Several weeks ago, Hubby & I were driving down our alley and happened upon a HUGE pile of "stuff".  I can't say garbage because there was just so much GOOD stuff there, like a perfectly lovely brass and black laquer single bed headboard and matching footboard that looked brand-spanking new, plus a lot of office furniture that looked quite serviceable.  Luckily, we have a lot of gleaners in the neighborhood, people who drive the alleys and pick up any useable items or metal that can be sold as scrap.  Recycling at the community level, I like to call it.

Anyway, it wasn't the bed frame or office furniture that caught our eyes... it was an old Singer sewing machine perched on top of the pile.  Hubby jumped out and untangled the electric cord from the jumble of "stuff" it was wrapped in, and dropped it on the floor of the car while he looked to see if there was anything else that interested him.  Hubby buys and sells items on eBay, and is always looking for something to offer. 

The sewing machine was very rusty, and the hand wheel was firmly frozen.  Knowing nothing about old sewing machines, we set it in the corner of the storage room until we could get around to looking at it.

Last week, I decided business was slow enough... no, that I needed something other than work to occupy my mind... that it was time to do a little research on the machine.  I've always loved taking things apart (in fact, I am the family auto mechanic, tinkering with our old Datsuns when the fancy strikes) so, taking a screwdriver to the Singer, I began removing everything that was removeable.  While looking online for a diagram of how the old thing worked, I found several sites that helped me identify the machine as a model 27, made from the late 1880's to 19910.  Thenk I stumbled across the Singer website that one can find the age of a machine by looking up the serial number.  I found the number on the machine and looked it up... and my jaw dropped.  This old chunk of iron was made in 1894! Needless to say, my interest in letting Hubby put it on eBay plummeted, and I vowed to try to bring her back to life.

First thing to go was the motor.  The 27 was a treadle machine, and I decided she must go back to her original configuration.  Then, I started dousing the internals with PB Blaster.  A Yahoo group of sewing machine "shade tree mechanics" called WeFixIt suggested soaking her in kerosene but we're slipping into the unbearable heat of summer and Hubby doesn't want super-flammable around... he said "Me no want wifey go boom!"  So, I decided to just keep spraying with PB Blaster until something either happens or until it cools off enough to not worry about kerosene's flash point.

After about 4 days of daily dousing, this morning I FINALLY got movement!  The bar that is attached to the needle is firmly frozen in the body, so by loosening a few screws and a sharp twist of the hand wheel and "WHEEE", it's no longer frozen!  This is just the first step in Julie's restoration (I call the machine Julie; I don't know why, the name just came to me) and I hope to be sewing on her some day.  I could probably buy a machine for less than what it will cost me to fix this one, but it just wouldn't have the history that Julie has, namely being a 113 year old alley find!