Originally Posted by MrsBoats

I bought a Featherweight yesterday, (I posted about it in the Featherweight Club thread; post #917) and now I have a cleaning question. In the picture you can clearly see there's some sort of edge in the finish, where something is worn away. What I can't decide is whether it's tar/nicotine (the faceplate was brown) and I should work on getting it off, or is it the finish and I should leave it alone? FWIW, the decals in the worn spots are paler (although not silvered out) than they are elsewhere, and I can feel them. All of which leads me to believe that's the finish and I should leave it be. All I did when I cleaned it was wiped it down a couple of times with sewing machine oil-I didn't want to do more until I figure out whether I should or not.

Otherwise, she runs like champ. I removed a ton of red fuzz from the feed dogs, then oiled everything that moved yesterday. We had a talk this morning about missing stitches, and not eating thread like that (GIANT bird's nest on the back, stuck in the needle hole), and when I went to adjust the tension, the whole thing popped off in my hand. So since it was off, I cleaned the discs, then I followed the directions for putting it back on. Since then, there have been no problems. We've been sewing all afternoon.

Any thoughts, suggestions, words of wisdom?