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The Sears sewing table (Model 853-9635, not that you have one) wrapped around Mary’s Kenmore machine has extension surfaces on both ends:

The foot panel is secured by a simple wood latch that fell off the left side:

Having some recent experience with this sort of thing, but not wanting to work under there, I waited for a pause in the sewing, then tried to remove just the hinged piece under the top surface. It turns out the joint is glued-and-screwed, so removing the two obvious screws didn’t do anything.

Dismounting the top surface at its other hinge and hauling the whole assembly to the Basement Shop showed this wasn’t the first time the latch had pulled its pivot screw out of the wood:

The reason the screw pulled out of the top hole / slot is obvious when seen from the edge:

That’s one of the screws holding the piano hinge in place, but AFAICT the original latch screw also went right across that hole with maybe three threads engaging the wood.

Moving the pivot half an inch to one side won’t make any difference, so I figured I could sink a threaded insert into the wood. I’d rather use the drill press, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do:

The combination square gets the drill eyeballometrically perpendicular to the end piece and the drill lies flat on the (underside) of the table surface. Seeing the bit line up with where the hole had to be was confirmation this would be successful; all I had to do was proceed slow-n-steady with the brad-point bit and stop when the tape hit the wood.

The insert screwed in as expected, without any collisions:

I drilled the wood latch to clear an M5 screw on the drill press, dabbed the screw with threadlocker, and reassembled everything on the bench for curing:

The extension surface on the right side of the table has an identical latch that hasn’t failed yet, but we agreed a preemptive repair is uncalled for.

The WordPress AI image generator is delivering much less jank, even if the result has little to do with the actual post:

Don’t think too much about the shadows, nor the lack of a treadle for what looks a lot like an early Singer Featherweight machine.