Originally Posted by vintagemotif
Well, I joined the Yahoo Davis group and read all the posts last night.
I asked my question about how to handle the cleaning, and someone answered back. What I learned was that oil should not take the decals off, but what can is too much wiping. So, if the decals are exposed (no shellac protection) or the shellac has turned cloudy or damaged, then if you clean with a cotton ball you should only wipe over once with the cotton ball because the cotton ball will pick up dirt and/or shellac and that dirt on the cotton ball will now act as an abrasive and scratch the decals if you were to wipe over the decals again. Which means you could wipe off the decals. I believe it is best just to clean around the decals with a Q-tip.
I saw the Davis Yahoo group a couple months ago, but I too don't really have time for another group. Maybe, I should reconsider this one?
Yes, sewing machine oil will clean the machines and make them shine. I doubt the oil can take most decals off, but the Davis machines seem to not have as good a finish over those decals as the Singers do. Anyway, I used cotton balls and oil. I was careful to get clean cotton balls as I kept cleaning. I think the decals came off because they were not protected, and not put on very good in the first place. I read somewhere that Davis had great machines, but the finish on their machines had 'shoddy work practices." I assume that meant that people had trouble with the decals coming off? My decals are completely gone, they are not silver like over-cleaning a Singer ends up. This tells me, the decals were not on very good to begin with?
Monica, that is really good about not using your dirty cotton balls over decals. My cotton balls from cleaning Betty last night were black! I was very careful, so I thought, about not going over the decals with the dirty cotton balls. Anyway, Betty is clean and she looks much better all shiny then she looked with part of a decal and dull.
Please inform us if you find out any more interesting things from the Yahoo Davis group.
I will post pictures.
Nancy