Rare Dinger 31-15 treadle

[DonInReno]

At a quick glance this appeared to be a Singer 31-15 and industrial treadle base for very little $$ so I picked it up only to find out it says “Dinger” not “Singer” on the treadle and there isn’t a single Simanco stamp on any of the machine parts!  

The joke is on me! Lol

I thought the Singer tag where a decal should be was a little odd, but that was probably added after clearing customs! 

Under that green paint is a black machine of unknown origin, although it looks well made - I’m guessing post WW2 Japan when they were copying all sorts of singers?  

Anyway I’m the only kid on the block with a genuine Dinger!

[leecopp]

Wow that is fun. Thanks for sharing

 

[rodneywt1180b]

Looks like the same castings Singer used on their treadle bases.  Just a few letters were changed.  They may have used original castings as the patterns.

The machine?  I'm not sure.  It's possibly a copy.  The tag on it looks like a refurb tag.  During the war years there were all sorts of places rebuilding and electrifying old domestic machines.  One of the conditions was they couldn't use the original Singer decals when they rebuilt them so they installed tags like that.  It's possible they rebuilt a few commercial machines too.  It could also be someone completely unscrupulous added the tag to a clone.

Does the model number tag and serial number match any of Singer's machines?

http://ismacs.net/singer_sewing_machine_company/serial-numbers/singer-sewing-machine-serial-number-database.html

Interesting find and I hope you get it running again.

[DonInReno]

1 hour ago, rodneywt1180b said:

 

Does the model number tag and serial number match any of Singer's machines?

 

The serial number is also funny - it’s a singer number for a model 39 made in 1910.

At least to me it’s unique enough that it seems worth saving.  I sprayed it down with lacquer thinner to take off some of the oily bits before setting it in an electrolysis rust removal bath, and normally a rinse with accitone or lacquer thinner doesn’t touch the paint much, but my gloves were covered in black goo!  So it appears there were two top coats of slightly different green over a black coat that just melted off and under all that a gloss black coat that felt like normal cheap lacquer or dried out enamel - very thin and could be stripped off easily with a dull putty knife! Lol  

Its already mostly stripped of paint and an overnight soak should take off enough rust to free up the bottom side - the top side would move on its own, but it all has surface rust from being left outside for a while. I’ll give it a proper gloss black and probably use regular singer decals.

I also have a 1920ish Singer 31-20 and the machining is nothing to write home about.  What a surprise when under the paint of the Dinger 31-15 the cast iron was mostly smooth - really smooth - like smooth enough that you could put a super thin coat of paint on it and it wouldn’t look rough!  Whatever part of the world this came from had labor that was cheaper than paint to put that much attention into cast iron.

The areas that normally show machining marks were also better than my 31-20 so their equipment and skill weren’t bad.

Now I’m no treadle expert of any kind, but now it’s obvious the back should say “SINGER” and instead says “SEWING”.  In the back of the casting the letters look welded to the frame, but I don’t know yet if they were welded onto the foundry mould or attached after the frame was cast.  It’s in the style of the harder to find industrial treadle and the mould used at the foundry does look similar to the Singers with the washed out emblem, not the more distinct one with more bold features and much more clear text.  I’m not really into old treadles and don’t know anything more than that.  It has a half dozen cracks that I’ll braze, the missing treadle pulley will get sourced from some kind of Singer, and the whole thing will get proper paint.  I’m not even sure what kind of top old treadles used, but I have some left over 8/4” white oak that should look ok with a mission oak style finish.

Now that I’ve spent an hour or so with it, the color and feel of the paint reminds me of the counterfeit stuff you’d see in Mexico and South America.  It’s strange that there are no paint chips on any paint layer from pin cushions on the upper, nor chips from scissors, yet it was repainted 3 times and it’s been used a bit. 

Totally off the subject, but I just found an easy way to take high resolution pics and reduce the file size for posting on leatherworker!  Simply open the picture and take a screen shot - at least on my iPhone 5s a screenshot is sized about 50k! Lol