About a week ago I noticed this in an ad on Craigslist. This is the best photo and there were no photos of the front of the machine.
What caught my eye in the ad wasn't the machine. It was the 18" flywheel on the treadle, sweet. For the machine I was just thinking, "meh, random industrialized version of the 15". I sent a text to the owner asking about it but didn't hear back, so it slipped off my priority list.
Over the weekend, after I finished the Revco installation I gave it another look and recognized something from the Diehl patent application. That little protrusion sticking out of the arm right there at the belt pulley. "Can't be," I thought. But I dug around for other pictures of 103s taken from the back and was convinced it was worth checking out. Plus an eighteen inch flywheel.
This morning I texted the owner with a bit more urgency in my finger tapping. Luckily she responded and the machine had not sold yet. The wife didn't have anything work related today and we had until mid afternoon before needing to be back to drop some tools off at the high school for our son's robotics club meeting, so off we went to New York! To buy a machine. Again.
Sure Enough -
We met the very nice owner, Stacey, who said that her dad had this for many years. She believed that her grandmother had it before him but does not think she was the original owner. She has had it for a while and just never had time to do the restoration work it needs.
Here's a closeup of the head, the reverse lever is to the right and goes under the Feed Regulating Thumb Screw. (I can't believe they didn't come up with a cool new name for that when they changed it out from the old 27/66 style clunky actual screw to this cool click dial.)
You can also see the level of rust on this thing. It looks like Stacey's dad lived close to the ocean.
The 103 occupies that weird space people call Semi-Industrial. It includes machines like the 1200. Basically home machines that have tricked out with knee lift presser bars and given just a base black japanning with minimal decals. The Singer description of the 103 includes: "For Home Manufacturing."
Everything that was supposed to turn on this machine was seized. Every. Single. Thing. Even the presser foot knee lift lever.
The treadle did move. Loudly. Once we got it up to the sewing room I gave the treadle a good douse with Singer oil so I could pedal it without the shrieking. Now just a little bit of squeaking. I'll take it apart when we have a warm day and get it cleaned up and polish the cone bearings.
The table top is also a mess. Almost all of the veneer is gone. I'll take a putty knife after the rest. Then we'll give it a bit of a sanding and put some 3M peel and stick on it. It looks so pitiful I'll work on it while it's too cold for me to get the boy to spend time helping dry wall.
I hosed down the entire machine with BlasterPB and let it soak for about an hour. That did a good job of loosening almost everything. The only thing still stuck is the hook.
I gave it two more coats. It's still frozen. Not the hook itself, but the Bobbin Case Holder is fused to it and it held from spinning by the Position Bracket above it. So the hook can't spin. I tried removing the bracket, but it's a pretty solid wedged in place. After it soaks overnight I'll try everything again. Luckily it uses the same hook assembly as the 95's and just about every other rotating hook industrial machine on the planet it seems, so I ordered a new one off Ebay, just in case.
It came with the original bent wood top. At first I didn't think it was the top, just one off a bent wood case that had been drafted into duty, but the table has the correct latch receptacles and the top doesn't have a handle or holes for one, so I guess it's the correct top.
The blue towels are because I shot this right before the BlasterPB hose down began.
It's hard to make out the serial number. It was completely caked over and I had to go after it with a paint sanding block for a bit to get it somewhat legible.
The "C" serial numbers are from the pre-WWII Germany plant that started production in 1904. Actually production went until 1943 but I doubt they were exporting much to the West. Since the 103 went into production in 1913 that gives a range of 1913 to 1939-ish.
Digging a bit the estimate production numbers from the plant is thought to be 6.5 million units from 1904 to 1943. If we just go linearly that would put around 167,000 (rounded up) machines a year, so 12 years to get to 2051144 . On my time scale that puts the year of this serial number in the ballpark of 1914. Very unscientific guesstimate, that.
I need to do some more verification. The List of Parts notes that the 103-1 went obsolete sometime before 1917. There were specific changes made between the 103-1 and the 103-2. If my parts turn out to be 103-1 parts then I'll be very comfortable giving my year as between 1913-1916.
(23 February edit: Miller, one of the regulars on the Treadle-On mailing list mentioned in a discussion about another machine that he had the year-by-year serial numbers for the Wittenberge factory. Turns out the 103 was made in 1921. So I was off by less than a decade. Yay. Two more years and it will be an antique.)
Oh. And just in case you forgot it has the Diehl slap lever reverse!
This machine is going to get a very full break down for cleaning. And while I do that I'm going to take on hard look at if it would be possible to fabricate the parts to upgrade my other non-reverse machines using the Diehl design.
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