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Damaged in Shipment
The following photos will show you what happens when a Singer Featherweight is not properly packed. If you are an eBay, Etsy, or shopgoodwill online seller and you are shipping a Singer Featherweight across the country or even across the oceans, please take these warnings seriously. Replacement parts are expensive and sometimes exact originals cannot be found (e.g. white and tan featherweight bobbin winders, spool pins, early case designs, etc.).
Over the years we have emailed many online sellers our photo tutorial for how to pack and ship a Singer Featherweight properly. Still, a few of them did not heed our request and pleas and assumed they knew what they were doing. So, we decided to create yet another tutorial (or the antithesis of a tutorial) for what happens when certain precautions were not taken. Many of the sellers were well-meaning and gave an attempt at adding packing peanuts and styrofoam but, unfortunately, it was in vain. Which is really quite sad, because knowing the proper way to pack would not have taken that much more time to do.
The case is one of the most susceptible areas to receive damage. Cause: A spool pin that is not removed and thus lodges in the lid during shipment, ruining the case.
An attempt was made at styrofoam - just not enough and not in all the right places.
Spool pin punctured lid of the case.
Cause: Spool pin coverplate not removed and not enough padding in the case to keep the machine from shifting, even if tipped upside down.
Damage to the case exterior.
Cause: Not enough padding around the case in the box.
The box appears well-packed. There is no exterior damage to indicate mishandling. The shipping couriers consider a package mishandled if there is evidence of damage to the outside of the shipping box.
Seller even attempted to mark it with an "up" arrow and wrote "fragile" on the box. As you will see from the next few photos, these indicators are overlooked in the mass shipping systems. Your package will pass many hands, conveyor belts, and shipping containers. It will be dropped upwards of 4 feet and tossed to and fro. So, if you don't pack properly, the box contents will be tossed about and it would be a safe bet that there will be Featherweight damage of some kind.
This seller attempted to pack with some padding, but as you can see in the photo below, the spool pin punctured the case lid.
The spool pin not only lodged into the lid of the case but broke off. So now the machine and the case are damaged.
Cause: Spool pin coverplate not removed and not enough padding in the case to keep the machine from shifting, even if tipped upside down.
Cause: Spool pin not removed and not enough padding in the case to keep the machine from shifting, even if tipped upside down.
This particular machine also suffered bobbin winder damage. So, not only a broken spool pin, a damaged case but also a broken bobbin winder were the casualties of this Singer Featherweight.
Cause: Bobbin Winder not removed or, at the very least, pushed down.
This lovely 222K arrived from overseas with a damaged case, and not just a bent spool pin but one that was shattered away from the coverplate.
Cause: Spool pin coverplate not removed and not enough padding in the case to keep the machine from shifting, even if tipped upside down.
Again, a well-meaning seller attempted to pack well, but unfortunately, this machine suffered exterior case damage.
Damage to the case exterior.
Cause: Not enough padding around the case in the box.
This machine was wrapped in cellophane, but in such a way that the machine still bounced around enough to end up with a broken electrical terminal.
This bed was cracked in half!
Cause: No protection between the faceplate screw and the bed extension when flipped up and placed in the machine case. The bed banged against that screw so hard in shipping that it literally shattered the cast aluminum structure!
