The Grand Sewing Machine Exchange

So I suspect I threw off the timing of my Singer 401A while sewing through a cumulative eight layers of quilting cotton on one of the boys' Christmas pillowcases.  And that's something I can't fix myself, so she's going to need a spa day or three at the repair shop.  So last night I pulled her out of my grandmother's sewing table:

And in place of my $30 401A, I put in my $25 500A:

Yeah, I sometimes find vintage machines for cheap.  The two most expensive I have are my 301A ($~100, for taking to classes), and my 201-3 ($~85, to put in that $20 treadle base my parents got for me.

I had spent the last couple days gradually cleaning, oiling, and greasing the 500A, a model which is colloquially known as "The Rocketeer."  Functionally, it's almost identical to the 401A - the bobbin winder is hidden under the top, and there's an extra step for threading it.  Even more fortunately for me, even though the plug is different, the foot is the same for both machines, which meant no finagling of the presser foot mechanism in the table.  I did have to cannibalize the hinge set screws and bobbin tire from the 401A, but I've placed an order at Sew Classic for those and a few other bits and bobs.

I even tested it out, working out the kinks with the first round of stitches on another Wheel of Fortune block from Betsy Chutchian's book History Repeated.  Seems to work okay.  The clutch on the handwheel is frozen, so I can't disengage the needle when I wind a bobbin, but that's something I can work around until I get some penetrating oil to loosen that puppy up.