The more information I find on the antique and vintage machines, the more I wonder about details on the ones I purchased. I think there are some sellers who will swap parts of all sorts out to make it look good to sell. I bought about 8 in a very short time. UPDATE...make that 10. I am pleased with what I got but haven't actually started to sew on any one of them. I still think they are all sound and will work. I have learned so much in that short period of time that my brain is smoking.
The Treadleon group is a must. If you only read information there that they have gathered, you will get a lot from it. I also found tidbits of info from connections they have on their site. They have a yahoo group to join too.
I will get some photos posted. Speaking of photos, searching thru the Pinterest Singer photos, has been extremely helpful. My singer 1888 fiddle base didn't have any chrome left on the wheel. I thought it must have worn off. DUH! Seems it never had chrome. Some of these were nickel. I was considering getting it re-chromed. That is load off me. The info posted with the photos on pinterest is what told me the ones I was looking at there and mine are just nickel. This is the connection to the singer machines. She has a ton of other boards with different brands and a seperate one for the featherweight.
https://www.pinterest.com/annemiekekooima/singer-manufacturing-co/
Singer gave me a connection to download the manual for the 1884 for free. I was very pleased about that.
Cleaning old machines warning. I was cleaning away. I have 3 Singer machines at least cleaned once. I thought, wow, I will clean my A.G. Mason Golden Star. It looked nice and the decals WERE nice. I did notice that the paint surface had 2 different textures. The areas with decals seemed to have a tiny bubbly appearance. The plain areas were a dull black matte. I do think somebody sprayed something over the decals, something not meant to be cleaned. I made the decision to go ahead even though I saw a problem. I started to clean. It was fine. I scrubbed the underneath. I looked at the top and started seeing strange things going on with the color. I took dish soap and washed it. I had taken the pieces out of the front section. This machine doesn't have a face plate. The whole front section comes off. It has had nice decals...I cleaned it carefully just on the inside of the piece. I decided to rinse it with alcohol. That didn't stay inside. The spots it got on outside became instant glue and stuck to my left glove. It was nasty and blackish brown. I decided to go ahead and clean the whole piece. It melted the stuff off leaving the decals just silver. Gross and sad. It is another reason to get Singer machines. I think the machines were all built to last. The paint wasn't built to last. I am going to consider this one RE-BIRTHED. Not sure what I want except that it needs repainted.
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