So here she is:
She`s a Singer 411G, made in Germany around 1964. I named her Gerda.
She was in quite good condition, she wasn`t rusty or messy and she sewed right away. She sews leather too, yes! I wiped her, cleaned the bobbin area, cleaned the area behind the face plate. I polished the needle bar and the presser feet bar. Then I installed some felt covers on her feet so she won`t scratch the table. Her old rubber feet-covers were worn out.
Following the instruction manual (Oh yes, I have printed it, 107 pages!!!) I´ve oiled the holes on the top, the mechanism behind the face plate, the bobbin area and the holes on the bed. I didn´t oil and lubricate the machine from the bottom because I don´t have the sewing machine lubricant yet. And she doesn´t seem to need it yet.
Bobbin area after cleaning. I only got two plastic bobbins and no attachments with her. I know she uses type 66 metal bobbins. Luckily I know where to get them, I will be buying a lots of those! :)
She has high shank so at the moment I cannot use any of my attachments from other machines. The high shank adapter is already ordered. ;)
I love the threading on these old machines, look how many thread guides! I think they make the thread go smoother and if there`s a trouble with upper thread, you can see instantly which guide isn`t threaded properly. As oppose to new machines where you just pull the thread through the face and one guide. All the mechanism is inside the machine and you cannot see what went wrong...
Gerda had her original hard-cover with her. Hard-cover provides safe and easy transport. I changed the felt covers there too. Although I will be making a quilted cover for her later. I hope I can have her on the table ready to go...
The lamp works! But it points to a funny direction on the bed instead of on the needle, so I probably won`t be using it. I´ll use my table lamp.
You cannot see the stitches in this boucle fabric but they are perfect! The presser foot is tiny (compared to what I´m used to) and it has a "forky" front which gets tangled easily into the loops of boucle fabric. I hope I´ll get my high shank adapter soon since the boucle fabric is for my next project and I´d like to sew it on Gerda.
I have to correct myself, Gerda does not have a high shank but of course a slant shank since she is one of the Slant-O-Matic models. This means that the high shank I got is too high for her and a low shank is too short. I´ve seen some slant shank adapters on the internet. White, plastic ones, not very appealing... It seems ridiculous to put plastic into full metal machine. I will have to think of something else...
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