Restoring a Vintage Chainstitch Embroidery Machine

September 10, 2025

Recently, I picked up a new-to-me Singer 114w103 chainstitch embroidery machine, acquired from a quilter in Arizona. She had found it at an antique store (for $200) and brought it to Ralph's Power Sewing Machine Inc. in Denver, CO for some servicing, then reported to never getting past the learning curve. It sat unused for essentially 10 years.

A real concern in buying a vintage chainstitch machine is whether it's "authentic" and having all original parts, and if you've spent any time looking into this you'll be well aware of all of the cautions against buying on ebay, etsy or instagram. There's a myriad of dupes out there with nice looking paint jobs paired with poor quality or non-original parts, and ambiguity of where they're actually being "restored" or shipped from. Griffen from Chareco Sew has a great video on this topic. So while I had only seen a few pictures of this particular Singer, after a Facetime conversation and laptop-camera tour of the machine, covering some of the specific pieces I wanted to see, I felt confident about what the machine was before we agreed on a price. Overall a great buying experience.

The machine did sew when I received it, although skipped some stitches when making tight turns and felt a little inconsistent/finicky. The metal was oil stained and had a veneer of dusty oil grime and pet hair from sitting for a number of years. I was pleased to see that all the parts were stamped with telltale the "SIMANCO" marks of an original machine, along with the specific component part numbers. Interestingly enough the main crankshaft has a "Singer Great Britain" marking on it. Maybe in March of 1961 (the year/month I could trace the serial number to) they were low on this part in the states so had a few boxes shipped over from the UK plant in Clydebank over to New Jersey as a stop-gap measure. Another interesting part is the handle bracket - it's pretty rough around where the oiling point is with some extra blobby material - a bad sand casting. At first I found it a little ugly but now think it's kind of cool :).

Some of the "before" pictures:

My summary assessment of the machine on arrival:

Paint looks great, super clean
Components are 100% original as far as I can tell
Parts are oil stained and had some dust/lint/grime build up, but overall in good condition
No major wear. The tolerances seem tight on the face components.
The paddle on my tension bracket was bent from being pushed too far against the edge of the cast iron frame. After cleaning I used a ball peen hammer to straighten this out.

With that in mind, I wanted to give the machine a little bit of a new life so decided to remove the face and all bottom/bracket components and give them a good ultrasonic clean. Part of me writing this up is to give a quick overview for anyone who's interested in taking one of their machines apart and show some pictures so you know what they know what they'll be getting in to. I take no responsibility if you mess up your machine, although do have two bits of advice for anyone doing this:

Be organized about the parts your taking off. Have ziplock bags ready. Take lots of pictures with the serial numbers (for example the various bevel gears may look interchangeable but not all of them are). There are some tiny parts, don't loose them. When I was doing some maintenance on my Cornely A, I misplaced a ziplock bag with some of the parts in it and hated myself for the week they were lost.
Use good tools. The random flathead screwdriver you have kicking around isn't good enough. It will deform and slip out of the screw heads. They'll strip and you'll hate yourself both for not being able to get it out/proceed, and for being the worst steward of the machine in its 100 year old life. Make sure the tip fits snugly in whatever screw you are removing. Seriously don't fuck this up. I've learned this lesson several times working on old vehicles. If you start to sense that the tool you are using isn't doing what you want it to, stop and reassess.

To disassemble the machine I used:
- Small, medium and large flathead screwdrivers. Decent ones.
- Pliers (I like the ones on my leatherman wave+)
- Small hammer and a piece of wood (don't hit metal on metal)
- A motorcycle tire lever for prying up on the part blocks under the machine (the large flathead will probably work just fine, just don't pry against anything delicate)
- A punch for knocking the vertical shaft on the handle control path free from it's bevel gears.
- 11mm box end wrench

Step 1: Remove the face

To remove the face you need to remove the two screws at the top, and one behind the central (spinning) tower. Then release the set screw on the bevel gear at the end of the smaller shaft that eventually leads to the handle. Once those are out of the way, use a hammer and a small block of wood to gently tap the face out, working your way gradually around.

As soon as you can access it, remove the small bearing/bushing that sits on the cam at the end of the crankshaft. It's easy to miss and can fall off so grab it right away and put it somewhere safe.

Step 2: Remove the tension bracket

Since this doesn't engage with anything else, you can remove it with the two bolts that hold it down and then wiggle it free.

Step 3: Remove the worm gear and the looper block

The worm gear is fastened by a small set screw. Loosen it and it should slip off the end of the shaft. Once it's off, you can remove the two bolts holding on the looper block, wriggle it off, and also slide it off of the shaft. You'll likely notice a build up of lint under here - while the looper can be cleaned from above, this is a good thing to do from time to time as it can get pretty grimey.

Step 4: Remove the looper wormgear shaft

You'll notice that the looper wormgear shaft goes through two bevel gears and between them is a small collar that oscillates between them as you run the machine. Loosen the setscrew on the collar until it slides freely up and down the shaft.he first is to loosen the set screw on the small collar that sits inside a shaft in the handle control pathway. Second is to remove the two small keeper blocks that sit in the round block that's pressed on to the end of the shaft. To get these out, I first disconnected the bolt that serves as the pivot point between the vertical shaft that goes to the main crankshaft and the looper wormgear shaft. It's an 11mm nut on the bottom, then the bolt unthreads.

Note that the nut is a lock nut to secure the bolt at a desired position. When you reassemble, you should tighten the bolt until it's snug and the part articulates freely, then snug up the nut to lock it into that position. If you tighten the bolt too much before securing it with the nut, it will be too tight.

Back to the keeper blocks: These are pretty finicky - To get them out I loosened just the top screw and then wiggled the second one free. They will fall out so be prepared to catch them and put them away somewhere safe. Since these screws are so tiny, be very careful removing/reinstall them so as not to strip.

Step 5: Remove the handle block and pivot arm block

I wasn't sure of the best way to do this, so first loosened a couple of the bevel gears so that the parts were less constrained to each other. Specifically, I loosened the top bevel gear on the veritical shaft that ascends into the body of the machine, as the last bevel gear on the handle block that mates to the next bevel gear on the pivot arm block.

Then I loosened all of the screws that hold these blocks on. They're tight - make sure to use a properly fitting screwdriver. Do not remove the 4 screws that hold the frame of the machine onto the base unless you have a reason to.

Once the screws are out of the block, it's not trivial removing them due to the alignment pins you can see sticking out of the bottom. I used a piece of wood and a small hammer to gently tap around the blocks, as well as one through the frame of the machine (like from the top down) to catch the edge of the pivot arm block. Go slow and in incremental movements. You could really mess something up by hitting it too hard. I ended up using a motorcycle tire lever to pry up around the bottom of the blocks once they could get a hold but a large screwdriver should also work. Again, be careful and if something feels wrong, stop and re-think.

Here's all the parts that I removed, not including the face and the stop motion parts:

Note: The 9 identical screws in the top left hold the pictured brackets in place. The two screws next to them are for the stop motion. Mentioning in case anyone is using this picture to try and find out what they're missing. The four small pieces next to the yellow zip tie are the cam bearing (this goes on the end of the main crankshaft and inserts into the cutout in one of the brackets on the face), the two keeper blocks for the wormgear shaft, and the alignment collar also for the wormgear shaft.

Step 6: Clean!

I have a basic ultrasonic cleaner that I got from Harbor Freight for vehicle parts and jewelry and it works great for cleaning this stuff up. I use water and purple power degreaser. I think I did a 20 or 25 minute cycle on the highest temp setting. As soon as the parts are done, rise with water and then spray liberally with WD40 to prevent flash rusting. For the face of the machine, I also used some compressed air to blow out the needlebar shaft.

For the inside of the frame and the crankshaft, I used a can of automotive brake cleaner which seemed to work well. Similarly, spray down with WD40 as soon as you're done.

The machine face after ultrasonic cleaning. This was so satisfying watching the grimey, oil stained pieces transform back to nice shiny steel:

Step 7: Reassemble

Essentially the reverse of disassembly. A good rule of thumb is to get the major bits in place, and then snug everything up at the end. More specifically, this means keeping the set screws on any bevel gears loose and then setting them to their respective shafts once everything is in place. Before reinstalling the brackets on the bottom, I spread a thin layer of machine oil on all of the mating surfaces. This should help keep away any rust that forms that could make it difficult to move pieces in the future.

Before reinstalling the face, I used a lot of sewing machine oil all over it while articulating all of the parts. Get it in there now.

A couple notes:

Getting the two keeper block pieces into position at the end of the wormgear shaft is kind of finicky. I was able to do it with both of the little screws in place, and then sliding everything into place before installing the crankshaft pivot bolt (below). The keeper blocks are tapered, and the tapered end should face away from the bottom of the machine.
Related, be mindful of the vertically oriented shaft that's part of the handle/control path. It needs to clear this assembly. I originally installed it with 1-2mm sticking out too far on the lower end so needed to adjust.
The bolt that secures the crankshaft pivot piece to the wormgear shaft should be installed as follows:
- Add some oil or grease to the middle of the bolt. Grease may be slightly better since the bolt has a retaining cutout in it and should stay there nicely.
- Finger tighten the bolt through both pieces. Then use a screwdriver to tighten - it should be as tight as possible to minimize play, but not so tight as to restrict any movement/create friction. Once you have this position, secure the nut while using a flathead screwdriver to prevent the bolt from turning. The nut effectively sets the correct position and tightness of the bolt.
The small collar that sits on the wormgear shaft, in-between the two bevel gears should be set as follows:
- After the crankshaft pivot piece bolt is installed and subsequently mated with the wormgear shaft using the two keeper blocks, rotate the crankshaft until the wormgear shaft is in the left-most position. From here, secure the collar about 5mm from the leftmost position. From there it should slide with the shaft within the bounds of the bevel gear block brackets. I believe this piece is primarily designed to keep the shaft centered and reduce friction between it and the bevel gears.
Oil everything liberally when you first assemble.

Some pictures of the cleaned up parts:

The handle block: