but the MDF worked wonderfully!  It doesn't have the original print but it doesn't look terrible without it, especially being the seat part.  I may at some point attach a means of storing spools of thread.

the original vinyl print

I had to brighten up the picture to get the pattern to show but the seat is a pretty cranberry color best shown in the first picture.  There is a small tear near one of the corners at the bottom but I'm not sure how to go about repairing that.  It doesn't hamper the function!  I don't know that I will recover this because I like the vinyl print quite a bit!

I hope I didn't bore you with this really long, non-stitchy post.  I'm so, so happy to have accomplished this task and that everything I did actually made a difference!  I have a few pieces of cotton to play with so that I can relearn how to sew (it has been around 20 years) and I get to have fun learning how all the attachments I've acquired work their magic! After that, I'm not sure what my first project will be!  I have a few heavy curtains I've had forever and have always been waaay too long at any house I've ever lived in... they sound like a good start!

YAY \:D/