Goodbye to the old, hello to the new

No, I'm not going plastic on you, good people, but the lounge room had started looking like a warehouse, with boxes stacked on cabinets and it made actual sewing (yes I still do that) really difficult. So, what should I do? Buy another machine in a cabinet of course! Two or three weeks ago (on Sunday night) someone had put an ad for a six drawer Singer cabinet in need of restoration on Gumtree for $50. Well, it looked OK in the ad, and as long as there's nothing missing I'm up for it. Yes it's shabby and yes I have no room. It lived in the back of the car for a few days. It took only a few days to get rid of the two cabinets that lived in my lounge room. My beloved 319k in lovingly restored 1960 cabinet and a model 66, which I had swapped the presser bar with a later 66 to fit side clamping feet. This brings me to what a PITA the back clamping 66 is.
The story of the back clamping goes back a bit over 100 years. I read that Singer thought it a pretty nifty idea to have the 66 as a back clamper just after they had bought the Wheeler and Wilson factory in the U.S. seeing as that's what they used.
It was a disaster, of course, and meant that the 66 had to use feet that were different to all other models, and their customers indicated their unhappiness with the back clamp. Around 1922 Singer caved in to the pressure and made all future 66s side clampers, making them compatible with, well, everything.
So every time I get a 66 it seems to be a back clamper. When the six drawer car crisis happened, I hastily converted the back clamper to use the only side clamp version I had, advertised it for a low price and of course it sold quickly. So, got the six drawer cabinet in, looked at the machine inside and it was, you guessed it, a Singer 66 back clamper! It did come with a couple of back clamp feet (which is unusual) but I'm still pretty unhappy about it.
Here's a summary of movements for the past month or so:
Out
Singer 221k featherweight (centennial, manufactured 1950)
Singer 66k in treadle cabinet (1922 - only just a back clamper!)
Singer 319k in 1960 model cabinet.

All of these seem to have gone to the right people. They were all going to see further use as sewing machines. Decisions on what had to go weren't difficult. The 319k is in a cabinet, and I have a 320k that's also in the lounge room. I did keep the cams from the 319, though. Can't understand why the 320k didn't have them, or the darning plate.

OK, now this stuff I have to rely on my memory for, because there are usually so many. In
Singer 201k treadle, original deco treadle cabinet (1946)
Singer 66k treadle, original six drawer treadle cabinet (1912)
Singer swiss zigzag attachment
Singer attachment lot (incl two more of the above, plus two buttonholers). Not arrived yet.
Singer green button hole attachment (for low shank machines, uses cams for different types of button holes) - this has not arrived yet, more than a week after I paid for it. Not happy.

Out: 66k treadle

Out: 221k Featherweight

Out: the 319k

In: The 66 - Did I mention it's a redeye?

In: The redeye's home. The top needs new veneer

Don't have a pic of the swiss zigzagger (Google it - plenty of pictures around). It has a built-in walking foot and originally came with pattern cams (I got one out of the ten), which makes it highly desirable for a straight sewing machine like a featherweight, a 201 or a 66.

Sewing machine cabinet quick restore

My Singer 319K came in a cute little 1960s cabinet. However, the cabinet had seen better days. It looked like this:

I decided during the holidays that this little cutie deserved a new lease on life.
Sanding it down seemed like a lot of work, and a scraper usually achieves the same result only much quicker. I used a scraper (I call it a wallpaper scraper), in fact this one:

You can clearly see the state of the cabinet lid. The top of the lid copped the worst of the sun, being on top of course. It was so bad that a lot of the varnish was gone completely, leaving large patches of exposed wood. The remaining varnish must have felt a bit lonely or even suicidal, since it barely held to the wood at all. I scraped it all onto the floor, vacuumed the floor, then unscrewed the lid to take it outside (it was obvious even to me that doing this inside was just unnecessarily messy).

Bare wood, before filling

A quick trip to the hardware shop and I came back with a brilliant Aussie varnish, Cabot's Cabothane Clear. Bit expensive as were all the urethane finishes. When the varnish was off, it was sanded using a machine, filled with liquid wood then manually sanded all over with some fine steel wool (00).

Steel wool, about to rub down the filler and bare wood

The urethane requires three coats, and here's how it goes:
First coat goes on the bare wood. You have to do this inside in a non-dusty environment, unfortunately (it smells pretty strong). If not you'll have dust, insects, pollen etc. under your beautiful polish. After six hours, rub it lightly with some 300 emery (dry), put the second coat on, wait another six hours, rub lightly, third coat, leave for 24 hours, rub lightly (I used steel wool grade 0000) and use car or furniture wax to leave a deep gloss.
Here is how it ended up:

Top of the lid is now as beautiful as the machine it contains

I put two coats on the underside of the lid, and three on the top of the cabinet:

Top of the cabinet

Only two coats for the lid's underside

Didn't really want that deep gloss for the underside. Seemed like a bit of a waste of effort and it didn't really get much sun exposure.
I still have to do the rest of it, but that was probably the larger amount of work. The legs are only just holding the varnish, too, so it shouldn't take much to get them looking like new (albeit somewhat rustic) again. It will possibly have to wait until the end of term 2.
Most of the time went into waiting for the stuff to dry, so this was what I'd class as an easy job, or "low hanging fruit".
The lid's underside took a lot more work to remove the original stuff that the top (it wasn't as damaged). Also, be careful with your scraper: It's not that difficult to scrape the wood off if it's soft.