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Alex has spent a lifetime in the sewing industry and is considered one of the foremost experts of pioneering machines and their inventors. He has written extensively for trade magazines, radio, television, books and publications world wide.
Check out the complete history of:Willcox & Gibbs
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No 1 New release! Most of us know the name Singer but few are aware of his amazing life story, his rags to riches journey from a little runaway to one of the richest men of his age. The story of Isaac Merritt Singer will blow your mind, his wives and lovers his castles and palaces all built on the back of one of the greatest inventions of the 19th century. For the first time the most complete story of a forgotten giant is brought to you by Alex Askaroff. I have a short Youtube clip on the machine as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdeINfVy8pM&feature=youtu.be Willcox & Gibbs dating Dating W&G chain stitch machines is not an exact art but this is a close as we are going to get. There were good years and bad with sewing machine production so numbers can vary greatly from year to year. Year Numbers made
Sometime around 1877-1880 most W&G chain stitch machines were prefixed with the letter A though there was a B series as well (scalloped bases) and to add more confusion there was a later series (grey electric) with no letter like the first pre-1877 ones and the free-arm hat machines which had a letter S prefix. Early rare Willcox & Gibbs 1870 model chain stitch machine
What we are going to do here is concentrate on the letter A prefix models which make up the majority of post 1876/7 machines. Willcox & Gibbs hat chains stitch model 200 series had an S letter prefix before the serial number
Example of letter A prefix Willcox & Gibbs chain stitch sewing machine post 1875 Dating your Willcox & Gibbs sewing machine To work out an approximate date of for the A series (only for machines with the letter A, Automatic, before the number) try this formula. This is by no means perfect but does work in many cases. You must pick the date which is between the two methods below. Method A. Take the number from the sewing machine above, ignore the A, (545351), minus 279638 from it. Divide by 17500. Answer, 15.1836. Ignore everything but the first two digits (15). Add this to 1877. 1877 + 15, bingo date...1892. Now using the Courtney Willis method of dating the Willcox & Gibbs sewing machines (with the A, Automatic prefix). Method B. Divide your serial number (in our instance A545351) by 8,000. Ignore the numbers after the decimal point and then add the first two numbers to 1838. The date for the our machine becomes 1906. Finally. Take the middle date from the two methods, 1906 and 1892. Approximate year of manufacture for the above machine becomes around 1900. Just a few years from correct.
By averaging the two dates in the middle, using both A + B methods, you may get close to your manufacturing date.
I do hope that helps you work out a rough age of your little W&G machine. If anyone out there has better records of the W&G machines or worked out a better dating system for the missing W&G dates please do let me know: alexsussex@aol.com Copyright © No1 New release Amazon 2014. Most of us know the name Singer but few are aware of his amazing life story, his rags to riches journey from a little runaway to one of the richest men of his age. The story of Isaac Merritt Singer will blow your mind, his wives and lovers his castles and palaces all built on the back of one of the greatest inventions of the 19th century. For the first time the most complete story of a forgotten giant is brought to you by Alex Askaroff.
Fancy a funny free story: Ena Wilf & the one-armed Machinist News Flash! All my latest books are now available on Amazon in all formats. "This maybe the best book I've ever read" John Vincent. Hailsham, UK "Alex's true tales blow my mind. One of the best storytellers I've ever read." B M Canada. |
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Well that's it, I do hope you enjoyed my work.
I spend countless hours researching and writing these pages and I love to hear from
people so drop me a line and let me know what you thought:
alexsussex@aol.com
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