1941 Blackside Singer 201-2

     Today I'm sharing a very special sewing machine.  It's a 1941 Blackside Singer 201-2.  Serial number AF789984.  This machine is basically a regular 201-2 but it has blackside parts.  During World War II the use of nickel was restricted for war use only so Singer (and other companies) used a bluing process to keep the parts from corroding therefore giving them a bluish/black appearance. For some reason, blackside 201's are much harder to find than blackside 15's.  If you've seen my blackside 15 post you'll know that I have several blackside 15-91's.  This isn't because I like 15's better, it's because the the blackside 15's are more common and easier to find than the blackside 201's. I searched for years to find a blackside 201 and was fortunate to find this one.  Since that time I actually found another one but I haven't cleaned that one up yet so that will have to be a story for another day.  I'm kind of facinated with blackside machines and collect data on fullsize blackside machines so I can track when they were manufactured. My data consists of serial number, year and run made, and I record all of the blackside parts on each machine. Based on my data it appears to have been random as to which parts on a machine were blackside.  It seems like there were bins of parts with both nickel and blackside parts in them and whichever part the line assembler pulled out of the bin was what was put on the machine.  I do see a pattern though with the bigger parts on the machine.  It appears that if a blackside faceplate, throat plate, or slide plate were selected they made an effort to make the other major parts blackside also.  Even though I collect data on the fullsize blackside machines, I don't collect data for the 3/4 blackside machines as they are extremely common.  If you have a fullsize (201, 15, 66, etc) Singer blackside machine I would love to hear from you and would like to add your machine to my research list!

     Below are some detailed pictures of  my 1941 Blackside Singer 201-2 machine.  The last several pictures are of this machine posing with my nicest blackside 15-91.  I thought it would be cool to take some shots of them together.  Enjoy!