Treadle Cleaning

Well we didn't lose power during the "Blizzard of '16", and only got about 3" of snow.  Instead of sewing by candle light I spent the day taking apart the seven-drawer and cleaning it up a bit.  The iron isn't in bad shape at all, a bit of dusting with a brush, a little rubbing compound and oil and it is presentable.  The wood took a little more effort.

I started by taking everything apart.  I left the drawer frames attached, I probably should have taken them off as well but I'm not a furniture refinisher.  I'll leave that for the wife when she gets time.

One bit of wood working like activity I did do was try to flatten out the puckers in the veneer of the flip top.  You can just make it out on the top of the above photo.  What happened was the first night I had it home I rubbed in some Fornby's Lemon Oil.  When we looked at it the next morning (yesterday) the wife and I both noticed that the puckers had relaxed some. I decided to make a more half-hearted attempt to flatten them.  The guys who actually know how to work on veneers say that you should put wax paper on the veneer, then a towel then go over it with a steam iron until the puckers flatten.  Finally cover the whole area with weight and let it set for 24 hours.  Like I said, I'm not a real wood worker, instead I rubbed some more Fornby's on it then laid a couple blocks of wood on it then set two 30lb sewing machine heads on top of the blocks.  After 24 hours the puckers are still there, but they are noticeably smaller.  Maybe when the wife is ready to do a real refinishing on it I'll try to fix the problem areas the right way.

For a one day cleaning project I used the Fornby's on everything with steel wool for two applications.  The a final round using t-shirt material for a rag.  
A problem I didn't notice until I started to put everything back together was the back riser.  The wood had a bit of a warp to it.  When I screwed it back on I went until the screws snugged, not really torquing them down.  This left about 1/16" of a gap between the riser and the table top proper on the right edge.  Easy enough to fix if you have some wood clamps, clamping the wood tight then snugging the screw.  If you don't have clamps available then I would recommend not taking the riser off the table top.

I have this image of the happy artisans who worked at Singer factories joyfully and carefully fabricating each piece of machinery and wood for each machine with respect and love.  Even when sometimes you find things like hinge pins that weren't pushed all the way in before being forced into their cutouts, or screws put in at a 30 degree angle.  Both of which made taking off and replacing the front riser a little bit of a challenge.

The filler plate ended up being a two person job.  The filler plate hinge side was screwed back on first, then with me using both hands to twist the spring and hold it in place my son screwed down the bracket.  There's a lot of tension on the spring so all the screws had to be tight before I could release it.

I forgot to take a photo of the drip pan after putting it back on.  But it's there.  I didn't forget it.

I reassembled the table onto the iron and set went to bed, waiting until this morning to take the flip top out from under the weights.

For all the hinges and screws I just went over them with a wire brush.  I tried some Eagle One on a couple after cleaning with the brush but didn't see enough of an improvement in the shine to warrant going over each screw with it.  If it hadn't been below freezing with blowing snow I might have broken out the Dremel and worked them more thoroughly.  I probably will at a later date we we actually refinish the wood.

I'm happy with the results of just a good cleaning.  It's not a full on restoration, but the treadle doesn't look like a broken down, dirty relic sitting in the dining room.

I swapped out the hand wheel on the 15-87 with a spoked one and mounted it.  It's looking good, but there is an issue with the bobbin winder not engaging.  The solid wheel has a much wider ring to catch the wheel and I can't adjust the 15-87's winder to connect with the narrower ring on the spoked wheel.  I'll address what I decided to do in another post.

And yep, still using cheap purple rope as my belts.  I have leather belts, but the rope is working pretty well.