This post will Make Adwoa squee!

I was helping a friend clean old stuff out of her house today, and guess what I got to haul away for free?

Work light and motor are still good, machine hasn't been used in about half a century, so it needs lubrication badly and the rubber bits are starting to calcify. Quick googling suggests this is a late 30's to early 40's model. I'll need to do a lot of work on it, but it seems fixable.

Work light and motor are still good, machine hasn’t been used in about half a century, so it needs lubrication badly and the rubber bits are starting to calcify. Quick googling suggests this is a late 30’s to early 40’s model. I’ll need to do a lot of work on it, but it seems fixable.

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Just like my 1970 Webster XL-747 typewriter, this machine was recommended by Parents Magazine!

Just like my 1970 Webster XL-747 typewriter, this machine was recommended by Parents Magazine!

Updated: April 14, 2013 — 10:36 pm

8 Comments

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  1. Beautifully industrial. I love the look of it. Parent’s magazine? I never knew such a thing existed.

  2. And here I am! What a lovely little machine – understated, and yet elegant in its simplicity. I haven’t been able to use any of these much older ones for extended periods – I miss having zigzag stitches too much – but they are great to have around and this one has a lot of personality to boot. Let us know how fixing it up goes – have you done it before or are you merely transferring your awesome mechanical skills from typewriters to sewing machines?

    1. Virgin territory for me, heck – I’m not even real sure how a sewing machine works, much less used one before. It seems a simple enough mechanism, I have hopes. Biggest challenge will probably be the rubber bits, I think. Even the power cord is cracking badly.

  3. Nice! We used to collect sewing machines. Still have a bunch stored away. q.v. –

    http://willdavis.org/SMsovereignangle2.jpg That’s the SOVEREIGN.

    Here’s the STRADIVARO 85… http://www.willdavis.org/SMstradivaro85.jpg

    There’s the more complex KINGSTON 400 De Luxe Automatic; http://www.willdavis.org/SMkingston400DL.jpg

    The Singer 15 clone MORSE: http://www.willdavis.org/SMmorse.jpg

    Your machine is, I think, what the collectors call a “Singer Clone.” When the patents for the Singer ran out, everyone on the planet seemingly got the idea to build copies. Some are very bad, some are just excellent and are still in use daily all these years later.

    All of the above I showed were made in Japan. There is (or was?) a Yahoo group for Japanese made sewing machines of this vintage that I belonged to for a while. It turns out that unless the machine is a Brother, it’s nigh on impossible to determine which Japanese company actually made a given machine given the failure of the Japanese to keep proper nationalized records. These attractively designed and painted machines were made to invade Western markets and were quite literally flooded out in all possible means.

    VERY GLAD to see that someone else thinks that vintage sewing machines seem to be a sort of natural adjunct to typewriters, at least in a collecting sense.

    1. Interesting! I very much like the styling on the Sovereign and the Kingston 400. I think a few Typospherians have an adjunct interest in Sewing Machines (Adwoa over at Retro Tech Geneva being the main example). Also Ham Radio, 8-bit computers, adding machines and photography in varying degrees of interest. Perhaps it’s all related to some mutated DNA strand we all happen to carry?

      1. Absolutely – and add cash registers to that list!!

  4. I believe the design style may be “Streamline Moderne, or something like that. Hope you’ve gotten good use out of it.

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