Earlier this week, a very kind fellow named Ray from the WeFixIt group on Yahoo sent me several parts for Julie, my 1894 alley-found Singer sewing machine.  After tweaking around the past few days, I think I have her purring.  I first replaced a broken needle bar cam, but she still would hang up occasionally when I spun the wheel.  Next, I polished the needle bar that Ray had also sent and that did it.  No more hanging!  I put Julie back together and am now polishing up her rusty bobbin shuttle.  I priced these little pieces of metal, as Julie's is VERY rusty, but at $30/each I decided a couple bucks worth of auto finish sandpaper and a lot of elbow grease would be more satisfying AND cheaper.  I still have to polish the slider plates (they cover the bobbin area) and the tensioner, then scrub her up real well and decide if I want to just shellac Julie and leave her as is, or if I want to refinish her.

I'm now looking for a treadle table.  I found one in Craigs List from this past weekend, the lady still has it for $15 and says it needs some work.  Before going out to look at it (I'm not wasting ANY gas!) I emailed the lady to see if it's a Singer table.  If it is, and it's not TOO rough, I might buy it although I'd really rather find a free one, in keeping with the spirit of resurrecting Julie.  However, lots of people seem to like making tables out of the treadle bases, so I don't think it's going to be too realistic to expect to find a free one.