A machine that runs on while you wind a bobbin and.....

If the "stop motion" knob located in the center of the hand wheel is loosened the entire Featherweight sewing machine should not keep running when you wind a bobbin, just the hand wheel. We have "stopped the motion". Should have at least. If not the cure is to remove the hand wheel and clean the hole (bore) of the hand wheel, oil it well and reassemble the hand wheel. This only takes about ten minutes. We begins by removing the hand wheel. Get a washcloth and fold it twice, into quarters. lay it on your base extension and lift the extension all the way up as if putting the machine back into machine's case and then tilt the machine forward until the machine is resting on the folded up base extension and the hand wheel pointing to the ceiling. Toward the edge of the stop motion wheel (knob) is a small screw. Loosen it by three full turns and the stop motion wheel can be unscrewed completely (lefty loosey, righty tighty). There is an odd washer that can be seen now that the knob is out of the way. It fits on the exposed end of the shaft that the hand wheel spins on. The washer has three tabs spaced evenly around its outside edge and two bent tabs on the inside of the washer's hole that fit the slot in the end of the shaft. Leave the washer on the shaft until you get a felt tipped pen or something you can scratch steel with. We need to make a mark from one side of the hole in the shaft out across one side of the washer. The washer we are speaking of has to go back onto the shaft the same way it came off of the shaft. When you put it back on make sure the mark is up and we will know the correct side of the washer is up and align the marks across the end of the shaft and the side of the washer and we will know the washer is "clocked" properly as well. Felt tipped pens work well but the mark will go away after awhile. I prefer something that will mark (scratch)the steel of the washer for keeps. Remove the washer and pull up on the hand wheel. Notice: I did not tell you to remove the motor belt. The hand wheel will pull off the end of the shaft with the belt left on and you will not have to adjust the motor drive belt's tension if you don't have to loosen the motor and remove the belt. Get hold of the hand wheel and pull. If it just moves a little, slap it back down and pull up smartly again. Repeat if necessary. It will really will come off. Ultimately we are about cleaning the hole (bore) through the center of the hand wheel and oiling it well. Oh, and putting it all back together. There are two simple ways to clean the bore of the hand wheel. Steel wool or fine sand paper. With four ought (0000) steel wool I pull off a one inch ball of the steel wool and pull it thinner and larger, pulling at the edges, without tearing the little pad. Ladies, I suggest you put on a rubber glove on your "using hand" and everybody cap the end of a correct sized finger needed so you can push the pad into the bore of the hand wheel and twist your finger like you do with the wash cloth in your ears on Saturday night bath-time. Don't dab at it, honestly clean the hole out. Change sides of the hand wheel and work from the other side as well. The bore of the hand wheel is one of the most neglected places on our machines and it frequently is dry of oil and it cruds-up preventing the hand wheel from turning freely. The other approach is to roll a piece of wet and dry sandpaper about two inches wide and six long into a tube rolled around a finger that allows the sandpapered wrapped finger fit the bore. 220 wet and dry sandpaper (used wet) works well. Either way you do this you will end up with a dirty finger and that shows we are cleaning crud out of the hole. Keep working until you are not finding any more crud to get your finger dirty with. Clean the bore of dust and such caused by your efforts and put some oil in the hole/bore. Put a little oil on the exposed end of the shaft and put the hand wheel on the shaft without the motor belt and give it a spin by hand. The hand wheel should turn very freely. If that is the case remove the hand wheel again and loop the motor belt around it and put the hand wheel back onto the shaft. Install the washer with the mark up and aligned with the mark on the shaft and install the stop motion knob. Turn the little screw in that is out there on the edge of the stop motion knob. Not tight, just there. It might take a second for your machine to buy into the idea its clean again. Loosen the stop motion knob and run the machine electrically. Give the machine a little while to break-in again. If the machine is thinking about not turning with the stop motion knob loose, run the machine and hold the thread take-up lever to stop the machine yet let just the hand wheel spin for a bit.

This is exciting, to me at least!!!!

    I paint Featherweights and am familiar with the prepping of a Featherweight for paint and the application of the paint. As with any paint project of importance, careful, attentive preparation of the surface to be painted is imperative if you want good results. If you are thinking of painting a Featherweight I believe a brief understanding of the paint on our machines is in order. Few really know what the paint is and not knowing can have you looking in all the wrong places. It is not japanning (small j and two "N"'s) and it isn't powder-coating, which wasn't invented until the 1980's.
    This I know. The aluminum castings of our Featherweights were cleaned and prepared for paint and a special black enamel paint was applied. I refer to this as being "special" because it is a paint designed to be baked-on to the surface of the machines in an oven that is not unlike the pizza ovens of today, just bigger. This oven has a metal conveyor belt that went through a four-hundred and twenty degree "hot-box" and deposited the freshly baked enamel painted castings in a cool-down room waiting for the "transfers" (we call them decals now) to be applied.
    Once the transfers were applied a top-coating of clear "four-pound cut" shellac was applied to protect the decals and impart the bright shine we all love about Featherweights.
    If you paint a Featherweight you will need to remove this shellac top-coating and the removing has to be done well, throughly even. Some, especially those who have never done it before, advocate using a sandblaster to "strip" their machine's paint. Don't! You will not like the cost nor the collateral damage. I did have a machine sandblasted once so I could show students that our Featherweights really are made of aluminum, and that machine's shafts have never turned again without grinding and crunching. Paint strippers (cans of caustic goo) work, but it is a long and ugly process, and don't get any on your hands or clothes.
    If you read my last blog (you should know better than to come back) I told of getting "the smell" out of a Featherweight by washing out the inside of the machine using hand dish washing soap, warm water, bottle brushes and someone else's tooth brush. Please go back to that last blog for details.
   In that blog I told of wrapping the motor in plastic food-wrap and avoiding getting the exterior surfaces of the machine wet. If a little gets on the outside it is OK, but don't let soapy water just flow over the outside unchecked and you are about to find out why. 
    I had a machine that needed painting and it had "the smell". I normally wash a machine just before I paint it having removed the shellac and decals already,  the old way. I want to get the grease and oil out of the inside of the machine and the exterior oil holes so resident grease/oil cannot compromise the new paint's application. But in the last blog I was telling of cleaning "the smell" form an assembled machine's interior, so I emphasized keeping the exterior dry while you scrubbed the inside. I literally had a machine in our kitchen sink stripped of all its external parts and the sink was protected by a layer of cardboard in the bottom with a hole cut for water drainage. I was running hot water through the machine's spool pin hole working hard to get rid of a big gob of grease I had found there in the gears up top. I turned the water heat up to hot and I appled a little extra soap. Because I would be painting this machine shortly I wasn't to worried about the exterior of the machine getting wet so I was a bit sloppy while having a good ol' time, water everywhere. (those were my wife's words, not mine) And it was at this time I noticed something. The shellac was coming off the exterior surfaces that the hot soapy water was running over. It didn't happen instantly, it was taking a minute while being bathed with the hotter soapy water running over it. The shellac could be simply rubbed off with your fingers, and that which didn't came off easily could be removed with a little steel wool.
    The black baked enamel was not phased by the hot water as it removed the shellac, even from the hard to reach places. Some of you know I do not advocate removing the black baked enamel as it is a very good foundation to apply paint to, so to me this was great!
   This was so exciting that I grabbed two more machines I had waiting in line to be painted and proceeded to "get water everywhere" all over, again!! This new process really works!!!
   For those who are thinking "that it doesn't take much to get him excited" remember please that it normally takes five hours to remove the shellac from a machine and do it well, or eight if your machine was a 1937 model.
    As explained in the last blog you must dry the machine out, and no, this does not damage the machine or render it into a pile of rust. It is just neat to have found a fast way to remove the shellac, completely, in just minutes. I had done three machines in an hour and a half and all that without creating an explosive atomosphere with acetone or the like.
    This really does work! Hot water, some hand dish washing soap and maybe a little application of steel wool (two ought, 00). And oh, while you are there, wash the interior of the machine. Back to the bottle brush and not letting the wife find out who's tooth brush you are using.
    Good-night

This is not for the faint of heart, just for those with a smelly machine.

    Every now and then I get a machine that almost smells worse than the storage case it came in. Spit your gum out so you don't swallow it and don't start yelling "No Way!!!" and we'll get underway.
    There are machines that smell so bad that there is no living with them. Between cigarette smoking (by former owners (remember, when these machines were made it was almost mandatory that you smoke to be an American) and the common mildew smell, although the case might just be beyond hope the machine can be cleaned up.
    First, loosen the motor attachment screw two turns. Remove the motor drive belt and then wrap the motor with plastic food wrap snugly. Tighten the wrapped motor's mounting screw without the belt being reinstalled. Remove the drip pan from the bottom of the machine and replace the drip pad normally glued to the inside surface of the drip pan if your aim is to eliminate "the smell".
    This will remove one source, but not all sources of the smell. Remove the spool pin cover, and the face plate. Put a piece of cardboard on and fitting the bottom of your kitchen sink with a hole for water to drain through it. This will protect your sink because we are going to wash the interior of your machine using hot water, hand dish-washing soap, bottle brushes and a toothbrush, your spouse's, not yours. A half inch wide natural-bristle hobby paint brush will clean the gears well as long as we are in there.
    I already told you to spit out your gum before you swallowed it. Preheat your oven to the lowest heat setting, be that "WARM' or 150.
    Now, listen, wash out the inside of the machine and avoid running water over the exterior of the machine. Do a real job of scrubbing the interior, don't poke at it and then write to say it didn't do much. Get a bottle brush all the way down the inside of the arm of the machine as best you can and then a little and scrub. A little water will not destroy your machine but do not let the water and soap pour over the outside surface of the machine.
   If you honestly did due diligence go rinse the machine one last time. Shake the water out of the machine or blow it out, blot the exterior dry and then put the machine in your oven ( which you have preset at its lowest "warm" setting) for five minutes if you don't have a hot sunny day working for you.
     I know this sort of thing is way out beyond many of your experiences in life for some of you, but believe me, it works and it will not harm your machine.
    Do not set the machine down soaking wet and go take in a movie. Dry it out!
    Oil the machine and grease the gears.   
    Take the food-wrap off of the motor and reinstall the belt. Remember the motor belt must be as loose as possible without the motor pulley slipping.
    Your machine will not rust away, it will not destroy the machine or any other superlative you can come up with. This is not something to do each Saturday night but if you are like the woman I had in class who could not sew on her machine because it smelled so bad, this can save your day and your machine's.
    I have done this many times now and it really does work and it will not hurt your machine. I had one person take my advice and said she was not impressed but she said she was afraid to use the brushes in the machine and dish washing soap seemed so harsh. Please, if you are willing to try it, do the whole job.

This might seem redundant but

I don't know why but frequently a problem with a Featherweight can crop up that has never darkened my door before and then I end up with a handful of machines with this same obscure problem. Obtuse and obscure can be fun though, so lets relay the story and see where we end up.

The first of the Featherweights with this particular problem announced itself as a Featherweight that wasn't running very fast. There are Feathers that do run slower than others, but this one was really quite slow. A bit faster than "stop" but not by much.

    The First thought was; the belt must be too tight, which is the typical cause. But this machine's belt wasn't too tight. A Featherweight's belt should never be tighter than it has to be to keep the motor pulley from slipping.
    The Second thought was; has the motor been lubricated in the last 30 years? It had been.
    The Third thought had me gripping the pulley with my fingers and pulling it in and out on it for no real reason. This behaviour is part of my finial set-up/testing of a motor if I had disassembled it to turn the commutator or clean the motor out but I hadn't done that work on this motor, so really I was just killing time while thinking. This is called "fiddling-around" all the time looking terribly busy to the untrained eye.
   There was no end play to this particular motor's shaft as I pulled in and out on the pulley, and there should be a little. I removed the pulley and found the motor's shaft had 16 inches of thread neatly wrapped around it that had partially filled the gap between the pulley and the motors housing.The thread was packed tightly enough that the motor could not get up to speed, much less the machine as a whole. The thread got there from a bobbin winding session gone bad. The thread had gotten itself snagged by the motor belt so fast it wasn't noticed. While the thread was dry it let the pulley turn without slowing things down much, but then it begins to wick the motor's lubricating grease out of the motor, which doesn't sound so bad, except that the lubricant makes the thread swell and disc brakes will have been reinvented.
    Solution; remove the motor pulley and clean out from behind it. Put the pulley back on.
    But note; there are two styles of pulley found on Featherweights, One is made of steel and it has a set screw on the pulley hub that secures it to the motor's shaft. Loosening the set-screw one turn is adequate to remove the pulley.
    The second pulley type is a Bakelite plastic that looks like black plastic (unless it was painted tan as found on the tan colored Featherweight). with soft rounded edges in addition to the fact that the pulley is round by function. There is a screw in the hub of this plastic pulley as well, but this screw must be removed completely before the pulley can be removed from the motor shaft. This style of screw threads completely through the motor's shaft. If you only loosen it a single turn as with the set-screw style of pulley the pulley can be broken as you try to pry the "stuck" pulley off the shaft. I am not speaking from experience, of course.

For the machine that has slowed down

     Somethings don't happen often, but when they do happen, they happen in clusters of bunches. A problem was simply stated, "my machine is really running slow" and when we went to the typical culprit, the belt being too tight, we found that this wasn't the problem, this time around. And then the same thing happened three more times within this week.
     Checking the belt's tension was the first thing tried. If too tight the machine will slow a lot and it is hard on the motor. The belt is to be no tighter than is needed to keep the belt from slipping at the motor pulley. The belt's not being too tight not being the problem looking elsewhere was in order. Removing the motor's pulley revealed the problem. Wound around the motor's shaft, between the pulley's inner flange and the motor housing, was an easy foot of thread packed in very tightly and dragging the motor speed down dramatically. With the pulley removed the wad of thread pulled off like a miniature donut. I suspect it got there by thread going native while winding a bobbin.
    The solution is to remove the pulley and slide the thread donut off the motor's shaft. The trick is to make sure you remove the pulley correctly according to the type of pulley you have on your motor.
    There are only two types of pulley; one of metal (steel) and one of plastic (Bakelite). The metal one looks like blackened steel, because it is. It can be attracted to a magnet and has a hole in its hub as it looks at you from the motor with the shaft pointing at your face. The plastic pulley looks like a double brimmed top hat, soft rounded edges on the hub and there is no hole for the sahft extending completely through the pulley's hub as it does on the metal pulley.
    The blackened metal pulley has a set-screw that holds it to the motor's shaft as it bears down on a flat spot ground onto the motor's shaft. Loosen the set-screw one turn and the metal pulley can be removed from the motor. Just pull it off the end of the shaft.
    The plastic (Bakelite) pulley found on white (pale green) Featherweights and painted tan to match the tan Featherweight's color is also found in natural black on some late model black machines such as the model 222. This pulley has a threaded pin that can be removed from one side of the pulley's hub. The threaded pin runs through one side of the pulley's hub and completely through the motor's shaft. This style of screw-pin has a slot like a screw head for the complete removal of the threaded pin.
    The first guess for a machine that is running slow is that the motor belt is too tight, and now you know the second guess.

Saturday Night Bath

In classes related to Featherweight maintenance, I can count on the fact that I am not going to get out the door without touching on the subject of how the owners can clean their machines. “Getting them to look like new in five minutes or less would be nice”.
    There are degrees of cleaning and there are degrees of urgency for a “Saturday night bath” with your machine. It will take a little more than five minutes to get your machine back to “like-new” condition though. A rule of thumb I employ is that some things residing on your machine’s paint respond to soap and water and other deposits need a solvent of some sort. Start with the gentlest approach; soap and water. Nothing harsher than you would use on your face. Dry the machine and then spray a fine mist of WD-40 (as a mild solvent) over the entire exterior of the machine. Do not oil the machine using WD-40 (EVER!) but you can use WD-40 to clean the machines’ exterior while grinning. I used the word “solvent” but don’t substitute some other rude solvent instead of WD-40. (Alcohol, acetone, lacquer thinner and stuff like that are not to be used!) Leave the WD-40 on the machine for ten minutes and then vigorously rub the machine down with a soft terry-cloth rag. Let the machine dry for awhile and apply wax. You’ll know you might be a red-neck if WD-40 is considered a great after shave, like I do.
    If you want more of a shine, we have some work to do. First, evaluate the condition of the paint on your machine. If the decals are worn there is something I would like to elaborate on. The paint finish on a black machine is in multiple layers. The base layer (the black) is baked enamel over the aluminum castings on our Featherweight. Enamel paint was sprayed on and the machine was put into what is basically a continuous conveyer belt pizza oven to bake the enamel finish hard. Then the decals were applied, although they were called “transfers” in 1933, and the machine went back to the paint booth to have a “clear coat” of shellac sprayed over everything. If your decals are showing wear the shellac over the decals was compromised first. This is why I recommend you use a wax containing Carnauba wax as it leaves a film over the decals that will protect them from additional wear if waxed every six months.
    If you want to ramp things up a bit, use a “fine” (grade) polishing compound that can be found in automotive parts shops. I use a cream based polishing compound by Turtle-wax, but there are others. A rule of thumb thing is in order again. As you use polishing compound, if you cannot easily see the color of the compound while you rub, you are doing the work and not the compound. Begin with a three inch by three inch square of terry-cloth that is damp. The moisture keeps the terry-cloth from soaking up handfuls of polishing compound. With a cream type of compound, put a US quarter sized blob of compound on the base of the machine and lay your rag centered on it. Work in circles for a full two minutes in an area about 3 inches by 3 inches and then wipe the work area clean with a paper towel. Buff the area a while with the towel. Looking better? Does it need more of the same? A 3 X 3 work area must be worked in a firm circular motion for about five minutes (typically) to get a great a shine on. Move on to the next 3 X 3 area of the machine. The polishing compound does not remove scratches.
    To polish the arm of a Featherweight I put a quarter sized puddle of compound on the base, again, and work on the arm from that surface. Dip in and polish. The polishing compound can be applied to the rag to use and Q-tips will clean out the oil holes.
    If the decals on your black machine are compromised; rub vigorously up to the edge of the decals (in circles) but not over the decals. I find it easier to polish a machine with compromised decals on its base by reaching through and under the arm of the machine to the far side of the machine and rubbing parallel to the edge of the decals. When done polishing feel free to wax over the decals.
    The white (pale celery) Featherweights are painted with baked enamel, but they do not sport a coat of clear shellac as there are no decals to protect. You can do fantastic things removing scuff marks and crud from a white (green) Featherweight using acetone, and I promise acetone will not damage the paint on the body of the white machine. EXCEPT it will instantly trash the black lettering on the lampshade and to the left of where the electrical cord enters the machine’s base. Work up to this lettering by making yourself a finger puppet from terry-cloth over a vinyl gloved finger to be used while working details with acetone. Again, do not wipe over the black lettering. Q-tips are your friend. Oh! The motor of the white (whatever) machine is painted with a different paint that does not like acetone either. That really does leave a lot that can be cleaned using acetone on your white (pale green) machine, especially the brown scum line at the bottom of the arm where it mates with the base.
    OH, yeah. Put out your cigar and work in a well ventilated area when using acetone.