Grease vs. oil
 

I need to buy grease for a vintage machine. I know some things get oil, others grease. But I have never needed to buy grease. I had a little synthetic stuff from an old school tech who put some in a tube for me, but its used up. Anyone who can advise me as to brand and where to pick it up?
Thanks!!

We use Tri-flow grease at the shop.

The recommended grease for a vintage (all metal) Singers.. since Singer redid the formula... is petroleum jelly. It's the closest thing to the original that's currently available.

I use tri flow on all of my vintage machines have for years.

Well, petroleum gelly for the motor at least. It has a wicking action similar to the old saponified greases and it is a must for the motor bearings. I have yet to try The Featherweight Shop's special motor grease. Gears can probably benefit from teflon and enhances smoothness of synthetic greases. Go for oil when it's an option; the only two brands I have noticed any improvement on the basic oil are Trilflow and Finish Line Ceramic Wet lube. I have tried lots of brands, but not every single one out there.

Thanks everyone! This was the exact direction and help I was looking for. Awesome community.

Be careful where and what you buy the grease/lubricant. Friday I took a 7 hour class on how to take apart, clean with kerosene, oil and lubricate my Featherweight machine. The instructor was Nova Montgomery. If you go to her website you can purchase what you need. She and a chemist produced and patent her lubricant. It goes only on the two sets of gears and in the motor. Oil goes on the bushings and designated sites. Sorry for such a long post but we all learned so much.

Call me a skeptic but I'll stick with what Singer recommended: Vaseline.

Cari

A lot cheaper too. I got one of the curved plastic syringes for a few dollars and store brand vaseline and it’s gonna last like forever

Vaseline has turned out well for me too. I know the old Singer motor grease was a saponified grease, in very old tubes you can see it some times has separated when bit of oil is seeping out. This quality still exist but it's very hard to find in reasonable sized tubs or tubes (Würth has one in a large bucket size container). It's very easy to find a synthetic grease with teflon / PTFE these days (like Triflow). They turn out very well in more advanced friction tests and work well on open meshing gears like the Featherweight and 201 have. I guess that's why they are widely recommended.