Repairing a Thread Guide on a Singer 99K

Looking at a safety pin the other day, I realised that I had found the answer to the problem of the missing thread guide on the face plate that I showed last week.  This cheap and nasty blunt safety pin got what it truly deserved.  My husband's pliers double up as a nifty pair of wire cutters.

Next I used my jewellery pliers to bend the sides to fit inside the faceplate.  The slight kink on the right was needed because the wire has to go over the pin that secured the original thread guide.

Next I poked it through the hole in the face plate and kept it in place with a couple of blobs of blue tack - this photo shows just one blob, before the second one went on.

Here is the inside once the blue tack is holding the improvised thread guide steady...

... ready for the wire on both sides to be covered with metal glue.  I used J B Weld.

The glue needed to set overnight, so I put the face plate up on my bookshelf out of harm's way.

Although the glue was still a tiny bit tacky next morning, it was firm enough for me to put the face plate back on the machine.

While doing this repair it became apparent how the original thread guide must have been broken off.  My theory is that the face plate was dropped face down onto a hard surface, so that the thread guide took the full force of the impact and was snapped off on the inside where it was attached to the plate.  I must try not to let history repeat itself.  I can just imagine dropping the plate face down and the wire popping out of the little beds of glue.

Now it seems worth giving the machine a thorough clean up.  I just hope it turns out to be a good runner.

Linking up to Connie's blog Freemotion by the River for Linky Tuesday