Now here is something that you absolutely do not see every day of the week. Behold the humble Moldacot – the world’s smallest (and possibly, the world’s most ineffective!) pocket-sized lockstitch sewing machine!

I purchased this more as a historical curiosity than anything else, but what a curiosity! And what a story!

The Moldacot Pocket Sewing Machine was invented in 1885, and manufacturing this tiny machine (tiny? It’s 8 inches from top to bottom!), commenced in 1886 in London. Touted to the world as the world’s most robust, and compact pocket-sized lockstitch sewing machine, it took the world by storm when it first appeared on the sewing machine market.

Featuring a bobbin-winder, optional hand-crank attachment, stitch-length adjustment, tension-adjustment and almost everything else that you expected to find on a MUCH LARGER full-sized domestic sewing machine, the Moldacot was held up upon high as being the latest, greatest thing in the world, the next big (or small) thing in sewing machine technology to come along since the needle!

Was it?

…Um…no.

For all its pomp and circumstance, the Moldacot was a TERRIBLE sewing machine! It was rushed into production and the initial design was never properly tested or quality-controlled. As a result, when it hit the open market, the resulting machine was riddled with design faults. About the only thing it had going for it was that it was, undoubtedly – the most well-built failure in history! The pieces were all milled and cast brass, instead of cheaper stamped steel or tin. But that counted for little, when you consider the fact that the machine barely worked.

Originally, the Moldacot retailed for anywhere between 10/6, all the way up to about 16/- (ten shillings sixpence, and later on, 16 shillings). It was supposed to be cheap enough for anyone to buy, and be the most robust and portable and useful machine ever made, or so the advertising material said…but because it couldn’t even do the one thing it was supposed to – sew fabric together – the machine never made it off the ground. Even in its day, it was little more than the most hyped-about laughing stock ever known in the sewing machine industry, which in the 1880s, was booming!

The TINY bobbin (left) and shuttle (right), of the Moldacot Pocket sewing machine. Many thanks to my good friends (and fellow collectors) Wayne & Judi McKail for providing me with this photo!

The sad thing was that the Moldacot was basically a scam. The idea was to build something too good to be true and make it look and sound as fantastic as possible! Get loads of people to invest in this amazing new device, and then produce a product that barely works, then take the money and run! The owners of the Moldacot boasted that they could produce an initial run of up to 5,000,000 machines!!

If only.

The Moldacot was such a terrible machine that the company directors weren’t even able to get that far! By 1888, the company had collapsed, crashing and burning and being done in by its own product’s failings.

The microscopic bobbin (top) and shuttle (bottom) of my Moldacot, removed from the shuttle-race (bottom right of the machine, slid out), and placed next to the machine, along with the bolt that holds the race into position during sewing.

In theory, the Moldacot was a brilliant idea. But with terrible management, ineffective design, poor quality control and even worse manufacturing practices, it was just never going to get off the ground. It cost too much to produce for too small a profit, and as previously mentioned – suffered grievously from design flaws. Instead of using investors’ money to improve the machine and make a better model, the company owners simply cranked out thousands of poorly-designed, albeit, impressively robust, and ultimately – useless machines – which nobody would ever want to buy!

The Moldacot came in two general categories. Earlier plunger-type machines (like mine) and a slightly modified, later model, with a hand-crank attachment on the side. Either type are pretty rare, and exactly how many Moldacots (of either type) were ever made is a hot topic of debate.

Like I said, the company that was in charge of producing Moldacot pocket machines were basically running a scam, and the kinds of production figures they threw out at the press were probably little more than fantasies. There are certainly enough out there for the really die-hard antiques collector to possibly get their hands on one, but they were certainly never made in the quantities of machines that other companies like Singer, White, Jones, etc, produced their machines.

Noted sewing-machine historian, Alex Askaroff estimates that perhaps tens of thousands of Moldacots were made…which sounds like a lot…and it is…but when you consider that thousands were probably thrown out, trashed, bombed out in wars, lost, or simply just smashed up…and that a few tens of thousands is NOTHING in comparison with the MILLIONS or even BILLIONS made by other manufacturers of sewing machines – the Moldacot is still pretty damn rare!

So Why the Hell Would you Buy One?

To sew with? Hell no! For one thing, the bobbin and shuttle are damn near microscopic, and hold only a few inches of thread! Today, the Moldacot is a pretty rare machine. It’s the type of machine that you buy to add to your collection as a historical curiosity. And they don’t get much more curious than this! The world’s smallest lockstitch sewing machine, a fantastic little gimmick and piece of late-Victorian engineering, and a great example of a retail scam that went catastrophically wrong!

If nothing else, it’s something that’s so weird and unusual that if you have this in your collection, most people will have no idea what it is! And for some, that alone, would be reason enough to have it!

Now I’m sure some of you might be asking – surely the machine wasn’t that much of a failure, was it?

Well, The Times newspaper, upon the collapse of Moldacot in 1888, called it “The Mouldy Cat” sewing machine…ouch! Talk about scathing reviews…

So in summary – the Moldacot is fascinating as a piece of industrial history, an example of Victorian ingenuity and engineering, and as a glimpse into shady business practices and how to run what coould’ve been a really interesting idea right into the ground…but it is definitely not a sewing machine! Or at least, not one that you would want to have to rely upon for anything.

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote this posting about an old Wertheim hand-cranked sewing machine that I bought. Since making that posting, I’d been struggling to find a replacement for the broken bobbin-winder on the machine. Well, this posting now exists because, at long last – I managed to find that replacement, and today, I fitted it onto the machine!

For those of you who don’t remember the Wertheim…here it is:

In this photograph, you may notice the elastic band wrapped around the bobbin-winder. That’s there for a very good reason. Because without it…this happens:

Unfortunately, nothing that I tried was able to fix this problem, so the only choice I had was to completely replace the winder. After asking around, I finally got the word from some friends of mine who had a replacement that they were willing to sell. For a nominal amount, I paid for the replacement and had it shipped to me. It arrived today, and I spent the whole of an hour or so, trying to fit it onto the machine.

The replacement winder. Surface-rust was a small price to pay for a working component. Sandpaper would deal with the grime.

Removing the old winder was the first order of business. The winder was affixed to the machine surprisingly simply. One screw, one bolt, and one spring.

Removing the spring was the easiest bit. A bit of tugging and stretching and it was released from the hook that attached it to the sewing machine. Next came the removal of the screw that held in the bolt, that held the winder onto the body of the machine. This too, was relatively easy, once I’d found the right screwdriver.

So far, so good.

The next step was to remove the winder from the machine. To do this, I had to remove the bolt that attached it to the side of the machine’s pillar. The bolt had a slot in it, so at first I thought that you had to unscrew the whole thing. After a few minutes tinkering with it, however, I realised that this was never going to work.

While I sat around feeling sorry for myself, I started work on the replacement winder. This was in full working order, albeit, very rusty order. I removed the rust with sandpaper, rubbing and grinding it off, and using an ultrasonic cleaner to blast out all the sanded grime. The more I removed now, the less I’d have to remove later. On top of that, it would be easier to remove the rust when the winder was off the machine, rather than on. Once I had removed as much rust as I could reach, or as much as I dared, without damaging the integrity of the piece (I didn’t need TWO broken winders!), and then returned to the one still fixed to the machine.

After examining the replacement winder, I realised that the bolt isn’t actually threaded. It just sits there. Finding a miniature hammer, I started tapping the edge of the winder still on the machine. Tap, tap, tap, tap…milimeter by milimeter, the winder came off, and the bolt came with it. Eventually I was able to just yank it right off. A couple more taps removed the bolt from the broken winder, and I recycled the bolt, and the screw, to mount the working winder onto the side of the machine.

The machine with the bobbin-winder FINALLY removed!

It took me a couple of tries to get the orientation of the new winder right, but once it was, the bolt slipped in smoothly. I cleaned it out with tissue-papers and sewing-machine oil to remove the grime and let it slide better, and once it was on, I tapped it back into place with the hammer, and then replaced the screw that I’d taken out earlier.

And there it is, with the decidedly less-attractive, but infinitely more functional, bobbin-winder fixed on. Mission complete! Fixing this was definitely an adventure, and a long one in the making, but at least it had a happy ending.

Antique Singer sewing machines of the 27-28 variety, and the 15 variety had special toolboxes that came with them, when they were brand new, back in the 1880s and 1890s. Made of wood, rectangular in shape, with a square cross-section, these boxes held all the main tools and accessories that one of these machines would need: Bobbins, needles, screwdrivers, various attachments and bits and pieces which were vital to the smooth operation of the sewing machine.

Made from 1889 until about 1910, these wooden boxes, called “puzzle boxes”, by collectors, are relatively rare. Rare, because they were made for a short period of time, and rare because they were only made for two different types of Singer machines.

A few years back, I bought, and have since filled up – a puzzle box for my Singer 28 portable machine.

Since then, I got my hands on another sewing machine…

…which is a Singer 15, the only other model of Singer machine for which a puzzle box was made.

After cleaning, fixing and restoring this machine, I thought:

“Wouldn’t it be awesome if I had a puzzle box for this, too?” 

Then I thought:

“Yeah. Right…” 

Then about two weeks ago, I saw this…

That’s right! Another puzzle box!

It was empty, but it was cheap, so I snapped it up at once! I brought it home and started filling it up. So far, I’ve put in a screwdriver (left), a tucker (far right), a full packet of needles (far right, again), and a ruffler (Inner-right, top).

There’s still quite a few pieces missing (compare with upper box), but the main piece missing is the rack for the bobbins. Fortunately, this can be homemade. Bobbin racks for Singer 15 puzzle-boxes were shaped out of thin, steel wire, and once I’ve got the wire, I reckon it’ll be easy to shape it and simply screw it into place. Singer 15 puzzle boxes are even rarer than the 28 ones, or so I believe. I can’t wait to get this filled up and complete!

As Fats Waller said: “I’ve got my fingers crossed…” 

This took a bit longer than I expected, but here’s the result:

Is it perfect? No.

Does that matter? Probably not.

The machine wasn’t in perfect condition when I got it anyway, so it was never going to look as good as brand new. But at least here it looks complete again, with a front panel back on and the missing pieces replaced. All in all, a very pleasing result.

And there you have it. A 1945 Singer 15 ‘Indian Star’ back to working order and saved from almost certain destruction.

Here is the interior of the new base:

And here is the new bed-support, to stop the damn thing from SAGGING whenever it sits down (which believe me is more important than you might think – it prevents you from opening the slide-plate!):

This is what the same machine looked like about two weeks ago, when I got it home:

The Indian Star! It sounds so regal. Like some great diamond hacked out of the dusty earth of the Subcontinent, back in the days of the Imperial Raj, which became the object of desire sought after by thieves and bandits and which played a key role in some dastardly Sherlock Holmes adventure!

Ahem.

THIS is the Indian Star:

It comes from this rather battered-looking Singer 15 sewing machine. My latest sewing-machine purchase:

At just $30 at the local flea-market, this thing was in a SORRY state when I got it. This is what the machine looked like after several hours of hard scrubbing and scouring to remove 70 years’ worth of grime!

That’s right. This machine dates all the way back to 1945! And for a machine that was missing its whole front panel, it was in pretty decent shape, apart from needing a damn good clean and a bit of rebuilding work. It came with its lid as well. Once I get the time I’ll rebuild the front panel and put in a new base for it (the base is absolutely dead), to keep this thing in one piece. It’s barely holding on as it is.

I replaced one hinge, the slide-plate and fixed a few other things, mostly by sanding or scrubbing off rust and grime.

This Singer is a ‘full-size’ machine. That means that it could fit into a treadle-base if I wanted it to. It’s an absolute beast and weighs a ton! It’s hard to believe that something like this (which weighs about 35lbs!) was ever considered “portable” back in the 1940s!!

Will be posting updates as this progresses…

I know this blog hasn’t been updated in over a month. That’s what happens when real-life affairs take precedence over online activities. From family events, looking for work and writing other stuff, I haven’t had much time to write much for here.

Well today I do.

I don’t drive. Never have, never will, can’t do it. Eyesight won’t allow it. Joy of joys. This greatly limits my mobility obviously, and I gotta rely on lifts from friends, public transport of questionable reliability, and a good pair of shoes. It also means I need a good bag. One that’s strong and which lasts. I don’t have the luxury of hauling half my house with me, dumping half of it in the car, taking what I choose, and then walking off somewhere and coming back later to get something else if I forgot. When I go out, I have to take everything I need with me, in one bag. This means that the bag has to be a decent size, good quality, and strong!

…What a pity that most of them aren’t.

In five years, I’ve had three bags, and they’ve all proved unsatisfactory in one way or another. They rip, they tear, they wear out, they fall apart…

I was so fed up with it that I decided to try and make my own bag. I researched fabrics and looked up designs online to try and figure out what my eventual bag would look like. I found a fabric warehouse in town which sells huge rolls of fabric to the public. They’re surplus from clothing-factories and they sell it off at so many dollars a square meter.

I showed up and got myself a healthy supply of denim fabric. I picked denim because I wanted a bag that was – first – blue, and – second – strong! Leather dries and cracks and flakes. And cotton just rips apart. I would’ve used canvas but I couldn’t find any, so I decided that denim would do as a suitable substitute.

I’ve never been much of a sewer, but I learned the basics from my grandmother – how to fold raw edges, how to sew seams, how to cut buttonholes and sew them by hand. How to measure, how to cut, how to make seam-allowances, and so-forth. I only do this stuff occasionally, so I’m still learning, but I felt that I had enough skill to try and make something which I would be comfortable using in public and carrying around. And so, I set to work.

Measurements and Calcuations

Before I did any cutting, the first thing I did was sketch what the bag would look like. I drew up a rough diagram and penciled in measurements on how wide, long, deep and high I wanted it, how many pockets, what the over-flap would look like, and so-forth. Now that I had the chance to make my own bag, I wanted to try and do it as best as I could. It wouldn’t look THAT professional, but still, I had a plan.

If you ever make a bag for yourself, like I did, one important thing to keep in mind with measurements is to decide what you’ll be putting in the bag, and to have those items near you when you’re doing your measurements. Measure the items you intend to put in the bag (laptop, iPad, umbrella, dead body, whatever…) and then proportion the bag accordingly so that whatever you put in will be housed securely and neatly. My big issue with a lot of my older bags was that they weren’t big enough to hold my bulkier items without compromising by chucking out other things which I might’ve needed. I was determined to make it and shape it to fit in everything I wanted.

Cutting the Fabric

To cut the fabric, I used my grandmother’s 8in. WISS tailor’s shears from the 50s. To get accurate measurements, I used one of those big, old-fashioned folding rulers made of wood, which have the measurements in inches. A modern plastic ruler warps and bends too much to be reliable when you’re cutting massive amounts of fabric. And this old wooden ruler extends to three feet long! More than enough for what I needed!

To try and minimise screw-ups, I measured how big I wanted the bag to be, then measured again, adding on extra inches, for seam-allowances, folding raw edges and for errors in my own calculations. To give the bag as much strength as possible, I used as few pieces of fabric as I could, and which pieces I did use, I tried to make them as big as possible.

The bag has eight pieces of fabric.

The first, huge piece was about a foot and a half wide, by three feet long. This gave me enough space to fold over the edges half an inch or so, to make space for mistakes, if there were any. The body of the bag is deliberately made of one big piece of fabric. The fewer seams there are, the fewer things there are to rip and tear, and the longer it’ll last.

Next came two side-panels for the end-walls of the bag. Then came pockets.

The bag has two pockets at the front, one big one at the back, two interior pockets, and one side-pocket for pens. I also cut extra red velvet fabric to act as a partial liner inside the bag, and some of the pockets. I didn’t have enough velvet to line the entire bag, so I just did the key areas. On top of that, I cut extra fabric for stuff like buttonholes, straps and so-forth.

Assembling the Bag

To put the bag together, I used my antique Singer:

My 1936 Singer Sewing Machine. A V.S. 128 model.

Friends have asked me questions about this machine for years.

“How do you use it?”
“Does it work?”
“How do you control it with only one hand?”
“Does it sew through thick fabrics?”
“Aren’t you scared about breaking it?”

The answers are:

“Easily”
“Yes”
“Preparation”.
“Yes” (although, not leather).
“No. It lasted this long, it’ll last a hell of a lot longer!”

I prefer using this machine to a modern one for all manner of reasons. It’s easier to set up, it’s much easier to operate, it’s HIGHLY portable and it’s forgiving of your mistakes!

The great thing about a manual sewing machine is that you can set it up literally ANYWHERE, regardless of light, space, and of course, whether or not there’s a power-outlet nearby! You just plonk it on the table, open it up, thread it, and sew!

The other great thing is that, since it IS a manual machine, you, yourself, decide how fast, or how slow, this machine is going to run. Not some electric motor with a gummy power-pedal which is as fidgety as a spooked stallion. This machine can go as slow and as fast as you want. Give it enough speed and a long-enough run-up, and it’ll punch through four, six, even eight layers of denim with no problems at all!

Because I can directly control the machine, I can decide precisely how to use it. I can run it at a snail’s pace if I’m doing something delicate, or as fast as I can turn the handle, to finish a seam. For someone with poor eyesight, it’s good to know that I can operate it slowly and precisely, when I need to get close and personal to my work and make sure that everything is lined up properly, instead of sewing my hands together!

Sewing the Components

Using my Singer, I sewed all the seams and lining and pockets, and then pieced everything together.

It’s easier to work with pieces and piece pieces to pieces and then put it together. That is, it’s easier to do that, than build the bag up, and THEN try and tack extras onto it like pockets and loops. It’s better to build up each component with all its necessities, before building the bag itself. That way there’s nothing leftover at the end to vex you! Some elements were easier to do than others, but I’m glad to say that about 90% of the sewing for this bag was done on my old Singer. The only hand-sewing I did was to sew on the buttons for closure, and to cut and sew the buttonholes by hand (I didn’t trust the sewing machine to stitch in the buttonholes reliably with its buttonholer-attachment, which has failed before now).

There was a time where I had considered sewing in a zipper or two on the bag, but in the end I decided to leave that to another project. I’d rather stick with what I knew for this project, and try that another time. I was much more comfortable with buttons and buttonholes, and I didn’t want the bag to be too ambitious, and screw it up at the last minute! That said, the button-closures I did make have worked very well!

I made the buttonholes vertical instead of horizontal. This would, I hoped, prevent the fabric from tearing from constant opening and closing. At the front of the bag, I made denim tags and sewed rope loops into them, to act as buttonholes, as I reckoned these would last longer than ordinary buttonholes, since they would be opened and closed more often than others. I used large, brass buttons instead of plastic ones. Plastic cracks and breaks and brass is stronger. To sew them in place, I used string instead of thread, so that they wouldn’t snap or wear out easily.

Attaching the hardware came next. To do that, I used more spare denim to cut tabs for holding down the D-rings for the shoulder-strap. I made everything here double-thickness and sewed everything back and forth, over and over at least two or three times on each side, since they would be taking the entire weight of the bag on just two points. I wanted to make sure that everything was secure.

When sewing, I used navy blue thread. I wanted a thread that matched the colour of the denim as near as possible. Admittedly, this was to camouflage my own deficiencies in sewing. If I was better Might’ve used white thread, but I didn’t want any mistakes or obvious screw-ups to stand out. And at any rate, I doubt anybody would be looking closely enough to really care. In the end, this was the result:

The Finished Bag:

The finished bag. The canvas and leather strap came from one of my previous bags which was falling apart.

The back of the bag with a three-button closure on the back pocket. I originally wanted to use brass snaps, but they weren’t strong enough.

One of the D-rings for attaching the strap.

Considering that this is my first real attempt at something like this, I’m pretty pleased at how it turned out, although the proof of quality will be in how long it lasts! We’ll see!

A while back, I made this post about trying to fix the malfunctioning bobbin-winder on my antique Singer sewing machine.

Despite my most determined efforts, and my initial success, it still failed to work flawlessly all the time. It kept jamming or loosening, and none of my adjustments worked well enough for it to be a lasting repair.

 In the end, I completely disassembled the winder to see how it was put together, and what were its component parts.

It assembles in this way:

Nut – Bolt -*WINDER-ARM* – Bolt – Washer – Toothed Wheel – Heart-Cam – Bolthead/screw-head.

My attempts to fix the jamming and loosening by adjusting the nut at the end of this assembly were unsuccessful. On a whim, I added a second, small, flat, round brass washer into the mix, between the bolt and the main wheel, but still kept the original washer (a flat, thin, slightly concave piece of metal) in-place. My guess was that the original washer was probably damaged or worn out from 70-odd years of use.

I reassembled the ‘new, and improved’ bobbin-winder, with the additional brass washer in place, and screwed everything in tight and firm.

And that has made all the difference, so it seems.

The addition of one small piece of metal has had the most remarkable, and pleasing result, in that the bobbin-winder now works 100% flawlessly! I’m very pleased with the results! Yay!!

Out of boredom, I decided to remove the dust-cover on my sewing-machine’s crank-assembly to see what it looked like underneath, and maybe clean it up a bit. This was what I found:

The crank-cover is held on by two screws. You can see them lying on the lid of the attachments-compartment under the balance-wheel. The screws are loosened and then the ring-shaped cover is simply slipped off and over the hand-crank to reveal the teeth of the gear-wheel behind it.

This was filled with old gunk and dried oil or grease. So I cleaned it out with some cotton-buds. Then, I put the cover back.

It’s nice to see the workmanship on something as simple as a pair of gear-wheels. The teeth are good and long, so they lock together really well. No chance of the gears slipping and failing to mesh together.