Today On Pimp My Treadle - Singer 125379 For Black Swan

It hasn't been lost on me that this last batch of posts have all been about stuff I've gotten and not about working on the machines.  It was pretty warm here today, up in the 50s, so I decided to rectify the situation by looking for a project I could complete in a day.

I've had this laying around for a couple of years. It's a Singer 125379 Stitch Indicator Plate assembly.  These stitch indicator plates came on upscale versions of early 15-91s in 1930.  I'm not sure if any 1931 machines had them, but by 1932 they were listed as obsolete in the parts list.

The subparts are 125307 for the plate (with the numbers) itself, 125308 for the plate cover and 714b for the thumb screw.  There should also be a washer, part 38391, for the thumb screw but I am missing it. The 714b thumb screw is much smaller than the standard 51312 thumb screw for the standard indicator plate.

Before installing there needed to be some clean up.  With all the work we are doing on the sewing room we've invested in some quality protection gear.  So for dremeling I'm using my high performance goggles.

The goggles are a good investment.  The cheap glasses I've used for years were not very clear and distorted details when trying to focus close.  The goggles aren't quite 100 percent clear, but a big improvement.

The Dremel made short work of the caked on grunge and was followed with polishing with Mother's.  The left side below is after polishing, right is before.

And fully polished.

I've tried to repaint the stitch indicator numbers on the regular 45306 indicator plate with varying degrees of failure, so there was a bit of tentativeness in painting this one.

I used some of my son's plain white acrylic model paint.  At first I thought I could just trace in the numbers using a needle.  That proved to be tragic so I just painted over the numbers with a brush.

Then wiped off what excess I could with a paper towel.

After that it was time for the Dremel once again.  I tried a pass with a polishing brush which didn't remove much of the excess.  I switched to a 320 grit abrasive buffing wheel (Dremel part 512e) and got much better results.

And here we have the final result in all its glory.  I guess the next thing for Black Swan is a paint job.

I was thinking candy apple red, but that would make her name superfluous.  Maybe just black with some red and gold flames.  Who knows.

Update:  I've been watching some Youtube videos for ideas on the paint.  Two words: Ghost Flames!  Oh yeah, it's going to happen.