After painting the wrought iron, I degreased the nuts and bolts and painted them black. Just don't paint the threads on the screws, just the parts that will show so that everything matches.
Assembly
Now that everything is done (at least to my ability), it was time to reassemble the base and top. Remember, I took the top apart last year and the base apart in April and even though I took pictures I was pretty sure I wasn't going to remember how this went back together. Thankfully, my husband came to the rescue! I won't lie. He did it all by looking at a picture of one off of the internet. Bless him!
First, he started by putting the legs and pedal out on the floor in the right positions then he just kept adding on to that.
We did discover later (of course) that we should not have put these two items together first. This is the leg base and the table top. We should've put the curved drawer on the table top first, then the base. The holes for the curved drawer on closest to the large opening, which would mean we should've worked from the inside to the outside. The way we did it, made it really hard to reach those inside screw holes with the leg base attached. He also discovered that even though some of the nuts/screws are the same size, they were not really interchangeable like they are today. Either that the pairing had been together for so long (121 years) that they fit better together than with another part of the same size. So that was some trial an error. If a nut won't go on easily try another one and it will probably go on more smoothly.
Here are some final pictures. I think everything looks great. The wood has a more uniform color to it and it's brighter. The brass is shiney and you can even see the rod is wood and not iron, which I couldn't tell before. The iron has a deeper black color to it and of course the antique gold color on the medallion and Singer text really stands out.
The photos don't really do it justice but I'm really happy with how everything turned out. Now, I need to work a bit more on the machine. I need to apply several coats of shellac, oil and a new belt and then see how she goes. This project is almost done.
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