This is my second 'Willcox & Gibbs' Chain stitch sewing machine. This one was manufactured in the Early 1900's, but is still about a 100 yrs old.

This was my second Antique Sewing machine I bought on Ebay. I got lucky, as this was a "Local Pick up Only" sale, & I lived about an hour away. This not only had the machine, but also a motor & Foot pedal, too. It was in pretty good condition, also. I loved it so much, & it was supposed to be the one I kept forever, after having to sell my first ( just to recoup the money I'd invested in tools, etc to refurbish it).

It was a lot easier to fix up this machine, having already done one, but the motor & foot pedal were all new to me. I've fixed up a lot of things in my life, but I've never delved into electronics, or motors of any kind, so this was all a learning experience for me. I did pretty well on most of it, carefully documenting where every piece went, as I disassembled & cleaned every piece, but one piece fell out of the foot pedal, & I had no idea what it went to, so I sat there stuck for a couple months, trying to figure out how such a simple piece could stop the entire works. Thankfully, my brother came over one weekend, & I asked him for advice. He hadn't seen this exact thing, but had a good guess to try. Yippee! It Worked! It was SOOO Simple, but if you never saw it before, you'd never guess it! (THANK YOU JOHN!! You saved me! : )

It came out well, & with a thorough cleaning & new wiring, it worked well, to boot! I did keep the machine & motor for a while, but eventually sold it, as I discovered ever more interesting Antique Sewing Machines, that I loved even better.

This Willcox & Gibbs Sewing machine, Foot Pedal, Motor & Base, each sold separately on Ebay, in 2018.

The machine was in pretty good shape overall, but super yellowed & dirty.

Hard to see in pictures, but there was a lot of scrubbing involved first, trying to clean it, and save the decals. Then I finally gave up trying to salvage the decals, & just went ahead and prepped & repainted the entire thing.

There's just no saving the decals, when they have this much crud built up on top of them. I scrub til the crud is off, but then half the decals get ruined, so I may as well just admit it, and get on with doing it right, instead.

I'm not sure if the yellowed crud is 100 years of cigarette smoke residue, or if the original clear coat applied on top of the decals just yellows, and gets all crinkly looking, but I've seen it on a number of old machines. I've never successfully gotten it off a decal without ruining the decal yet, & I've about given up trying. Whatever it is, you've got to scrape it off, & start over with fresh paint, and new decals, original style, or not. Fortunately, the W&G decals are readily available.

Here's the foot pedal. It was super dirty inside, too.

I had to run new wiring to it, as well, as the old wires were really old, frayed, & probably unsafe to use.

I had to get creative to find some wiring that was black, round, and looked a lot like the original. I got lucky that my 1 yr old Microwave died, while I was doing this one. I never would have found such a heavy duty wire to go into it, otherwise. It fit perfectly, and looked great!