Posted 4 years ago
Miguel_tap…
(1 item)
Anyone know more about this sewing machine all i know its from ww2 and they only made 200 of these machines its about 5 ft tall
Ww2 1 out of 200 singer sewing machine | ||
| Unsolved mystery items9405 of 96522 |  |  |
Hi, Miguel_tapia12. Cool industrial machine. :-)
I tried to read what looks like the serial number (in a little elliptical cartouche underneath the Singer medallion and another smaller cartouche), and it looks to me like it might be "AG416033."
Per the International Sewing Machine Collectors' Society (ISMACS) serial number tables (which they got directly from Singer who endorses them via linkage), that would put it into this block of numbers:
AG- 415826 416125 231 300 May 26 1942
http://ismacs.net/singer_sewing_machine_company/serial-numbers/singer-ag-series-serial-numbers.html
Translated, that would mean that AG416033 was one of a block (415826 through 416125) of 300 serial numbers allotted May 26th, 1942, and they were all destined to be stamped onto model 231 machines.
Your machine looks nothing like a model 231. Here is a model 231-4:
http://ismacs.net/singer_sewing_machine_company/model-list/images200-299/231-4.jpg
What your machine looks like to me is some minor variant of the model 97. Here is the model I think it mostly closely resembles, the 97-5:
http://ismacs.net/singer_sewing_machine_company/model-list/images0-99/97-5.jpg
It's not a perfect resemblance, but it's close.
About the 97 class of machines:
*snip*
Large. Cylinder bed; one needle; one shuttle; lockstitch. Stitch set of 3 presser feet, from 3 to 12 spi. Gas heating device for hot wax stitching. For harness work and other heavy work in leather; parachute harnesses, etc. Speed for all models 400 spm
*snip*
http://ismacs.net/singer_sewing_machine_company/model-list/classes-1-99.html
Certainly some of the AG series of serial numbers were supposed to be model 97, just not that block of serial numbers I cited above.
It's not impossible that the ISMACS serial number table is incorrect; I've seen a few errors in them here and there, but before I would say it's in error, perhaps you could take a close-up picture of the serial number, and add it to your post. I may have misread it. :-)
Hi again, Miguel_tapia12.
I see your picture got reoriented. That's good, because there are a lot of people of a certain age here at CW S&T with stiff necks. };-)
I thought I'd go back out there and look for some actual photographs of Singer model 97 machines, and found some good ones at the leatherworker dot net website:
https://leatherworker.net/forum/topic/78197-singer-97-10/
That sure does look like your machine, except for the tray underneath the cylindrical bed. It also has a nice close-up picture of both the model number (97-10) and serial number (AG431595) plates.
I don't know whether there were any model 97 machines with serial numbers that weren't prefixed with AG, but just for grins, I decided to do a bit of judicious searching and editing of the AG table to smoke out the model 97 machines:
(The formatting might be a bit rough here in CW S&T, but in Windows Notepad, they line up very nicely.)
AG- 253201 253275 97 75 December 2 1941
AG- 391176 391225 97 50 March 3 1942
AG- 407026 407125 97 100 April 22 1942
AG- 417526 417725 97 200 July 9 1942
AG- 426726 426925 97 200 October 22 1942
AG- 431436 431635 97 200 January 28 1943
AG- 433086 433285 97 200 May 13 1943
AG- 444711 444910 97 200 September 21 1943
AG- 448371 448620 97 250 February 14 1944
http://ismacs.net/singer_sewing_machine_company/serial-numbers/singer-ag-series-serial-numbers.html
If you add up the column of serial block numbers, the total is less than 1,500. That is actually a very low number when you compare it with some other Singer models, especially some of the popular domestic machines like the model 15 or the model 66.
Whoops, I just found one with a non-AG prefix serial number (AK973719):
https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Product-Service/Singer-97-10-sewing-machine-111961889478976/
But if you look at the AK serial number table, the model 97 does seem to have been made in small batches of only 100-300 machines.
Out of curiosity, I decided to comb through all of the Singer serial number tables looking for model 97 machines:
AB- 208976 209025 97 50 6-Aug 1926
AD- 826946 826955 97 10 24-Dec 1934
AE- 50251 50265 97 15 5-Dec 1935
AE- 279916 279940 97 25 14-Oct 1936
AF- 300706 300730 97 25 19-Jul 1939
AF- 461031 461080 97 50 25-Mar 1940
AF- 683301 683350 97 50 12-Nov 1940
AF- 901051 901100 97 50 23-Apr 1941
AG- 102451 102500 97 50 13-Aug 1941
AG- 253201 253275 97 75 2-Dec 1941
AG- 391176 391225 97 50 3-Mar 1942
AG- 407026 407125 97 100 22-Apr 1942
AG- 417526 417725 97 200 9-Jul 1942
AG- 426726 426925 97 200 22-Oct 1942
AG- 431436 431635 97 200 28-Jan 1943
AG- 433086 433285 97 200 13-May 1943
AG- 444711 444910 97 200 21-Sep 1943
AG- 448371 448620 97 250 14-Feb 1944
AK- 52721 52820 97 100 22-Nov 1950
AK- 566851 566950 97 100 5-Sep 1951
AK- 705776 705875 97 100 3-Jan 1952
AK- 973576 973875 97 300 16-Jul 1952
AN- 461350 461399 97 50 24-Oct 1962
G- 6463846 6463895 97 50 9-Oct 1918
G- 1333401 1333450 97-1 50 27-Jun 1911
http://ismacs.net/singer_sewing_machine_company/serial-numbers/singer-sewing-machine-serial-number-database.html
If you total all of the serial number blocks, you get 2,550. That is a very small number of machines when you compare it with, say, the model 66, of which more than 8 million (closer to 9 million than 8) were made over the years it was in production.
It's interesting to look at the production history on the model 97, using the serial numbers in the Singer/ISMACS tables.
It looks like its first appearance was in 1911 with a block of 50 serial numbers allotted. Then there was a gap of 7 years before they allotted 50 more in 1918, and another gap of 8 years until they allotted 50 more in 1926.
It was another 8 years before they allotted a mere 10 in 1934, dropping to a mere 5 allotted in 1935. That was probably the effect of the Great Depression.
Production picked up again in WWII, which makes sense, given the purpose of this rather specialized industrialized machine which originally was billed as rope stitching, but evolved into harness work:
https://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/Trade-Literature/Sewing-Machines/pdf/sil10-156.pdf#page=7
https://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/Trade-Literature/Sewing-Machines/pdf/sil10-159.pdf
*snip*
Possibly the 97-10 was sold to the military for use during WWII, but is was made years before that. It goes back to 1914 , I have been told it was used to sew the oak slats on the canvas aprons for the swatters used to harvest grain before combines were invented.
*snip*
https://leatherworker.net/forum/topic/36692-singer-97-10/