Good Housekeeping

It was fun to be home for an extra long week over the holidays so I could catch up on quite a few projects. Along with the final adjustment on a New Home XL-II sewing machine (that deserves its own post), I picked up a Deluxe Automatic 107:

Deluxe Automatic 107

She's a great two toned blue and in very good shape cosmetically. Although there was no manual, I figured it was pretty straightforward in operation.  See the shifter on the top? That's where you selected the various stitches that were built in with a camstack right next to the lever. Cleaned and oiled, I practice sime stitching but found it was hit or miss if I could shift into a different stitch. More cleaning. It still didn't work consistently. I didn't want to do it, but I finally took out the three screws that held the shifter in place, then the whole faceplate with three knobs had to come off, and then try to get the knob that protruded into the faceplate off (it was threaded but still took some maneuvering). This is what I found:

Under the shifter

Another gear for cleaning

Altogether there were five gears I could see that were like this. Out came the paper towels, toothpicks, and cotton cloth to wipe this gunk off so it would look like this:

All clean before regreasing

I can hear the relief on the clean gear

I really hate to pull out a mechanism like this for fear of not getting it back in place but it seemed to be easy to remove and replace. Although the cleaning of the gears was necessary, I'm not sure that was going to fix the problem. What was the hold up on the shifter? Here's the way it looked:

Shift lever on top left, bar with rider on right

The two bars next to the shift lever needed to be in perfect alignment in order for the lever to be able to move up and down. There was no fix for that but I did put a light coat of grease on them and hoped the cleaning and regreasing of the gears would be enough. It worked! Here's the stitch sample:

Deluxe Automatic 107 stitches: I made that 4 step buttonhole myself

Now that ain't bad is it? It reminds me of the Brother Select-O-Matic with those built in stitches and it does sound quite a bit like it. But it is a left homing needle  and the Brother is a center needle with a choice of left, center, and right. She's a fine machine so I put her in my only available case, plastic, but now she has some protection. I found a set of presser feet and a few more bobbins and she's all ready for sale. Maybe I will sew on her for awhile to see how she performs but I'm more than happy with this great find. Where does the title Good Housekeeping come from? She has a name plate that says "Good Housekeeper" but it's not original to this machine. I discovered the holes do not match up and it was held in place on one end by the faceplate. Who know what her real name is and I don't really care because she's great even as a no-name.