1963 Kenmore Machine...

The case is made of wood and the covering has seen better days. It weighs a ton, but I don't plan on taking it anywhere. 

I love the gray and cream body color. I only had to clean out the feed dogs and then was able to sew with it. The only problem I have is to figure out the thread tension disc assembly, it seems to not be functioning quite right. Thread does not slide through it very easy. Seems to be either too loose or too tight, no inbetween.

 It also has a very stretched out belt. When I get time to check it out better, I plan to see if it will fit into my treadle. In the mean time I will take it to my Sewing Machine repair  man to get the tension disks sorted out and a new belt. It also has sixteen cams to make decorative stitches. Once it is serviced I will try them out.

My Husbands only question was - is the last machine that is coming in the mail? I assured him that it is for now. 

New/old machine...

 I was on the ebay site for too long last Wednesday...lol. I found this sweet 1956 Singer 403A in a cabinet for a not to high price (I paid $150.00) and was able to pick it up in Columbia, SC. The biggest temptation was that it is the same age as me and it is a gear driven machine. After some cleaning and addition of lube to the gears it sews beautifully.

 The cabinet is kind of rickety, but I plan to someday have a cabinet made for it using this one for a pattern. The plus is it came with a knee control as well as a foot control.

 This is the before cleaning picture. It had lots of old brown grease on it. I used WD-40 to clean most of it off and still need to do more. Iput new Singer gear lube on all the gears inside as they were all bone dry. Now she is running smooth again. 

Now she is sewing great and even making zig-zag stitches. The bobbin that came with it fit loose on the bobbin winding spindle. But I was able to put a sliver of fabric with the bobbin onto the spindle and that worked to get a good bobbin wound. I am loving how fun this machine is to stitch with. I may even buy some of the decorative cams to play with. (it came with just the one zig-zag cam)

Now I must get back to my longarm quilting...