I'm A Rocketman! (Sorry Sir Elton) - Singer 500A

 After getting the 500A apart I took some pieces down to Sherwin Williams (I read the reviews of their do-it-yourself phone app and they weren't good).  They guys were actually excited to try and mix some paint for something other than interior walls (one of them is a sewing machine fan as well).  They spent almost an hour experimenting and came up with these.

Once I had the paint I came home and finished taking the machine apart.  On the whole, I would say it's a tiny bit more complicated than the 401, just because of the trickiness they went through to get all the parts hidden under the space-age exterior.  I don't mind it, I like puzzling machines back together. 

There's plenty of resources online for Singer machines.  You could probably start with a box of loose parts and put the most complicated Singer domestic together in a few hours just using parts lists, pictures off Google and Youtube videos.

I'm not as skilled (brave) as Andy Tube though.  I have yet to pull any geared shafts out of machines.  If you watch his videos you can see he does it pretty regularly.  I'm not there yet.

For parts cleaning I went the quick and dirty route.  Everything was just sprayed down with Crudd Cutter and brushed/wiped dry.  I was doing the cleaning during a Treadle On Zoom chat so I didn't want to make a mess indoors with Dremel.

Once I had the machine apart and the mechanical parts cleaned I finally focused on the painting.  Here are the major chips and nicks I was going after.

The painting took several days, mainly because I was being cautious. I prepped by giving all the painted parts a good cleaning with Gojo.  The areas I was going to paint I used the Dremel with a buffing wheel to smooth out, then went over the area with alchohol to make sure they were clean and dry.  To add to the time needed I only painted one color at a time.  I would paint a coat, set the part aside to dry overnight before giving it a sanding and doing another coat.

I'm happy, but not thrilled, with the results.

The paint color matching is almost, but not quite perfect.  From four feet and further away, even in a brightly lit sewing room, they blend nicely.  Getting closer you can see the repainted areas begin to stand out.

I should have been more aggressive in my initial sanding to get everything much smoother.  And the stomp motion clamp would have benefitted greatly from using an airbrush instead of a bristle brush.

There are also a couple of spots on the beige lid where the paint didn't turn out completely opaque.  They look okay in person, but as you can see in the  center just to right of the middle in above photo, using flash photography the paint becomes semi-transparent.  The cream lower lid also would have came out better with an airbrush instead of a bristle brush, you can see it's a little gloppy at the top where it turns back from the front of the machine.

But, again, on the whole I'm happy.  My wife didn't notice the issues with the paint until I pointed them out.  And maybe later in the year I'll get an air brush and redo the whole machine so it matches better.  Since it's just a small shift in the color tone I don't think I'll strip it down completely.  Just sand the rough parts and give the whole thing a coat.  I have plenty of paint now.

Once I had the painting done it was time to reassemble and test.  Like I said, mostly I just puzzle the pieces back together.  For the most part it's pretty intuitive.  

The only issues I had were with the bobbin winder tire.  The one on it was some modern no-brand tire that was much thicker than the standard Singer 15287.  So it was always engaged.  That was easily corrected, I have a stockpile of the original Singer tires as well as modern 15287-A versions.

The bigger head scratcher came from the parts list and collet 172231.

The way I was reading the parts list it looked like it was supposed to go on the needle bar somehow.  But there just wasn't enough space, and it is rather large to go on it.  And the disassemble photo I took was useless because the presser adjustment dial kind of blocks most of the needle bar area, and dummy me didn't take a photo after I had removed the dial.  D'oh!

Luckily the 401 and 403 use the same collet and checking them I saw that it actually goes on the needle bar position eccentric (the presser bar top thingy), to keep it from sliding up.

So once everything was finally back together it was time to make some stitches and give this guy a review.

Right off the bat, it's loud.  Same as the 401/403/404 and 328 (when it still had a motor).  I'm not sure what changed between Singer doing the 301 and the next generation of internal motor machines, but the 301 is whisper quiet compared to the machines that came after.  It has to be something to do with the motor itself I'm guessing.  Because the 328 makes almost no sound now that it doesn't have a motor, so it's not the arms and shafts, it's something with the motor in that echo chamber.

Beyond that the 500 makes about as good of a stitch as the 401/403.  Maybe a tiny bit better, but it could just be because I spent much more time fiddling with the tension settings on the 500 than any of the 400 series machines.  Though the dedicated straight stitch 404 is better, as expected.

Speed wise, the 500 is in the same league with the 400s and seems a touch slower than the 301.

The 500 does have the styling win.  Though it comes at some cost in functionality.  I'm not a fan of the popup spool pins, as you can probably tell since I went ahead and used the external spool pin mount.  I'm not sure how I feel about the dial presser gauge.  I like the look but I also like the infinite adjustability of a screw knob over the click into place pressure.  However moving the adjustment to the dial versus the screw knob means that the needle alignment adjustment is much easier to perform on the 500 than the 401.

Overall I would say the 500 is a cooler machine than the 401 and the functionality isn't degraded to the point where I would choose the 401 as a definite better machine.

My biggest knock against it is that it is one of the machines from when Singer was giving up on focusing on their machines being the absolute best they could make and were going for 'see how cool this looks'.  We go from machines like the 201 being called "the dressmaker".  To machines nicknamed things like "featherweight" and "rocketeer". 

Sure it's a serviceable enough zig zag machine, but the more modern zig zaggers I have will probably be seeing even less use now that I have the 107W5.  I guess the best I can say about it is that it will be a really cool blind hem stitcher.