Originally Posted by
SteveH
1st, welcome to the Board!!!
2nd, Welcome from a fellow Californian!
I am a person who only collects machines from the 19th century and I would strongly suggest that for the painted parts you only use sewing machine oil for cleaning that one. It looks to be in very nice shape and would probably shine right up.
Glenn's cleaning solution would work very well on the wooden parts.
congrats, those Singer 12's are great little sewing machines. (I have several variations)
Also you can post the serial number from the stitch length adjustment plate (the larger of the two numbers) and we can tell you when it was made.
or you can look it up yourself here
http://ismacs.net/singer_sewing_mach...l-numbers.html
SteveH, thanks for the welcome! I just looked up the serial number (1775033), so she seems to be from 1884. In looking for the number I needed to use a flashlight (that plate is pretty grubby), which pointed up lots of scarring in the finish. And what looks like clear coat in some places and flaked/worn away in others. Do these machines have shellac?