Video Notes:

In this video, I introduce a new long term project: restoring an antique treadle sewing machine!

http://www.barrowsandwights.com
IG: barrowsandwights
https://ko-fi.com/barrowsandwights

Transcripts for videos are available on my website.

Notes:

Newspaper Ad in the Indianapolis News, Jan 2, 1918
Improved Howe Cabinet style for a Singer 66
https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=INN19180102-01.1.12&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN——-

A-Z of American Sewing Machine Manufacturers
http://www.sewmuse.co.uk/american%20sewing%20machine%20manufacturers.htm

Reddit Post asking to identify Improved Howe machine:
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagesewing/comments/lrwfg0/improved_howe_sewing_machine_question_see_comments/

Napanee Express – March 15, 1912 advertisement
https://archive.org/details/11-napanee-express-march-15-1912/page/n17/mode/2up?q=%22davis+sewing+machine%22

Davis Sewing Machine Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Sewing_Machine_Company

Serial number guide – Fiddlebase.com
Sources from Davis VF Yahoo group & http://needlebar.org/nbwiki/index.php?title=Davis https://web.archive.org/web/20230625021546/http://needlebar.org/nbwiki/index.php?title=Davis
https://www.fiddlebase.com/american-machines/davis-sewing-machine-co/dating-davis/

Davis M&N Model Parts list
http://needlebar.org/nbwiki/index.php?title=File:DavisMNpartscatalog.jpg
https://web.archive.org/web/20220918142917/http://needlebar.org/nbwiki/index.php?title=File:DavisMNpartscatalog.jpg

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Attributions:

Title Card:

Photo by Anton Atanasov
https://www.pexels.com/photo/landscape-photo-of-forest-1655901/

Logo designed and drawn by A.R. Gergler

Background Music:

Walking Home by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/
Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Warm Memories – Emotional Inspiring Piano by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

White Petals by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

End Screen:

Photo by Anton Atanasov
https://www.pexels.com/photo/landscape-photo-of-forest-1655901/

Transcript:

[Music]

Uh, hello. Welcome to Barrows & Wights. I’m Adrian and uh, this is my newest project.

This is an antique treadle sewing machine. I don’t know how old it is. I have thus far identified that it is an “Improved Howe” model of sewing machine, which a quick web search tells me was manufactured by the Standard Sewing Machine Company based in Ohio.

[Ding!]

So far I don’t have any more information than that.

This was found in the storage space above the garage at my grandmother’s house. My grandmother passed away in 2019. We thought we had accounted for all of her sewing machines. In fact, one of the sewing machines that you regularly see on this channel, the Janomi sewing machine, is one of my grandma’s sewing machines. She was an avid quilter and she used to sew clothing. She’s been probably using sewing machines her entire life.

We don’t know where this one came from. We don’t know how long she’s had it. It was probably in that storage space above the garage for my entire life. It is 2023. I am 35. 

She’s not in the best condition, but she could be worse. Her table here is more or less intact. The drawer sides here are both mostly attached, uh which is why there’s no drawers in them. This one’s a little bit wobbly. I think this one just needs some glue and possibly a reinforcement nail or two. This side is falling apart. There is damage on this side like this has come out of the grooves in the- where the shelf sits. And this part on the other side is, uh broken. Only one nail is in it and it’s pulled out of the wood. So the drawers are up here. We are missing one 
drawer. Couldn’t find it. This drawer works. Didn’t know this was here until we tried to move it and I pulled it out. Oh, now I can’t get it back in. There we go. The treadle does turn without much effort, so that’s good. In a minute I’ll get up and uh flip this open, and show you that the hand wheel on the sewing machine does turn. The needle does go up and down. It’s difficult because it’s been stuck in the same position for a long time, but it does turn. So that’s a pretty okay baseline to start off with. Yeah.

So let me get the drawers off the top of this and flip this up and I can show you the actual machine that we are working with. Okay here we go. That chain definitely needs some oiling, obviously.

So here she is. Pretty well intact. The decal-ing is in actually great shape, honestly. We have the model name Improved Howe written here across. Uh, here’s the hand wheel. It does turn. The needle does go up and down. See it gets stuck right about there. We’ve got the bobbin winder over here, which does move when I  turn the little wheel here. The little arm does move. I can sort of turn this screw. I can sort of turn this. This is all gummed up underneath. I cannot remove the bobbin plate at this point. It’s pretty well stuck in there and obviously the uh- obviously the belt for the foot treadle has since rotted away.

So she’s pretty grimy but nothing currently appears to be missing or looks unsalvageable. So my first order of business is to give her a once over with a damp cloth because she’d be grimy. um I have been watching some sewing machine restoration videos in preparation for this. I think my plan for getting her up and running is going to look 
like the following: a general clean first of all, including cleaning and cataloging the contents of these drawers because there be some gems in here. General cleaning and then focusing on the machine itself. Hopefully, we don’t find anything terribly rusty that can’t be cleaned up. That’s my worry but um I have been told by more than one YouTube restoration person through their videos that for a lot of these sewing machines the sewing machine oil that was on the machine when it was put away can kind of harden into this, you know, gross residue. But it does sometimes protect the metal from corrosion because it’s a- it’s an additional- sorry, there’s a bug. It’s an
additional- because it’s an additional barrier from the metal and moisture and oxidation, so… We are crossing our fingers.

I’ve seen the recommendation that you don’t use chemical cleaners on the actual machine itself to 
avoid stripping the decals and the lacquer from the machine. Maybe I’ll add some dish soap to clean the wood because I think the wood is what has absorbed the most grossness uh from that garage. So, some just some warm water on a damp cotton thing, immediately dry it off of all the metal pieces, just to get the dust and grime and smoke and whatever else uh off of this and we’ll see where we’re at at that point.

[Piano Music]

Before I go and get any water, I’ve got a plastic bin lid here under a towel for when I wash off some things. I figured I’d pull out the paper items from these drawers and show them to you.

I’ve got some directions for using a ruffler. Looks like this is Page 2 and Page 15 or 13 maybe. This looks like it’s from the same manual, bias binding- ooh! oiling this the machine survived. Hooray! And threading the machine survived. Okay, so that’s Page 3. I was worried we weren’t going to have this and that I wouldn’t be able to find it online because this is not a machine that uh comes up right away when you do a web search. And it shows you the exact length of needle to use on the machine. Excellent.

We also have a domestic magic key button hole worker. Like you know it has that coating the way magazine pages do, so this is probably much later. I would guess the ’50s or ’60s. ’70s even maybe.

I have an envelope here and this looks like my grandma’s handwriting. It says “buttons for grey dress.”

Have some matches. Some very old matches. Look at that.

Attachments for a sewing machine by Greist attachments. I don’t know if I have those attachments. We’ll find out.

Is this the cover? Oh my God, it is. Oh that’s exciting. Okay. Instruction book for the sewing machine. I will have to scan these and uh print them out on some uh newer paper. Okay. There is no date inside this front cover, but this uh is definitely the worst condition of all of the papers. Okay. M & N up here, so that’s something I might be able to use to do some searching.

Instructions for using an electric Singer sewing machine model 66-6 with attachments from uh June 1929. So this instruction book either goes to my great grandmother’s sewing machine, which I believe is in the possession of one of my aunts, or my grandma at some point acquired this sewing machine from someone. And the reason why I suspect it goes to my great-grandmother’s sewing machine is because my grandmother was born in 1929. Here’s a a newer bit of history, an instruction book for the computerized arcade from Radio Shack. I don’t know why this is here. I don’t know who owned this object. uh and then I have this cardboard box with Singer sewing machine feet. And that’s all the paper. Is there any paper in here? Oh, there is. Looks like a coupon or an advertisement out of a grocery flyer; Suncrest mayonnaise for 33 cents gets you 5 points. Good to know. Ovalettes large packages, 89 cents. Bonus offer, green yellow bananas 10 cents a pound.

[Music]

Researching this sewing machine has been quite the adventure. There isn’t a manufacturer name anywhere on this machine. I’m very lucky that the model name is still intact, but but the phrase “Improved Howe” brings up a lot of unrelated sewing machine information.

Elias Howe is the name of the man who patented the lock stitch sewing machine – the style of sewing machine that we all know and love – back in 1846. Because of this, a search for anything with his name will bring up his sewing machine company and sewing machine related paraphernalia that’s been named after him in the past two hundred years by multiple other sewing machine companies.

[pop!]

Like this cabinet style for the Singer 66 listed in an ad in the Indianapolis news in 1918.

The only thing I knew for sure was this this sewing machine was not a Singer. Singer likes to put their name front and center on all of their machines.

I started by doing some link hopping from Wikipedia and general web searches for phrases like “antique treadle sewing machine,” “improved howe treadle,” and “1920s sewing machine” to get an idea about what the sewing machine landscape was like before the 40s. I’ll be including links to all the helpful places I visited in the description below including a list of American sewing machine manufacturers.

The thing that really jumped my research forward was a comment on a reddit post called “Improved Howe Sewing Machine Question” where someone else with this model of sewing machine, or something very similar, was looking to identify the manufacturer. I’d seen this post early on in my searching, but hadn’t read through the comments very carefully the first time. When I came back to it and actually paid attention, one commentor notes points out some distinctive attributes that made them think this was a Davis machine:

“Although an “Improved Howe” does come up on the list of Standard abeled machines… I don’t believe this one was made by Standard. There are several ‘tells’ and the first of which is the square needle plate. A square needle plate on an old treadle machine head is usually an indicator of either White, or Davis manufacturing. White, however didn’t stamp their serial number on the front slide plate and Davis did. The stitch length lever on the deck by the pillar has the same cover plate as post 1906 Minnesota models made by Davis and the same pointer/knob indicator. Also, there’s one last thing; the belt pulley. In this machine you have a spoke hand wheel with the belt pulley on the outside of the hand wheel. By ‘outside’ I mean that the belt-pulley wheel is not mounted in between the body of the machine and the hand wheel, but is instead located at the furthest point right. This is a distinctive feature of post 1900 Davis design.”

I took it upon myself to look at as many models of Davis sewing machines as I could and read up about the company. Most the machines I looked at were listings on Etsy and Ebay, so most of the links I saved no longer lead to active listings, but I did grab a couple of screenshots. The Davis models do have the name needle plate and the “Minnesota” model has the same knob on the lower right. Although the Reddit commenters tips about the needle plate and stitch length lever did point me in the right direction, the thing that really convinced me that this machine is a Davis machine is the shape of the legs.

Here’s what the iron legs of my treadle machine look like.

The more machines I looked at, the more I noticed that each manufacturer had a unique design for the sewing machine cabinet legs. Singer’s sewing machine legs have the name “Singer” in that cross brace. A lot of White sewing machines have this sort of upside down heart shape in the legs. I can’t see if the name White is one both examples, but at least some of the time White includes their name on the side of the legs.

Wilcox and Gibbs machines have this filigree patterning on their legs and treadle with feet shapes worked into them.

Most of the later Davis sewing machine models have a circle divided into quarters on their legs, like this illustration from the Napanee Express from March 15, 1912. My machine has that exact same leg shape.

At this point, I’m 99% sure that I have a Davis sewing machine. Davis Sewing Company was in operation from 1868 to 1924, so I know that it’s at least 100 years old, but I’m determined to narrow it down by year. So I have the manufacturer and I have a serial number from the needle plate. Using this information, I found a list on Fiddlebase.com of serial numbers manufacturing years and bill of sale dates. This database has up to 2.790.000 confirmed for 1915 and 1916 confirming serial number 3.200.000. My machine was probably manufactured in late 1915 or very early 1916, making it almost 110 years old.

In the midst of all this looking around, I also found a parts list for M & N model Davis sewing machines, which I think will be very helpful as I try to clean this thing up. The wiki in which I found this image no longer functions, but the page has been added to Internet Archive Wayback machine. And I know this parts list goes with my machine because the instruction manual notes the M&N models in the upper left on the front cover.

[Piano music]