Playing with paint......

What's in a name?
When I posted pictures of this machine in a Vintage Sewing Machine group on Facebook, I called it Sunset. I had a particularly  red sunset I saw in Cuba one time, in mind, when I painted it.

Several comments assured me that it's name should  be Tequila Sunrise. My first thought was that it's taken me three weeks to paint this thing, so it's darn well Sunset. Once I got over my snit (by watching the news and politicians telling me  that, reality is, what ever, each one them says it is), I  started to reflect a little on my journey with this 1920's model 28, and I think we might both be right. (me and the commenters on Facebook, not the politicians....)

When I first encountered this machine, she had been sitting on the top shelf of a welding shop, for the last 20 years. This turned out to be a bad environment for shellac and she had finish issues. The big blob of weld splatter, right in the middle of the Sphinx decal, didn't help either. Mostly I bought it because it had an interesting needle and back cover plates on it, which turned out to come from an old New Home machine, which I am saving for a future project. Beyond that, I was thinking of scrapping the machine.

How ever, needs must, and painting  sewing machines is a skill that can only be acquired with practice, so it went from the corner of the sun porch to the paint stripping table.You would be surprised to see how rough the castings were, under Singer's thick, black self leveling paint. If you plan to do this yourself, I would recommend metal files, bondo and high fill primer from your local auto parts store, and sand paper, lots of sand paper, in grits from 320 to 1600.  The painting process itself turned out to be a lot of work, spraying and sanding, more spraying, more sanding...... Turns out I am a slow learner.........

The first coat of paint was a loud yellow just to see how it would look, (not good), and everything evolved from there. I chose the sunset in my memory as my color palette, so it became Sunset. But, when I think of it's journey from the welding shop to the scrap heap to my painting bench, to my living room, I am beginning to think that Sunrise would do equally well......