Originally Posted by BoJangles
Originally Posted by vintagemotif
Penni is all cleaned up! The cabinet cleaned up nicely too. I had to glue back a piece of a scroll that had been damaged. Luckily, it was sitting in one of the drawers. I carefully cleaned up the built in tape measure on cabinet. Next is the belt and then learning to sew with her.
Wow, now did you tell us all what you did/used to clean her up?
Nancy
I wiped once over the decals of my Davis NVF with GoJo and numerous times over the black areas to shine them up which may have removed the old shellac (can't tell what is dirt/oil and shellac). I then cleaned around the decals with TR3, wiped over those areas with clean cotton balls lots of times to remove any remaining stuff, and finished with one coat of Turtle Wax on just the black. I tested one area where the bobbin winder sits on the decals and noticed that the decals were starting to turn; so, I immediately stop doing that. I used oil over the decals to shine her up since the sewing oil doesn't seem to eat the decals. I noticed that the TR3 was more difficult to use on this machine than the National Two Spools or the Singer 66-1 that I had tested with. The TR3 kept clouding on me. The Turtle Wax easily cleaned that problem up to a pretty shine. I do hope that this will help others like myself who are new to this cleaning process of antique/vintage machines. I spent hours reading blogs and sites. What I noticed is no two machines are alike in cleaning them up and what works for one machine may not work for the next. Be very careful of cleaning old machines that have bubbles in their shellac or have a cloudy look because most likely the shellac has been damaged and is no longer protecting the decals. All I can say is clean around the decals if the decals look exposed, like mine.