Violet: 1954 Singer 99K hand crank
From
rusty to beautiful, this little 1954 girl from Great Britain was quite a challenge!
We
bought her for $35 in February 2022. Her decals
looked good but the shellac finish was mostly gone. Gouges and
crazing in the paint, wiring shot, and oh so dirty inside and out.
Amazingly, she did sew after oiling. We put her on the shelf while
working on other projects, thinking it could be a parts machine.
This
February, we got going with a plan to clean, paint, replace missing
parts and add a hand crank. Jerold took her apart all the way down to
the last screw, then cleaned and polished all parts. He rewired the
motor, too, so we can use either it or the hand crank. We got the spoked wheel and crank on Amazon; they both fit and the bobbin winder still works.
We
tried to sand the finish but it was too uneven, so
ended up stripping her to bare metal. After primer came the gorgeous
Rustoleum 2X paint in Gloss Grape. I printed and applied new decals
in black, using Art Deco style designs.
Then
Violet just decided to be finicky. We hit a snag with the clear
coat: it wrinkled up on the bed so we had to sand and recoat. It's
not perfect but it's good enough. We polished and waxed her to a
super shiny finish.
Jerold had to fine tune all tension and bobbin adjustments, but now Violet sews a perfect stitch. I'm happy with how she turned out, even with the setbacks. I couldn't do this without my talented husband. We learned a lot, didn't give up, and I got the purple machine I wanted. It's all good!
