Parting out treadles....

 Interesting Fact:
You can, if you want, go online today, and order from China,  a Chinese copy of  of the Japanese JA2-2 (Singer clone), sewing machine, to install in your brand new cast steel treadle table, from the same shop. Depending on how much freight costs you are willing to pay, you can be up and sewing on it in anything from a week to 3 months from now..

The Chinese treadles are sold into developing nations where electricity can be scarce, just like it was in the West before the 1930's. I don't doubt that the children and grand children of new treadle machine purchasers today, will have the same sentimental attachment to those machines, the many in North America have today.

This sentimental attachment is part of the price of treadles of treadles today. It was their grandmother's or their mothers, it still sews, and it's a beautiful piece of furniture. It must be worth a lot of money..... Well no. It's beautiful, but it's a piece of furniture, unlikely to ever be used except by some sewing machine enthusiasts or people living off the grid, and Singer made millions of them right up the 1960's.

So, given that treadles are a thriving business today (at least in Asia), that I have no idea what my grandmothers in Europe sewed on, and that my mother demanded and got a Singer 222, I have no sentimental attachment to treadles what so-ever. On the other hand, I do have an appreciation of their history, their  beauty and their capabilities. On the third hand, I sell sewing machines....lol

So what do I do with treadles? I buy them cheap and part them out. I make some money, and a clunky old dust collector with peeling veneer, gets a new life. The heads with good decals, go to collectors, the ones with crappy decals go int my pile for repainting and resale as decorator pieces. The model 66's. 15s and 201s get serviced and get resold to people who will use them. Those lovely Victorian  cast iron legs, get sold to people who make tables out of them. The drawers get resold, some to people who are restoring their own treadles, or to folks who just like the idea of having lots of little drawers in their home decor.

Ironically, the value of the parts callously resold, can be as much as or greater than the original sentiment inspired asking prices that some people ask for their whole treadles......Funny how things work out.........