Anyone know much about sewing machines?

[fortworthgal]

While driving around town today, we stopped and picked up a sewing machine table with machine off the curb. My husband is the primary sewing machine user in our household, and he wanted an older machine, rather than his new Brother. The one we found is in a 1950s-style cabinet, but the machine looks like an older style. It is marked "Sovereign Precision Sewing Machine" model 1050, made in Japan. It has a Good Housekeeping seal on it, and looks almost identical to this machine:

Anyone have any ideas how old this is, or where to find info online? So far I'm coming up with nothing. Would like to be able to download a manual for it, or something.

 

[KittyT]

While driving around town today, we stopped and picked up a sewing machine table with machine off the curb.

Funny, I have an old electric Singer machine in a cabinet that I also picked up off the curb one day!

Look on the machine for a patent number. That's probably the best start for dating it.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

I will say that I have a 1954 German made machine that also looks older then its 'date'. Yet I know the date is right, ads in magazines from 1954 show it as the 'latest model'

I think that oft-times the early 50's machines made in places that were much more at war then we were, still had older styling, and yet were imported as part of the post war trade deals. So they tend to look 'older' to our eyes, since our products had continued to have design changes for longer before the -wartime- production zapped all the other industries, so to speak.

 

[fluffy-tiger]

The person who writes this blog may be able to give you some info, there is an entry on post war japanese machines which she explains were made by the bucketload and are hard to trace info on, however she says most were based on some singer models so maybe if you can get hold of a simelar old singer manual (which should be easier to track down) it may help you get it up and running

http://sewing-machines.blogspot.com/

Also these people recondition vintage machines and may also be able to help, they also have tonnes of gorgeous pictures of vintage machines they have reconditioned.

http://www.mckennalinn.com/machines.html

They describe themselves as having machine pox haha!!