No need to throw the old lady out...

We love vintage stuff over at our place. My husband especially. One of his hobbies is to restore old Singer sewing machines and I'll share with you a couple of photos from one of his recent restorations.

He bought this 1948 Singer 201K electric for a mere $16 at a garage sale recently. To me, most of the stuff he brings home just look like hard work + junk. But he saw that the mechanics of the sewing machine was still sound, only extremely dirty and that is easily fixed.

It is quite rare to find any vintage sewing machine still accompanied by its bentwood case, so he was very pleased with this find.  The shellac coating on the machine was worn and cracked in most places. That he scratched back painstakingly with a wooden spatula. Most restoration websites advise that one should use your fingernails to scratch it off.  Apparently that is the most effective without scratching the paint work underneath. Trust me, the wooden spatula does an equally good job and no damage to the paint or your fingernails!

The Singer 201K can also be converted to a hand model and he felt this specific machine would look and work better as a hand model.  

Here's the hand crank attached. Nicely polished. You can see on the photo below that the shellac has been completely removed and the whole machine has been cleaned and polished.  Even the timber base got a bit of love with a new coat of varnish:)

The completed front view.  According to him it wasn't a difficult restoration, only a bit time consuming due to the shellac needed to be scratched off.

The bentwood case looks beautiful too after a bit of sanding, varnish and polish. It's a lovely, solid machine. Sure, I won't replace my Janome Memory Craft for this Singer 201K but it's still a beauty and works perfectly.