Originally Posted by kwendt
Originally Posted by Lostn51
I oil mine after every quilt I make, that is plenty for the old girls. I dont think you can over oil one but honestly there is no reason to waste oil. Billy
That's good advice there. :-D. And actually, Billy you may know this.... is there any way to actually CLEAN the felt wicks or replace them? That blackside 15-91 of mine has the top felt wick (up over the needle bar) all dirty/nasty. I've cleaned a bunch of old grime, grit and some sort of old sticky/tacky stuff off the rest of the machine (old smoke residue?), and that felt wick was/is coated too. It's the only one that was totally exposed to whatever conditions the rest of the machine was in. I have not reassembled it yet, nor put oil in that wick... I don't want to put oil in and have it carry more grime into the metal gearing/needle bar carriage.
I have an industrial machine (Singer 241) that sets in an oil bath - well it dried up - big hard balls of oil EVERYWHERE... The wicks were STIFF with dried up oil. That machine was locked up tight. I got some xylene and painted it on over and over... took about a half cup to get all the hard oil out of the machine. The wicks are soft now. If they harden I'll brush them down again with the xylene. In this machine's case, I wasn't worried about any paint damage. However you might want to be very careful with paint on something pretty. You want to use the xylene outdoors on a windy day. It is found in most paint departments - might be used in brake cleaner or something you can spray on. Avoid if you are pregnant... 'o/