Skip to main content

Singer 99K with added ooooomph.

Contrary to what Diane, my partner thinks, I am not a sewing machine collector. I do have two vintage Singers, a 99K Centennial edition from 1951 and a 201K dating back to 1940. I also have a Toyota Super Jeans 34, Toyota 3304 overlocker and Singer 14SH754 overlocker. All of these machines are "in use", meaning that they are not display only machines. All of them except for the Singer overlocker have been used in the past week!
All have different strengths and weaknesses but I was beginning to feel that having two vintage machines, both hand cranked was more than a bit quirky. I definitely was trending towards putting an electric motor on one of them. The 99K would seem to be the ideal machine to remain hand cranked, being smaller and far more portable than the 201K, but as it originally had a Singer motor attached from new, I erred on the thought of replacing the crank on the 99K.
For a little over £30 inc p & p I was able to obtain a brand new YDK  90w. 0.45 amp motor complete with foot pedal from BSK in Bedford which seemed a hell of a good deal to me, and a lot less than it would cost to have the original motor and pedal repaired. OK, so it's a white motor on a black machine. Nope..... not bothered. The machine is going to be used, not displayed, so a 2 day wait and I had it.
The business end!

New motor, using the old Singer V belt.

Replacing the hand crank with the new motor took all of 5 minutes, with just one bolt to unscrew and a belt to attach. Although the motor came complete with a belt, I chose to refit the original black Singer belt, which seems to be almost new, keeping the new belt as a back-up/spare.
I did have to re-site my cheap-as-chips, 30 LED gooseneck lamp. It has a really powerful magnetic base so I now sit it on the metallic cover for the machine base accessory box which allows the lamp better access to the front of the machine.

Not just a pretty face(plate)

LED lamp now re-positioned on the accessory box cover.

As you can imagine the 99K can now fly along. The new motor has around 50% more power than the Singer original, but the machine is now more noisy especially when running at speed, as you might expect. The motor itself is remarkably quiet.
I gave the new motor a good testing yesterday putting together some quilt blocks for Diane. I have to say that for a 66 year old machine, with a new heart, the 99K is a very impressive little sewing machine and well worth the upgrade to a new motor. (But I am keeping the hand crank. You never know when it might come in handy)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Singer 99: Edge stitching attachment.

Looking like a weird set of ladders the Singer edge stitch attachment is one of the most versatile attachments I have, so I thought that I would share some of the ways it can be used. First, it is a very effective and almost faultless way to stitch at the edge of material. Remove the normal presser foot and attach the edge stitcher and you are good to go. I like to turn under 1/8-1/4" of fabric first, and either press or finger press a sharp edge in place. The video below details the full edge stitching process using the attachment. Singer edge stitching foot   More edge stitcher techniques: Singer 99: Adding lace, ribbon etc to a garment edge with the edge stitching attachment

My primary machine: Toyota's Super Jeans 34 after 10 months use.

This is my Super Jeans 34. The big daddy of Toyota's Super Jeans machines with 34 stitch options. It's black, well actually it's more like a dark brown to my eyes. Like almost every domestic sewing machines today, it has a plastic exterior with a rigid metal frame inside. This makes for a lightweight machine, but one which can still punch its way through multiple layers of denim fabric with ease. So what drew me to this machine and what is it like to use? Well, first let me say that my partner has been using a Toyota Quiltmaster 226 for close to 5 years and swears by it as a real, un-fussy workhorse. She is a quilter and has made a multitude of quilts on her machine since we bought it, and it has been totally reliable. I have a Toyota 3304 over locker that I use for garment construction too. It took me a weekend to get to grips with a machine that uses 4 threads instead of two, but since then I loved using the 3304, it's a great over locker, quiet, easy to use, ...

Issues with using a thread stand on my Singer 201K and 99K solved.

I had a small frustration with my vintage sewing machines which I have now cured. When I sew using cross-wound thread, which is most of the time, I do not use the machines spool holder. It is designed to work with spools of stacked thread, like the old Sylko reels. I run my thread from a thread stand, which works in reducing any additional twist to the thread by pulling the thread off the spool from end, not the side. In theory, it works great but in practice, I hit a snag. The spool stand is tall, with the thread stand guide arm being 3-4 inches higher than the spool pin on the machine. Most of the time there is no issue with this, especially if I am sewing at slow to medium pace, but if I pick up speed the thread has a tendency to jump out of the first thread guide on the machine. I find this happens on both my 201K and 99K machines. What causes the problem is that the thread goes slack if I take my foot off the gas. There is nothing to stop the thread flap...