My Philmont Leather Hand Crank - 15-88

This was from a visit I did to Norm's right before I went to work at Philmont Scout Ranch in 2017.  I was wanting a machine I could put a hand crank on that had reverse.  He had this little beat up machine sitting off to the side.  It was kind of like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree so I had to have it.

So 'technically' I should call it a 15-89 since it's hand cranked.  But it's a modern after market hand crank so, yeah, 15-88.

When people ask why I like the old black Singer's, I tell them it's because you can throw them out of an airplane then go down, dig them out of the 5 foot crater they made and still use them.  This one looks like someone tried that. Or went after it with a shotgun full of birdshot.

I did do a bit of cleaning on it just to make it functional.

Besides the forlorn nature of the machine I also snatched it up because it has the Centennial Badge on it, even though the serial number was allotted in 1950.  November though, so maybe it was in for the Christmas rush of 1950.  I hear it was massive.  Women choking each other with their pearls and beating down the competition for sewing machines with their spiked heels. Somewhere I read Marge had 3 confirmed measuring tape kills on Black Friday.

This next bit is curious, if you are into how people store their pins.  Usually I find when the paint gets scored off because of pin wear, it's on the front of the arm.  Here it looks like whoever was sewing on this kept their pins on the back of the arm.  And it looks like there was a lot of pin swapping going on.  They wore off almost all japanning.

Don't award me any cool points for the hand crank.  It's one of the 13 dollar Amazon ones.  I would like to have an original Singer hand crank, but I can't see spending $100 or more for one.  The cheap modern ones work well enough.

This set up was originally going to be what I took to the back country at Philmont to do emergency repairs with, but as it turns out they are really good about getting damaged articles back to base camp.  Someone could rip their clothes and I could have them the same day and have the repair done and back out to them the next day.  Since we made sure everyone had two full sets of period clothes to wear we didn't have a problem with people being out of their time frame.  Well except for the guys at the civil war camp.  We only had enough uniforms for one each, but they are getting that fixed.

So here's my recruitment speech for working at Philmont.  The pay sucks, you live in a tent for 4 months, with a tent mate who will probably keep different hours than you and the food isn't all that good.  But if you are a retired guy like me, or a college kid who doesn't need to make that much money over summer break, it's really an awesome experience.  You get full access to the back country for hiking on your days off and just about everyone you meet is having the time of their lives working there.  The fun is contagious.  I can't give them full summers for the next couple of years, but I went out for a month this year and will continue to go out and give the wardrobe a hand for as long as they will have me.