SOVIET SEWING MACHINE

This personal project of mine was a very ambitious one with an interesting story. During my exchange in Tartu, Estonia in 2017, I found a very worn and broken Soviet era sewing machine in a second-hand store. The machine had a large wooden cabin, and it could be tucked away for hidden storing. It had broken pieces of veneer, thick and worn lacquer, missing pieces, rusty screws, missing paint...you name it! But the mechanism still worked, so I saw its potential. I bough it for a mere two euros, and swore to give it a better life. We transported the heavy piece to Finland via car, and I worked on it at my university's work shop. 

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To begin with, I removed the rust from the machine and screws, painted missing parts and polished the metal. Next, I reconstructed one of the broken legs and replaced missing pieces of veneer using the wood inlay technique. I decided to create a wooden piece for the top of the cabinet, to act as a cover when the machine is tucked away. I attached a piece of veneer on plywood to make it match better, and created little wedges to keep it in place. Finally, I scraped the wood from the old varnish and gave it a new shellac polish. Following lots of hard work, this piece turned out beautiful in the end!