Servicing a 1930s Singer Hand Crank

I haven't been in the mood for sewing at all for the past few weeks. I've made some attempts, feeling like I should be doing something, but fortunately I was wise enough to stop myself before I screwed anything up. Sewing when you're not in the mood is never a good idea. I learned that very quickly in my first year of sewing.

Instead I have found two other projects to keep me busy: One is to find a good vintage sewing machine to replace Sy as my main sewing machine (or multiple machines that will compliment each other). The other is to clean and tune up an old Singer hand crank.



This beauty came to me (well, us, actually) when my boyfriends grandmother passed away about a year and a half ago. It originally belonged to his great-grandmother. We had no idea how old it was but thanks to the Singer database we discovered it was manufactured in May 1930 in the UK. There was no model number listed anywhere but thanks to the serial number I was able to identify her as a Singer 26K. Apparently there were only 5000 26K's ever made.



The machine was very dirty and clearly hadn't been used for years. The stitch tensions was completely off as well. At first I considered having the machine serviced by a dealer but when I looked for a video on how to thread the machine I found this great video on YouTube on how to clean an old machine like this. So I felt confident enough to give it a go myself. It seemed like a fun project to take up.



I forgot to take pictures before I started cleaning so these where taken when I already gave her a good dusting off and polished a few bits. But she's far from ready! I'll show you the result when I'm finished!