Willcox & Gibbs - 1

1860's

This is a 'Willcox & Gibbs' Chain stitch sewing machine. I did a lot of research, to find it was manufactured in the early 1860's - during the Civil War, and it was a Civil War reenactor who eventually bought it from me. I thought that was so cool! : )

This was my very first Antique Sewing machine I bought & Sold on Ebay. I loved it so much when I first saw a refurbished one on Ebay, that I had to have one.

Silly me, it was listed at only 99 cents, which made me feel like I had a good shot at it, because I was willing to pay Sooo much more than 99 Cents. I placed my bid for $100., secure in the knowledge that that would surely be the most anyone would ever pay, & after several days of no other bidders, I was certain I had it.

Then the auction wound down, & suddenly everyone bid on it - in the last few seconds, with the price screaming Waaay past my high bid - by Hundreds of dollars, with a final price of over $450.! Yikes! I kept watching, & bidding on others, but the same thing always happened.

I knew I was never going to afford that, so finally, I decided I could try to fix one up myself - if I could get one that wasn't already refurbished - so I did. This is it.

Unfortunately, after many months of work, & many failures at schemes to make it easier/faster (buying many tools, tumblers, & plating equipment, etc), I had so much money into it, I had to buy another junker to refurbish & sell, just to break even.

This one was the older, & more valuable machine, so I was forced to sell it, rather than the next one I bought - to keep for myself. (See the link to my second W&G, to see that one, too). I'm quite sure the lady who bought it, never knew it was literally silver plated, but she got a much more valuable machine than any other W&G Machines out there. : )

NOTE: I went with Silver Plating, only because you can't chrome plate at home.

This Willcox & Gibbs sold on Ebay in 2016.

This came out so well, and I loved it dearly, but it had to go, to afford to keep the next one.

Look at how wonderful & shiny the Silver plating came out. This was the First, & Last machine I ever used Silver Plating on.

Plating was SUCH a bear to do, & so unreliable, & expensive ($80. just for the solution - Thank you Douglas), not to mention all the other equipment (Slow cooker, electrical current generator, silver bars, etc, etc), or My time standing in the garage all winter, babysitting it (Hours, and HOURS, over soooo many days), and the general hassle of plating oversized items without getting buildup on overlapping areas, or worse, having it just flake off after all that work.

All those things happened, and I swore there would never be anymore plating in my future.

It was gorgeous in the end, but now I have a polishing wheel, so despite even more money spent on tools, it does a pretty good job, too, without all the dangerous chemicals, and breathing of fumes. Yay! : )

******** SIDE NOTE *********

What is a chain stitch? (I didn't know either.) Chain stitching is when they only use one thread, and as the needle goes down, a Looper on the bottom catches the thread, and holds it, til the next stitch comes, then releases the first loop (which is then held in place by the next loop). The stitching looks like a single line on the top side, but looks like a chain of loops on the bottom. (Interestingly, you can pull that entire line of loops out by simply tugging on one loose thread - but only in one direction).

I'd seen chain stitching when I was a kid, on big bags of dog food, but had no idea how they did it.

I did love tugging that thread out, though. : )

********* Here's how it works ***********

Looper grabs a loop from the needle

Needle comes down through that loop. Looper releases the first loop, and grabs a new one from the needle

Needle pulls up the thread, tightening the old loop as it goes.

If the timing is right, this results in a very nice stitch, and they're harder to pull apart than it might seem at first. There is a trick to it.

This is not quite how it looks on the Antique Sewing Machines I see, but the concept is the same.