Fashion Mate 362 continued

The continuing saga of the Fashion Mate.  There is a particular type of Singer pedal that seems to have a bit of a fault.  I'm not sure if it's an age thing or to do with them being stored, because ones in constant use don't seem to have the problem, whereas only a couple that I've come across that have been stored have been OK.  I'm afraid I forgot to take a picture of the pedal so I've had to get this one from the internet, courtesy of sewingmachinenut.blogspot.com.

These pedals are found on a wide variety of Singer sewing machines from Hushmatics to Touch and Sews.  However they have a highly undesirable habit of going up in a nice little plume of smoke and a nasty smell.  Apparently it's the capacitors but it is a trifle disconcerting the first few times.  As you have probably guessed that's exactly what the Fashion Mate did to me when I started to sew with it, I had a feeling it might because it looked like it had been stored for a while.  All is not lost though, B's son is trying to get a new capacitor for me, which would be great!

Before I got as far as plugging it in though I did a thorough 'cosmetic job' on the machine and it looks really clean and shiny now:

A lot nicer than before!

                                                                            Before

Hopefully we can get capacitors for it and there will be nothing else wrong with it!

The Frog Princess

I have had technical issues, the memory card that was in my camera won't allow me to load images to the computer, thus I have lost 40+ images, many of which I intended to post here!  Anyhow, a friend has been moving house and I got a new machine from it!  If I can get it to safely operate I'll sell it otherwise it's mine.  It's called a 'Princess' and has seen better days, the pedal (not shown in the below images, sorry) has been dropped I suspect, a LOT, it's very broken and damaged, electrocution hazard.  The plug to plug into the pedal looks like a dog has chewed it and it is basically a lot of exposed wires, another electrocution hazard!  Hopefully the motor will actually work and I can deal with the plug by taking one from another machine, the pedal I'm not so sure.  Spare pedals are almost impossible to come by.  Ok, would you like to see some pictures?

 

Lovely looking machine, it's a Japanese made, zig-zag, feed-dog drop, highshank foot model.  There must be thousands of machines like this around, all going under different fancy names, the other two I've come across being the Sterling and the Myer-Victor, both machines were fabulous.

In other news, courtesy of the friend who gave me the machine above, I have a canary.  He's lovely but I'm rather hoping that my friend B will have him.  He hasn't got a name yet, there's been quite a few suggestions from helpful family members though, Gilbert, Enrico, Bjorn, Puffball, Frangipani, Freddie, Shirley, Elton, poor bird, whatever he is named he will reflect someone's musical taste I suspect!  Perhaps we could just call him 'Canary'?

There is a story to be told about the Fashion Mate posted earlier on but some of the photos were on that memory card so it'll have to wait till I've taken a few more.

Singer Fashion Mate 362

I got a new machine to work on on Wednesday.  To be frankly honest it's rather ugly but I was intrigued.  It was a Singer Fashion Mate 362 with a garish orange tinge rather reminiscent of faded curtains after a hot summer.  They look like and in design are similar to the Singer Hushmatic 242, equally unattractive I'm afraid!  The Fashion Mate 362 has completely plastic casing, not something I am overly fond of.  Let's get to the nitty-gritty and start to pull it apart.  First of all you need to get the top off, this is fairly simple, there are only two screws holding it on. The second is under the felt disc on the thread spool.

Arrows mark screw positions

 

Now take the belt cover of the side, it's only one screw and a bit of wiggling to get it free.  Next take the handwheel off.  It's the normal type, take the stop-screw out then unscrew, take washer off and slide handwheel off.  The belt will make it hard, just pull!  When you go to put it back on make sure you slip the belt back on the handwheel and then motor before attempting to get it back in position.  When you've taken the top of it'll look like this:

Under top cover

 

Notice the plastic gear nestled inbetween all the metal ones?  And the plastic cams?

 

Now take the back off.  You will need to take off the belt cover and handwheel as described previously.  To take the back off remove the screws marked in diagram.  Tip the machine up and remove the metal light bulb cover, it will only get in the way.  Make sure pressor foot is raised.

Remove screws indicated

 

Now comes the tricky bit.  The casing is plastic remember so you don't want to be careless.  Place your machine as illustrated above and GENTLY lever the left hand side from the base of the casing with a screwdriver.  At the same time (it may help to have two people) grab hold of the right side and pull it towards you.  You should now be able to gently push it to the left and it will come free.  Remember if it gets stuck DON'T FORCE IT, it WILL break.  Now your machine should look like this.

With the back off

 

Now clean and oil your machine.  This one was very dry and I had to give it a thorough oiling.  I also had to clean a lot of rust off the main shaft.  When it's all nice and clean and oiled put it back together again, being careful with that plastic.  Next I cleaned and oiled the base of the machine.  First of all I took it out of its plastic base, this is fairly simple, just remove the two grub screws holding the hinges to the machine.  Next I opened the bobbin plate and took the throat plate out allowing me to access the bobbin and hook area.  To get the bobbin case out lever the piece of metal on the right up and over the screw it is sitting over, as shown in the image below.

 

Now the bobbin case and hook can be cleaned properly.  This machines bobbin case was very rusted so I dealt with that before progressing.  Last of all I turned the machine upside down and cleaned and oiled the base.  These machines have a fabulous belt drive underneath and the belt on this one is in surprisingly good condition - it looks almost new.

Fabulous belt drive.

 

Now all I need to do to this machine is give it a very thorough cosmetic job.  I am guessing someone stored it in a shed or garage for a while because the hard cover and base are very dirty and the locks rusted stiff.  Nothing that a bit of TLC won't fix though!