Enablers, Every One!

I have caught my husband looking at vintage sewing machines with me in mind, and the vintage machine bug is spreading. DD#3 texted me a photo yesterday of a vintage Singer. She was at a resale shop that specializes in books and media, but has one room full of miscellaneous everything. She sent me the photo and said, "You want this, right, Mom?" I showed the photo to DH, and laughed at the fact even my youngest daughter is machine shopping for me. He looked at the photo and said, "THAT is a really cool machine, you should get it!" I asked how much it was, not really planning on getting, more of a way to say it was too expensive as a lot of sewing machines that end up there are. The thing was, it wasn't a bad price. It was a really cool machine. I was still leaning towards saying no, when DD#3 asked me if I had ordered the boots she wanted for her. I told her I had, and she told me that instead of paying me back for the boots, she would buy me the sewing machine, which was $30 more than the boots. She said we'd call it even, and that I should get this machine because it looked so cool. I had already looked up reviews on it, and it had good reviews, so I told her to go ahead and get it. When she came home I saw this

and inside that

THE ROCKETEER

A Singer 503A, commonly referred to as The Rocketeer with it's futuristic lines. From what I can see from a quick online search, it looks like these were only made for three years 1959-1962, even though the serial numbers may have been issued earlier.

The top raises to expose the spool pins, the bobbin winder, and the place to put cams for decorative stitches. This machine only came with one cam, the one that does a zig zag.

The machine has three needle positions which is nice, and I can adjust the width of my stitches.

I love this stylistic atomic symbol over the stitch length adjustment knob.

When I first saw this lever, I thought it would drop the feed dogs, but I was wrong.

It lifts the stitch plate above the feed dogs so you can free motion sew.

Here is the stitch plate in the normal position.

This machine looks like it was barely used. The case has dings and paint loss, but the paint on the machine is close to mint condition. I looked around on ebay today, and bought a package deal from a seller who had all the cams for this machine, the manual, a straight stitch plate, and a couple feet. My Singer 99 bobbins will fit this machine, but none of the presser feet I have will, since this is a slant shank machine.

I have a friend who thinks everything should have a name, so this is Cliff, the name of the main character in the movie The Rocketeer, which I happen to really enjoy.

Lest you think I am the only spoiled one around here, let me show you DH's new toy

 

A Ural motorcycle and sidecar. He's been wanting a sidecar rig for a while, and he found a deal too good to pass up. It, however, did cost more than the price of a pair of boots ;-)