Old Sewing Machines

For summaries of each machine, see photo gallery at the end.

It was the day my grandmother's sewing machine exploded.

Maybe exploded is a bit of an exaggeration, but it did make a loud popping sound and started leaking smoke out of the casing. It also smelt really bad, like burnt sugar. This sewing machine, was an Elna 5000, found in the dusty recesses of a long-untouched cupboard, or at least that's where I imagine it was found judging by the crud choking up the inside. I had cleaned most of the dust and thread remnants from it before I started using it. I spent about two hours cleaning it and working out (from the limited instructions) what the buttons all did. It was turned on while I did all this, nothing moving yet, but turned on. Then, right when I get ready to start sewing a test strip, it goes 'pffrup' and starts smoking.

I waited a while, to let it cool down and for the smell to dissipate. Then I took to the task of dismantling it (with a little help from a friend). The instruction manual didn't seem to want us to dismantle it at all, so it took a lot of guesswork, trial and error and scanning the casing to work out what needed to come off first to enable the safe removal of the main body of the casing. Eventually, we got it all off.
The inside of the casing had been blackened slightly where the smoke had been most concentrated, but we couldn't see any clear signs of breakage in the motor or the motherboard (nothing obvious like a blown capacitor anyway).

At this point, I started researching whether it worth getting fixed at all, or whether we were better off dumping it. This then initiated the exploration of the other two sewing machines as well - my grandma's well-loved Bernina purely out of interest not necessity.

I managed to date the sewing machines, estimate a rough re-selling price for them, and evaluate their general state of usefullness. The youngest sewing machine is the exploding (and pretty useless) Elna. The middle child, my great-grandma's Singer 507 still functioned fine, but hadn't been cared for very well and so was in desperate need of servicing (we ended up donating it to a local school). The oldest of the machines, the Bernina, is by far worth the most and very much built to last, as far as we can tell it would have been top of the line at that time.

Photo Gallery/Tldr

Grandma Brenda's mechanical Bernina 532-2 (made 1960) valued at £175-300, made mostly out of metal. My grandma loved this machine so much she probably tucked it into bed at night to make sure it was comfortable. It's been looked after amazingly well, I sincerely hope I manage to keep it that way .

Great Grandma Mumpty's mechanical Singer 507 (made est. 1976) valued at £50, badly in need of servicing. It's a simple but effective plain stitch sewing machine, however it didn't come with any spare bobbins and needles or any instructions.

Grandma Jenny's Elna 5000 (made est. 1986-1990) valued at £10 or less, and only really if you're salvaging parts. It might have been worth up to £80 if it was fully functioning and had been regularly serviced, but that's not the case. Finding a specialist to fix it wouldn't be worthwhile either, because computerised sewing machines have (undoubtably) improved a lot since the 1980's, so there wouldn't be much of a market for them. I mean, you wouldn't buy a thirty year old computer, it seems safe to assume the same applies for sewing machines.