My 1953 Zenith TV!

My 1953 Zenith TV

This TV came into the world the same year as one of my parents. The style is just out of this world compared to what on the market for TVs. All the units now are C.B.P. (Crafted Black Plastic) and have no style.

I have been working on this since 2014. It came from a smokey place and was really bad smelling. I managed to clean it up and get it somewhat working but with a job change and moving into my house (used to be in my grandma's basement where I worked on my vintage electronic stuff) it's been on the side burner.

Hope to get it going in 2019 and will be working over the next few weeks to find my old photos.

Montgomery Ward - Sewing Machine - URR 273

UPDATE October 16, 2016. I originally published this back on 1-7-2013 and I am sorry for the two who wanted to download the PDF. It has been updated. 

Sewing & Me
I have been collecting sewing machines since late 2011 when I pickup a old Singer 128 portable unit made in 1951. After that other units have found there way to my home.

My newest sewing machine is a 1960s Montgomery Ward URR 273 unit that was made in Japan by a company called Happy. This unit is very powerful but that is only when it has a working belt (had to borrow from my Singer StyleMate 237.) It has plastic pattern disc that allow for some basic zig-zag design. The disc are ok but could have been made of high quality plastic such as what was found to be true with my Singer 603 pattern disc.

One thing that I find disappointing is that not a single person was sharing this Sewing Machine manual for free, so I scanned this manual. Using ABBYY FineReader I was able to convert the text parts to digital fonts that allow for high quality printing and resizing.

Here's the user guide/manual for download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/28eg248k65ew6px/Montgomery_Ward_Sewing_Machine_URR_273.pdf?dl=0
The PDF might have errors due to the optical character recognition program. Let me know if any are really bad and I try to go back and update.

My Service to Others - Week 12 - Milestone 5

Okay, the class is coming to a close at this point and you have completed your service project. Take some time to ponder the requirements and experience. 


How did it make you feel? 
I felt good performing this complex yet simple task. This opened my eyes that a simple task given time and effort can bring a lot of happiness to others. This in turn made me feel good about myself and would like to do more. My mom and some other family members have expressed interest in scanning our older photos, so that will most likely be my next project.

Were you energized, or did you resent the requirement? Was it fulfilling, or did something not quite click for you? 
I was not enthusiast at the start of the project since there was so much repetition scanning so many photos. After I got all the scanning done I found this to be a fulfilling opportunity as it gave a lot of joy and happy memories to the 90^th birthday lady, her family, and friends. Doing things for others can and did give me personal satisfaction.

Would you recommend this type of service opportunity to other Sig Series students, or would you steer them to something else? 
I would recommend this task of scanning to anyone who has some good/yet simple computer skills. You do need to have time, patience, and some organization skills.

You will need a decent computer that has some good storage to keep larger image files. The scanner is very important, I currently have two and the quality is very different. In my view most people go the simple way with scanning. If they scan they will only go with a Resolution of 600 dots per inch, which is low quality and does not look good so they need to pick 2400 DPI. When zooming in to edit details of low-resolution images, things will get pixelated easily.

If a person does not have good computer skills they could help organize the photos, and assist in the scanning. If not able to perform the scanning task an important involvement would be to visit older and disabled people in assistive living, nursing homes, hospitals, and/or living isolative by themselves. You can bring a gift of time, games, friendship, and entertainment to name of few. 

My Service to Others - Week 10 - Milestone 4

My project was to help a friend of the family to have a great 90th birthday party. I helped setup a digital photo display. Before the party I had to scan many photo before hand, but found new ways to scan more efficiently. This is great for archiving older images that may not last so long. If there was damage I could correct small issues such as scratches.

My experience went well. Anyone could do this if they have a computer and a high quality scanner if they wish to archive the images. Performing the scanning would take about 2 minutes, but that depends on the resolution. I tried to scan at a setting lower setting of 600 dpi (dots per inch), but found 2400 dpi to be much better quality to store. It’s true that you can go larger but it takes even longer and the photos for the most part don’t look better. You end up seeing the scratches.

For software you can use such software as Adobe Photoshop to edit beyond, but I am a mac user so I use iPhoto. If you are not a Mac user, there is free software to edit called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program.) I have used GIMP on the Linux platform and it is much like Photoshop except it’s free, just like Linux such as Fedora and Ubuntu.  

It took me weeks to complete the scanning as I had over 300 images, some were good quality, some were not since some of them were anywhere from 50-100 years old. These images were old and very precious to the family and friends; they very much enjoyed seeing the many old pictures, reminiscing old memories. The family and birthday lady had many more memories with the birthday party. I took pictures during the event and later visited my 90-year-old friend and gave her copies of pictures from her party.  It was neat to see her view her recent pictures and talk about her party.

Many members of the family put in requests or hinted that they would all like to have a copy of the pictures I had scanned. They told me it would be a precious and wonderful Christmas present. I guess this will make a nice gift. 

My Service to Others - Week 6 - Milestone 3

My project was to organize, scan, and help a family with old and older photos to help celebrate a 90th birthday. There are many reasons to volunteer to help others. With the service to others everyone can benefit, those that get the service and the good feeling to the person doing the volunteering. The contribution I shared was my computer, scanning, photo and organization skills for others Some might say I this project demonstrates that I can be a helpful citizen by doing kind things. Scanning older photos for this person has made her feel better by being able to recall traditions and memories.


Realistically, I could have charged her money for doing since it took me a lot of free time. However, I do not always have to be motivated by money. Everyone should do at least one nice thing every once in awhile. We all don’t need to be capitalist. Sometimes the best memories are the ones that don’t cost anything. Doing things for other can make a person feel better, this made me feel good to help the family share many fun and happy memories thus volunteering can increase self-esteem.


Some of the benefits to me were building self-esteem and confidence, making a difference to others, to increase my people skills, to be needed and appreciated, to share my skills with others, as well it was fun.

My Service to Others - Week 3 - Milestone 2

What: Scanning Older Pictures for an elderly person & their family. Help set up a slideshow.

Who: Older Person and their family

When: For Senior’s Birthday

Where:  Doing scanning, organization at my home. Setting up slide show at birthday party which will be coming up soon.

Why:  For Elderly Person’s 90th birthday.

With my service project I plan on spending time with older people since it is sometimes very sad to see them alone in nursing homes. I know from personal experience with even my grandma that they just want to be around friends or family. It always good to keep an open mind to learn from their life experinces.

That being said, I plan on helping a friend of my family celebrate their mother’s 90^th birthday. They have many older picture that they need scanning, setting them up in an organized slide show. I have started scanning these picture using high resoluion scanning so I can have them at archivical quality since some of the photos can and are degrading over time. Some of the quaility of the picture have deteriated  so I have used some color correction, alteration programs to improve the quality.

The family has given me about 150 pictures to scan, which is time consumming considering it takes about one minute per photo. After I'm done scanning that I plan to sit down with the birthday girl after her birthday, to take some notes of who's in the photos.

Here's an example of one image that needs a little correction.