Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Boxes

After a long winter of working indoors, the weather has turned warm enough for my woodworking associate to produce some wood boxes for my sewing machines. What would I need wood boxes for? Since so many of the machines I find have no base or it is beyond repair, I want/need to have something to hold them. Sometimes I can do a decent repair job with glue and nails but other times they just need to be tossed:

Wizard base broken in shipment
Through Craigslist Ashley comes to my rescue with her posting about doing woodworking projects. She has some nice photos so I get in touch and when she can get out in her garage again she makes up these gems:
Two sizes in two styles
As requested, she made some out of oak and some out of poplar, both very sturdy woods that will stand up to wear and tear. The corners are rounded and very smooth, have corner wedges to support a base, small indents on the short sides for a handhold (a finger grip?), a cutout for electric cords, and a wood bottom, too. There are two styles: just big enough for the machine to sit on and some with   storage compartment on the side to hold accessories or an electric foot control.
Plain base in front, base with side compartment in back
And then there are two sizes: Singer 99 small base and larger size for all of the Singer 15's, 201's, and 15 type machines and others like the Brother Select-o-Matic that I'm in love with (sorry, not pictured yet):
Singer 99 in front with small size box, Singer 15-91 behind it with the larger size
I haven't done anything but  admire them but will probably stain a few and even paint at least one in black but most of them will be left unadorned for the buyer to finish as they would like. Now I can list a few more sewing machines that were just waiting around for a nice wood box to support them. Not everyone wants a table and with boxes that are decades old and broken this was a necessity but necessary or not, they are just beautiful! Ashley did a very nice job but good work doesn't come cheap. Could I learn to do something like this one day? I sure hope so because there's a woodworking class that is locally taught and I hope to get signed up next winter. It might take a long time to get up to this skill level but it would be a great goal for me.

In the meantime, I'm going to be calling on Ashley!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Those boxes are very beautiful and well built. I have an old New Home that I bought a while back to replace my old one and I had to settle for a plastic case and bottom for it. Not nearly as beautiful as those wooden boxes, but it will do.