Originally Posted by
vintagemotif
Janice, I can see the photos now of your very lovely Davis NVF. Well, worth your drive down to LA.
If you use Glenn's method of cleaning the machine, I would go around the decals and then clean the decals up with just sewing oil. These decals can turn green with other chemicals, but sewing oil works great.
I would NOT use baby oil on them since baby oil has other oils, perfumes. The baby oil will be fine for the Singers and other machines with shellac intact, and babies bottoms, but not on these Davis machines.
With that stated, I wish I had bookmarked the blog of one collector that I found a couple of years ago. I can't find the blog now, but he stated that he only cleans his machines with sewing oil. And that it would take him weeks to get the crud off, but it would come off. He had the prettiest machines I have seen on a blog, a very beautiful collection.
Congrats again! You are going to LOVE this machine!!!
Thanks everyone!! Yes, I am really liking her dirty little self already!! She really is a pretty grimey mess, but I know she is going to clean up just fine. My DH is a wood guy, and he thinks the veneer under that pumpkin paint is pretty shot...there are tons of cracks in it. He said we will leave it as is for the foreseeable future. I am not offended by the color...it brightens up any room it's in, that's for sure!! And the treadle irons are very very smooth....it treadles really easily. I will be threading it up tonite if I get a chance. I've been busy with other stuff since I picked it up, so I'll let you know how it goes.