Tag Archives: Singer 201K treadle

Nov4

Singer 201K treadle, Elsie’s birthday present … and augmented reality

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Picture of Singer drawing room cabinet

Hurrah!  Yesterday we finally got a lovely classic Singer 201K ready for sale as a treadle machine, and this morning we realised that we could offer it in a choice of bases!  It’s now listed on the Singers for sale page in both forms, so if  you could fancy a really good treadle machine, do get in touch with us to find out more about this one and the options for it.

Also on the treadle front, here’s a snap of Elsie’s birthday present having an urgent bit of first-aid done to a lifting bit of veneer on its first morning in its new home.  It’s a 1900 Singer Drawing Room Cabinet that’s totally original down to the little patterned carpet on the treadle plate and the 27K which we took out to get it all home safely.  All that’s missing is the knob for the latch which in theory holds the lid closed but in practice serves no purpose we can think of, and the 27K’s belt guard.  And with any luck, an exact replacement for that will soon be on its way from Jay and Sharron in Missouri.

I’ll take some more snaps and do a blog post all about it when we’ve got it a bit more sorted , but for now I’ll just say that Elsie agrees it was well worth the 376 miles drive on her birthday.

Anyhow … every now and then I have to go to Waitrose on account of there’s a few things we use which Tesco doesn’t stock, and when I do, I always pick up a copy of their house newspaper thing.  It amuses us no end, and gives us some idea of what’s currently exciting the chattering classes.

We’ve just now read about “the revolutionary Christmas adverts that open up a magical world of tricks and tips from Delia and Heston” and we’re trying to get our heads round that.  If we understand correctly, you wait for a television commercial, then pause it, show it to your smart phone, then have an “augmented reality experience”.

Gosh.

We don’t have a television set, neither of us understands how you can pause a television program, we both have dumb phones, and although I can’t speak for Elsie, I can say for sure that the last augmented reality experience I had was a good 40 years ago and involved dried mushrooms.

There’s no hope for us.

Have a good weekend, folks.

Oct3

Singer 201K for sale

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Picture of 1949 Singer 201K sewing machine

Rear view of Singer 201K sewing machine made in 1949

This is a rather nice 1949 Singer 201K hand-crank and it’s the latest machine to go on the “Singers for sale” page.  It’s also missing its bottom spool pin in these pictures ‘cos I forgot to replace it before I took them, but there you go …

Anyhow, having got that embarrassment out of the way, let me say that it’s customary for those flogging a 201, particularly on Ebay, to tout it as a “semi-industrial” machine.  It’s also the done thing to point out how many thicknesses of denim, leather, rhinoceros hide, chain mail or whatever a 201 will “sail through”, but it’s a lovely evening here and I don’t want to spoil it by going off on one about that just now.  Suffice it to say that not so very long ago, it seemed to be only 201s that were hyped up like that.  Now 99’s and 185’s are, regularly, so it’s surely only a matter of time before both the Barbie and the Hello Kitty sewing machines are rated “semi-industrial” too.

The reality of the 201 is that it’s a beautifully-engineered machine which is so well made it’s amazing that Singer could ever sell the things at a profit.  It’s also generally held to be the best domestic sewing machine Singer ever made, it’s true that with the right needle and the right thread it’ll sew pretty much anything you can get under the presser foot, and it was certainly designed to take a lot of use.  But not eight hours a day five days a week use.  For that you still need an industrial machine, and they tend to be bigger, heavier, uglier and a great deal more expensive.

Put simply, if the 201 was a carpet, it’d be rated Heavy Domestic.

So, given that it’s “only” a straight-stitch machine like the 15 or the 66, you can be forgiven for wondering what the big deal is.  Well, to anyone with a precision engineering background who works on sewing machines (e.g. me), the big deal is the all-metal, all-gear drive and a rotary hook.  To most people who use one, the big deal is that they run beautifully, they sew a lovely stitch, they have same-stitch-length reverse, and you can drop the feed dogs on them.

I’ll do a separate post sometime about why the rotary hook of a 201 is an improvement on the reciprocating hook of a 66.  However, die-hard fans of the 15 will already be muttering that what matters more is whether your bobbin’s horizontal or vertical, so for now I’ll just say that I do understand their argument about the 90 degree bend in the thread path, but speaking as an engineer, rotary motion beats reciprocating motion any day.  So there.

The all-metal all-gear drive thing’s a no-brainer though.  “All-metal” is good because metal gears don’t shred like horrible plastic ones can and do.  And as to the all-gear drive, the handwheel of a 15, a 66 or a 99 moves your needle, your feed and your bobbin via an ingenious system of levers, cranks and cams.  On a 201 it’s all done by shafts and gears, which is probably more efficient and is certainly far more elegant from the design point of view.

So it’s all good as far as I’m concerned, whether your 201 be the original Mk1 cast iron one or the later more modern-looking aluminium-bodied Mk2.  Elsie likes ’em too, which explains the presence of the Mk1 in the 7-drawer treadle base in the front room and the Mk2 in the No46 treadle cabinet in The Sewing Room, which in fact she’s using as I type this.  Doing something with a Swiss zigzagger, since you asked.  Which might shortly be for sale …

Aug28

The Singer Enclosed Cabinet No.51

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Before we get to the nitty-gritty about this cabinet, I must apologise for these less than wonderful snaps of it and get the excuses out the way.  The Sewing Room measures 7ft x 9ft, it has a small window in the narrow end opposite the door, and right now there is this cabinet plus two treadle machines in it.  There’s also baskets of fabric, a large bean bag (I have no idea why), Stoner’s bean bag (awaiting repair) and six other sewing machines in their cases.  So there is not a lot of room.  Hence these very wide angle shots …

Picture of Vintage Singer cabinet no.46

Picture of Singer Cabinet no.46 with Singer 201K Mk2

So OK, that is Elsie’s 201K21 (that is to say, 201K Mk2, treadle version) in her fairly dark Cabinet No.51, and yes Hawkeye I do know there isn’t a drive belt on it.  There will be when I get round to it.  It’s on The List.

This thing measures 21 inches wide by 17 inches front to back, and it’s the Singer standard 31 inches tall.  To go from closed to ready to rock, you open the front doors first because the left-hand one supports that flap, which you then simply swing over from its closed position.  And as I’m sure you’ve already worked out, that adds 21 inches to the left of the base, so if you’re going to put one of these in an alcove, you need a minimum width of 42 inches.

Having opened the doors and turned the flap over, you’re left looking at this …

Picture of top of Singer Cabinet #46 with machine down

except of course there will be a drive belt in place on yours.  All that’s left to do then is lift up that hinged flap in the foreground, grasp the arm of the machine, swing it upwards away from you on those hinges you can see at the back, drop the front flap back down, and lower the machine into position.  C’est un doddle, as the French say.  There’s even a big spring thing lurking under the cabinet top which takes some of the weight as you raise and lower the machine.

Picture of drawer of Singer Cabinet no.46
That really neat tray with the swing-out drawer (for want of the proper word) under it lives inside the left-hand door, and is well handy.  It’s also a headscratcher if you’ve never seen a picture like this before, because the spring catch which holds it closed is quite strong and it’s not at all obvious how it opens up.

And now to the treadle mechanism, as seen below …

Picture of interior of Singer cabinet #46

What we see here is the treadle plate at the bottom with the horrible brown rubber mat on it which is always rock hard from age, and at the top is a nicely varnished bit of curved plywood with a metal edge.  That’s a typical Singer touch, that is – it’s to stop any oil dripping down inside the cabinet (or worse still onto your legs).  It’s even hinged at the front and suspended from the machine base at the back by a bit of chain, so it rises and falls as you raise and lower the machine head.  Neat or what?

The thingy with the small wheel in the top right is the bobbin winder on the folded-down 201, and that rod is what is properly called the pitman rod, the bottom end of which is fixed to the back of the treadle plate by a ball joint.  The top end of the pitman rod is normally connected to the crank of the treadle wheel, which hopefully you can just make out behind all that other ironwork (most of which is the skirt guard).  That’s how the up-and-down motion of the treadle plate is converted into circular motion of the treadle wheel, around the circumference of which the drive belts passes to drive the machine head.  Or would if I’d got round to re-fitting the one on this machine.

However, as you can see, the top of this particular pitman rod is not connected to the treadle wheel.  It’s connected instead to that brown metal box, which is seen more clearly in this snap …

Detail of speed controller in Singer cabinet #46

The brown metal box is the Singer Sewing Motor Controller, and the pitman rod actually connects to the slidy-in-and-outy bit at the bottom of it, by means of which the controller does the controlling of the motor, assuming of course that one is fitted to the machine in the cabinet.  Now, if you’re one step ahead of me here, you’ve already realised that this is very cool indeed.  Yep, the treadle plate either drives the machine, or it acts as a foot pedal to control the speed of a motor attached to it, depending on what you connect the top of that rod to.  And changing it over is no big deal at all.

So that’s the Cabinet No.51.  I’m not sure what the colour choice was in the local Singer shop, but nowadays you see them in anything from a light oak to a very dark oak, and they are certainly very sturdy, well made bits of furniture.  They’re also heavy.  Elsie and I can cart one up the stairs between us if we take our time, but they’re a bit awkward to get in and out of the back of the car.  If you do ever move one by car, don’t forget to take the head out of the cabinet first! And at the risk of stating the obvious, it’s a good idea to fit castors to a No.51 once you’ve got it home and sorted to your liking!

Although they’re at least 50 years old, these cabinets are more common than you might think, and indeed it often seems to me that every second household in south Wales and in the north-west must had one with a 201 in it in the 1940’s.  They do tend to have their share of scratches and scrapes, as well as the almost-inevitable water rings on the top where the plant pot with the aspidistra stood on it, but you’d be surprised what you can do with those wood restorers they sell in B&Q.

Points to watch if buying at auction or particularly on Ebay include check whether all the treadle mechanism is still there and avoid one if it is but it’s rusty.  If a cabinet’s got that damp at some point in its life, odds on there’ll be some veneer lifted somewhere or maybe even rotted.  Also watch for strained hinges on the top flap caused by repeatedly lowering it without the left-hand door open under it, and doors that don’t close properly because one or both of the (very long) hinges is stuffed.  One other thing – when checking out any enclosed cabinet with a view to purchasing it, be prepared for it being really grotty inside and having a strong pong when you open it up …

Singer Cabinet No.51 will take a 15, a 66 or a 201 of either flavour, and we usually have one available at a sensible price which is clean and tidy but perhaps still has scope for improving the surface finish.