Taking A Break From Weeding

I did not weed yesterday. We are having a string of cool, rainy days and being cold and wet in the garden is not my idea of a fun time. The husband laughed and called me Goldilocks, which is his nickname for me when I am being particular.

Instead, I mixed up and canned a batch of Grandma Milly’s BBQ sauce:

When the husband and I got married, my MIL gave me a recipe box with family recipes, including this one. A note at the bottom says, “G’ma Milly said the boys would eat old gym socks with this sauce on them.” (“The boys” were the husband and his younger brother, Ted.) I use ketchup without high fructose corn syrup as the base, and if I quadruple the recipe, I get 14 pints. It has plenty of vinegar in it, so a 25-minute trip through the water bath canner produces a shelf-stable batch. We ran out several weeks ago and this has been on the to-do list since then. It’s got a bit of a kick to it, which I like, although sometimes I’ll add some currant jam if I am cooking a pork roast or meatballs with it.

I also moved more of my sewing machine stuff out to the garage. This is my collection of accessories:

I hate it when accessories get separated from machines. Many thrift stores—Value Village and Goodwill come to mind—sell the accessories separately. That makes no sense to me as the machine is worth a lot more if it has all the parts with it. I’ve been in the habit of picking these things up when I see them. I try to stick with accessories for machine I have, but I’ve got a few parts for Kenmores and Berninas. Those will probably go on eBay.

The trick now is to go through and figure out if I can put together complete sets of accessories. To say this is frustrating is an understatement. The husband says that this is why there are dedicated parts guys at most repair shops, because finding replacement parts for machines is a full-time job. I noted that they probably all drink, too.

Here’s a prime example: I have two boxes of extra top-hat cams for Singer sewing machines. The part number on each box is 21976. Each box contains 12 cams. The cams are numbered. The collection of cams is different in each box. I went to eBay to see if I could determine which cams were supposed to be in that box when it was sold originally, as I have a bag of loose cams that I could pull replacements from if I have them. People are selling boxes of cams on eBay with various numbers in them, and after 15 minutes of research, I still don’t know what number cams came in those boxes originally.

Arrrgggghhh.

Here is another example—one that I hesitate to share because it makes me angry that I did this—but which is illustrative of how hard it is to find correct parts. You may remember that I bought that Singer 9W machine last fall and even lucked out and found the bag of presser feet that went with it. However, the machine was missing a bobbin case. I researched and researched and researched some more, and it appeared that a bobbin case from a Wheeler and Wilson D9 machine would fit the Singer 9W. I was using as the basis for my research this page of information from Needlebar.org.

The Singer 9W evolved from the Wheeler and Wilson D9 after Singer acquired the W&W company in late 1905. As these things go, parts and model numbers changed along the way. The problem is that they didn’t change all at once on the same day but rather evolved as the factory ran out of existing parts. The woman who runs the Necchi group on Facebook has a theory that on Friday afternoons, when everyone was tired and just wanted to go home, workers grabbed whatever parts were available and put them on the machines, which is why sometimes you get a machine that looks like some kind of outlier.

There seem to be two extant models of 9W, the 9W7 and the 9W1. In trying to determine which machine I had, I started with this bit of information:

The 9W1 and 9W7 differ from each other in their bobbin cases, bobbins, and slide plates. The 9W7 takes a solid, bagel shaped bobbin, similar to the W&W 9. In fact, it is reported that the later W&W 9 bobbin will work in the 9W7, but not the 9W1.

And this:

The differences in serial numbers for the slide plates and bobbin cases are as follows:

Slide plates:
W&W9 - 202143 (other respondents reported also 202206)
9W1 - 208737 or 204177
9W7 – 208799

Bobbin Cases:

208811 - Singer 9W7 (has latch)
202145 - Singer 9W1, W&W D9 (has latch)
202192 - W&W 9, old style (no latch) (other respondents reported also 202054 and 202063)

The serial number for the slide plate on my machine is 208799. I didn’t have a bobbin case so had no way of checking the serial number on that part. Further down that page on the Needlebar.org site is another clue regarding the machine serial numbers:

Machines with a serial number of 3,160,000 and above are presumed to be 9W1s, with the featherweight type bobbin. Machines with lower serial numbers are presumed to be 9W7s with the solid or later W&W 9 type bobbin.

My machine’s serial number is 3,144,297. All available evidence is pointing to my machine being a 9W7.

I found a W&W bobbin case with two solid, bagel-shaped bobbins on eBay and bought them. The bobbin case had the number 202054 on it, which matched the bobbin case information given on the Needlebar.org site. I fitted the bobbin case into the shuttle on my machine. It fit into the shuttle, but it took more jiggering to get it in there than I was expecting. I turned the handwheel slowly to make sure that everything moved smoothly, but apparently, I didn’t turn the handwheel carefully enough. The bobbin case dislodged and this happened:

I wanted to cry when I saw this. I don’t like to break parts, and I especially don’t like to break parts that are no longer made. (The husband tried to console me and said this happens to everyone eventually.)

I have concluded that—despite the evidence—this was NOT the correct bobbin case for this machine. After looking at some of the additional part numbers on the hook, I believe my 9W takes the bobbin case which holds the flat bobbins that are similar to the Featherweight bobbins. That would make it a 9W1, not a 9W7, for whatever that’s worth. Of course, the only way to test that hypothesis is to find the other style of bobbin case. I set up eBay alerts to let me know if one shows up there, and I’ve asked on a few vintage machine groups. If I can’t find the correct bobbin case, I’ve resigned myself to using this machine for decoration, not sewing.

Vintage machine repair is an art, not a science, for sure.