The Heartbreak Of Taking The 1949 221 To Market

Well the Goodwill 221 is listed for sale.  We'll see how it goes.  It's my first 'for sale' machine, so I made sure to get into every nook and cranny to clean it up.  Which it needed.  But dangit, it's so cute!  I'm not sure if I can really sell it. Even my wife is constantly commenting on how cute it is whenever I'm working on it. The 221s suck you in, don't they?  They are the tribbles of the Singer family.

First off, props to the Sacramento Goodwill store.  First they were honest, but beyond that, they shipped this thing triple wrapped with the machine even wrapped inside the case, so I quess that's quadruple wrapped.

The machine was just as grungy as advertised.

And... what's this?

Jeeze, were they trying to kill it?

I felt the need to sing 'Warm Kitty' to it as I extracted what looked to be half a bobbin of thread that someone had managed to wrap around the hook.

That bit of sewing machine abuse corrected,  I moved on to the deadlier problem. No kidding.

Those bare wires are the return for the wall plug and the motor return from the pedal.  So basically when you pressed the pedal you were creating a dead short on the house line.  Oh and all the wires are bare inside the shell and it's not even close to being sealed.  So yeah, maybe this got donated because grandma got electrocuted after cousin Jimmy 'fixed' it for her.

I ran down to the local True Value Hardware (always go to a real, locally owned hardware store before the big box places) and grabbed some light cord to rewire the thing with.  By the way, I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this but before I retired my job did require me to be a certified electrician, so I'm trained and 'legal' to do my own electrical work.  Be safe out there kids, always ohm out your wiring before plugging it in.

Not that grandma was an innocent in this machine's neglect.

So maybe it got donated after Marge from Your Singer Sewing Center stopped in for a spot inspection and dragged grandma off to the hole.

After ensuring that little bunny here wouldn't kill anyone, I moved on to the rest.

The motor was first. I took it a apart gave it a good cleaning and polished the commutator.  I didn't photo it because there are tons of really good guides out there on how to do it.  Like this one (not specific to Singer motors but still good).

Not sure if you can tell in the photo above (lower right corner), but the power receptacle was broken on the bottom end.  Pretty common thing for 221s as it gets bumped into the case if people are careless with their cute little fluffy bunny machines.  I had a spare laying around so I replaced it. 

The drive belt was coming apart so I went to The Featherweight Shop and ordered a new one, and new rubber feet for the bottom, and a new drip pan felt liner.  I also got a neat little bobbin tension gauge they had for sale.  Basically I paid for Ruth's school lunch bill for the week.

I didn't order their Clamp Stop Motion Flanged Bushing puller though.  It was tempting, but just seemed kind of pricey for something you can make by drilling out of a 1/2", 20 thread per inch bolt for under a buck.

The hook timing was way off.  About 45 degrees.  I'm guessing that noose of bobbin thread had something to do with it.  That was pretty much it for mechanical issues.  The rest was just cleaning and polishing.

I keep meaning to get some Gojo, which seems to be the current 'best head cleaner ever'.  I didn't have any so I went with just some mild soap, sewing machine oil and carnauba wax on the bed and extenion.

After cleaning I balanced the tension using the new gauge.  I set it to 23 grams from the bobbin carrier.  The test stitches came out really good (for a 221).

After that the only thing left to do was take the pictures and post the CL ad

*Sniffle*  But it's so darn cute!  Maybe it won't sell and I'll HAVE to keep both of them.