This morning we went to a Christmas Craft Fayre and bought a few bits and pieces, this afternoon we went to an indoor car boot sale. I bought a little bone china tea set for £1, quite sweet with autumn leaves on it.
Later I cleaned a Singer 99 case and base with Fenman's Elixir. It came up quite well and I have now polished it with white polish. This contains shellac like French Polish. When that is dry it will be polished with beeswax and turpentine polish to bring a lovely patina to the case. The machine itself is not in bad condition and needs very little work to make it presentable.
I tried sewing with the Jones Spool treadle yesterday evening. It treadles with the wheel going away from you and it is very difficult to treadle that way when you are used to Singers. That has also been cleaned, with methylated spirits to get off any remaining shellac. There are a few stains I might need to treat with white spirit as they look like green paint.
It's amazing how any vintage machine with a wooden table or case seems to get paint on it. The Singer 99 case had spots of white paint all over it.
I have started repairing the broken drawer on the Jones Spool, gluing it together and clamping it until it dries. I need to make a new back piece for it as the original is broken and in a bad way.
Tomorrow we are going down to London with 16 blocks of soap and possibly a sewing machine if I get it finished in time.
Tuesday I hope to be able to stain the Jones treadle and complete reveneering the other Singer 99 base. It's a learning curve, vintage veneer is thicker and doesn't bend round corners so well, but I have found that using a steam iron on the corners helps with modern veneer so I will try that on the old veneer on Tuesday.
It is very difficult trying to type with a large cat draped across the laptop so I am giving up now.
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