jennb, thank you for the links. I'll go and take a look at them. I just joined the two Davis groups I found. I have to learn how to refinish the cabinet.

jljack, thanks for the tips on cleaning the machine. I found it on craigslist, someone was offering 4 treadle machines for 100.00 and I dragged my hubby out to look at them as soon as I realized that one of them was a Davis. There's also a New Home built in 1910, and two Singer 66s which I haven't really looked closely at yet but they both have the 7 drawer cabinets and the middle drawers aren't broken, I'm picking those two up today, you can't really kill an old Singer. He was cleaning out a house and found them in the garage. They're mine, even my dh thought it was a good deal!

Wow! What a good deal you got!

PM Glenn before you tackle that cabinet...we have the same one btw. I really didn't do much to the coffintop for fear of taking off the "DAVIS" decals...if I remember right, I used his cleaning method and then put a fresh coat of shellac on it.

Sure seems to me like those metal parts between the drawers, and the drawer pulls themselves are silver plate. Wouldn't swear to that, but they sure look it.

Thanks Charlee. I found Glenn's directions that you had posted on your blogspot (I think that's where it was.) Your machine is in better shape, mine has a ton of over the years gunk on it but I'll get in a huge supply of cotton balls and go to work on it with some sewing machine oil. I don't think the machine has any decals left on it unless they're buried pretty deep. That's going to be slowly started this weekend, I'm putting eveything else off.

BTW, I told my hubby it's your fault I keep buying sewing machines.

"Your fault" as in the collective group "your fault", or "your fault" as in "Charlee did it!!"??

Your fault, as in, all the pretty machines you find and tell us about that make me wish I could find one of 'those'..