Eeeek!!

It’s alright. Don’t panic…It’s just a sewing-machine.

A while back, I wrote this article about a Singer 128 handcrank sewing-machine that I bought in London for a song.

Well, the machine arrived home today, and I spent the last few hours cleaning it, oiling it and lubricating it. It sews, it runs, it works!

And I even found a replacement slide-plate for it. This is before:

And this is After:

Ain’t it purdy?

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that the two slide-plates do not match…

I could purchase an ORIGINAL Singer 28-series slide-plate. I could even buy a brand-new reproduction one. But I found that one in a box of sewing-machine nicknacks which I purchased for the heady price of $10 at the flea-market. One piece out of probably a hundred attachments, nuts, bolts, springs, feet and god knows what else…it cost me probably one cent!

Not bad!

Going against my own advice in my sewing-machine posts, I actually went ahead with my needle-nosed tweezers and ripped out the old, red felt wick which, as you’ll recall, is inside every bobbin-mechanism, to stop friction and abrasion, and to keep the mechanism lubricated.

I did this for two reasons:

1. The old felt was completely TRASHED!

2. It’s very easy to replace the felt wick on old Singer 28-series machines like this.

All you need is a TEENSY scrap of fabric, or some cotton wool. Roll it into a little ball or sausage, and then just stuff it into the hole where the felt wick goes. You may need to use your needle-nose tweezers or a chopstick or something, to shove it down the hole properly, but it’s not that hard.

So long as the replacement wick (made out of whatever material it was you chose) is sufficiently absorbent, you can replace the old one with no problems at all!

The only thing I need to do now, is to buy a new case-lid for it. If I can find one anywhere!