Casige #3
Dual Pedestal (2)
1902-1910
This is a German toy, manufactured by 'Casige'. Casige produced toys from 1902 - 1975.
This is their Model #3, Dual Pedestal - Cast Iron Toy Sewing Machine, from the very early 1900's.
Only their Earliest models were Cast Iron, with later models made from Sheet Metal - starting in 1910.
(Cast Iron, plus Model #3 indicates this is one of their earliest models, so Dating = 1902-1910).
This machine was sold on Ebay in July of 2024
This one came to me in pretty good shape, & I could see she had a lot of her original decals - underneath the grime. Sadly, it's very hard to get that grime off, without also taking the decals off with it. If you do, though, you can start to see the original colors of the decals, which were not what I expected. They all appeared to be gold, or tan, through the dirt, but once I cleaned it, they were clearly Blue on the florals, & green on the leaves, with a lot of gold, too. A lot of the beauty was lost or damaged already, but with a super fine paint brush, I was able to restore some of the flowers and leaves. I's a very pretty machine. I just wish the decals held up better.
I did have to manufacture some of the missing pieces for it, which is interesting, & nice to know I can make some pieces myself, if I have to. The center pin that guides the small ring that steadies the needle bar was missing, so I had to grind the threads off a long screw, then cut to length to fit the threaded hole, and still allow the steadying ring to slide easily, & look nice. The pieces I made are are not too far off what it originally looked like (I searched for pics online, til I found some I could make out what was missing, then went by that. All I knew was there was a an empty hole in the machine.). I also scavenged tensioners, & nuts, which are cleaned up & modified, so as not to look like modern hardware. That is surprisingly hard to do, as I have to hold tiny nuts & screws against the grinding wheel, without letting myself get ground down with it, or having it go flying across the room, if I lose my grip. (That's happened more than once, so now I have a wall on the back of my worktable, to stop them flying across the room, & reduce my search area.)
It's a pretty rare machine, with an unusual drive gear, made of fiber board, so few survived in tact. This one had it, & it was in pretty good condition. It sold very fast, & for good money, so that was great.
This is the inside of the machine, in case you were wondering how it works.
(That's not how it looked when I opened it up, but it cleaned up nicely. : )
Notice the fiberboard gear in the last 3 shots. Pretty good shape for 115 yr old fiberboard - that's been Oiled!