Sewing Machine After Market Manuals, Painting Vintage Sewing Machines

Hi There!  You can find many sewing machine manuals for your vintage sewing machine online free as downloadable PDF's.  I downloaded the manual for the Singer 500A Slant-O-Matic Rocketeer sewing machine.  It was not too bad; however there were a number of missing pages - mainly detailed pictures and explanations of the decorative stitches and also the color pictures pages. 

Then I ordered this from a person on eBay:

"Rare Deluxe-Edition Instructions Manual for Singer 500, 500A Sewing Machines"   The only selection for shipping was media mail - sigh.  It finally arrived yesterday and was better than the download in that the format and fonts were larger for easier reading and it included the missing pages and the color pages-Yay!  My only complaint is that some of the sewing machine - that is the machine itself - illustrations were lighter than I would have liked.  If they had been dark it would have been better.  All-in-all the "new" manual is good enough and legible enough to use.


The name of the seller on eBay is doriefrie1.  She has other deluxe manuals and also service manuals. 

Here is a link to the Singer 500A manual that I purchased from her.

If you live far away from an authorized Singer service center/sewing and vacuum repair shop or if you lack funds, you might want to invest in a deluxe service manual.  It's interesting to see how all the various parts inside a sewing machine link together and work.

I'd really like to paint the Singer 500A a light pink solid color, not pearl or metallic flake, but I'm afraid to as when we get the sewing machine back, I don't want to chance ruining it by getting paint stripping chemicals, paint or clear coat on the inside parts. 

For the various plates and knobs, on the gold colors I would like to paint them chrome and on brown parts I would like to paint those black with chrome numerals.

You can compare to the pink Cadillac above to see how that would look - there's even black on the dashboard. 

So to reiterate that would mean the balance wheel would be pink, but the gold wheel closer to the machine would be chrome, the thread tension gold plus minus wheel would be chrome with a black plus and minus sign, the brown Singer plate on the light housing would be black and the "Singer" and outer ring would be chrome, the large A-J stitch selector knob would be chrome and the brown underneath knob stitch selector K-Special would be black.  On the stitch length screw knob - that would be chrome while the plate would be black with chrome on the design accents and numbers.

It would look really good I think - like that pink Cadillac.

If you were brave enough to paint your vintage sewing machine, what colors would you paint it?  Let me know.  Thank you for reading, Kathy

Singer 500A Slant-O-Matic Rocketeer Sewing Machine

Note:  Long absence due to illness

Recently, I acquired a Singer 500A Slant-O-Matic Rocketeer Sewing Machine.  I'm trying to find information about how to strip this sewing machine of paint so that I can paint it another solid color - I just don't like beige and taupe.  There are many different types of paint stripping products out there -  some more toxic than others.  I have viewed countless Youtube videos about stripping and painting sewing machines, but usually they are for the Singer Featherweights or 1800's to 1920's sewing machines which were painted black or "Japanned".  Also there are videos about painting your plastic machine, but the Singer 500A is not made of plastic, it is made of aluminum.

One question I have is how do you keep the paint stripper product out of the many small oiling holes in the body of this particular sewing machine - the Singer 500A Slant-O-Matic Rocketeer?  There is a lot of information about blocking all the holes using the blue painting masking tape, paper towels, Q-tips, cotton balls, toothpicks and other devices, but I think those things would melt under the onslaught of the chemicals used to strip the paint.  What kind of paint was used on the 1960's Singer 500A Slant-O-Matic Rocketeer?  Was it lacquer, acrylic, latex or something else?  How many layers of paint did they normally use to paint this machine?  I would be much obliged if someone could answers these questions for me.  I have been scouring the internet, but I have not had any luck so far in getting answers.  Thank you - contact me at kathiego88 at gmail dot com.