Jamesbeat

Since a lot of people have trouble obtaining Singer grease, and there's talk of it being discontinued, I thought I'd email Singer and ask for the MSDS for it.
I told them that I work for a flooring company which uses sewing machines for carpet binding (which is true) and that I needed the MSDS sheets for our records (which was a white lie ).

I asked for the MSDS for the oil too while I was at it.

They emailed back just now, and attached the MSDS for the oil. Unfortunately, they don't have one for the grease!

Interestingly, the oil MSDS is actually for 'Albatross Crystal Clear Lily White Oil'.
I googled this, and it turns out that this is a sewing machine oil too.
I can't figure out how to attach the MSDS that Singer sent because I'm on my phone right now, but it differs in minor details from the one that Albatross themselves publish for their oil.
The Albatross version goes into more detail.

You can read the Albatross version here:
http://albatross-usa.com/msds/3020.pdf

The CAS# is 178603-64-0, which is just a basic mineral oil with no additives.

Interesting reading, but I'm disappointed that Singer don't have an MSDS for the grease.
If we had that, it would probably have meant that we could get the same product from a different source.

I was hoping to have a nice surprise for everyone, but I guess the grease will remain a mystery

oldsewnsew

Grease is probably whatever petroleum jelly is cheaper that week ;-)

Jamesbeat

Shh! You're not supposed to say that, these products are specially formulated for sewing machines!

I emailed Singer back, and asked them if they could put me in touch with whoever manufactures the grease for them.
Probably won't work, but worth a try...

J Miller

James,
Can you speak Chinese...........

Joe

Jamesbeat

Good point, but you never know...
If they buy their oil from (or license their name to) Albatross, maybe they go through a u.S. based middleman for their grease too?
I'm not expecting them to tell me, but it can't hurt to ask, right?

Sunflowerzz

"Wikipedia"

("Most often, mineral oil is a liquid by-product of the distillation of petroleum to produce gasoline and other petroleum-based products from crude oil. A mineral oil in this sense is a transparent, colorless oil composed mainly of alkanes [SUP][2][/SUP] and cyclic paraffins, related to petroleum jelly (also known as "white petrolatum").

I don't think you will ever get far away from a petroleum product.

amcatanzaro

There's that paraffin again.

Jamesbeat

'Petroleum product' is a pretty broad term.
Don't get your Vaseline mixed up with your gasoline!

Greases (at least conventional ones) are a mixture of an oil (usually petroleum) and a soap (often lithium). It would be interesting to see exactly what the Singer grease is, or even if it's not actually a grease (like petroleum jelly for instance).

barny

Well shoot! We are in the oil business and paraffin is one of our worst problems. The pipes get paraffined up and the oil won't come up. Have to heat up oil and pour down the hole to melt the paraffin. Maybe we should just drop the oil and get into sewing machine lube business.LOL

Jamesbeat

That reminds me; an ex girlfriend of mine put a candle in the dishwasher. It was one of those 'church candles' and was about 4" in diameter.
She said that she only intended to leave it in there for a few seconds to remove the dust(!) but then her sister called, and she came back to a dishwasher with a wick in it.
She called me in a panic, and I told her that I would be right over, but to keep the machine on a hot cycle so the wax wouldn't solidify.

She ignored my advice because she was worried it would make it worse, and it cost her £500 (around $800 or so) to get it repaired!
The repair guy had to replace several parts of the machine, and pour concentrated acid down the waste pipes to dislodge the wax.

He told her that she should have kept running hot cycles through it to prevent the wax from solidifying...