RESTORING A SINGER 66: Cleaning a Sewing Machine Treadle Base with Vinegar and a Nylon Brush

Welcome back to my series on restoring my 1918 Singer 66 red eye treadle sewing machine. In this third installment, I show how I cleaned up the treadle base using vinegar and a nylon brush. It is important to make sure that the base of a treadle sewing machine is fully cleaned before using it. Most of these treadle sewing machines are at least 80 years old and have probably been sitting who knows where gathering all sorts of nasty gunk for the last 50 years. The cast-iron bases of these types of machines can become overly brittle so it is important to be relatively gentle. If a small bit of debris gets caught in the mechanism it could cause the cast iron to shear and it's not like these parts are easily replaceable.

To the naked eye, the sewing machine base was fairly clean but as I discovered it wasn’t as clean as it looked. I found that scrubbing the loose surface gunk with a nylon detail brush to get the bigger bits then following that with a rag and some vinegar to get some of the surface rust worked well. The cast-iron on my machine was originally painted but portions of that have chipped away over time leaving the bare untreated cast-iron to start to rust. Vinegar works great on cast iron to remove rust but it is ideal to be able to submerge the cast iron in a vinegar and water solution and let sit in the solution for a day. I made do with a rag and some elbow grease. I eventually want to do an overhaul of the entire treadle base to get rid of all the rust and refinish it but for now, I just want the sewing machine to be fully functional without worrying about any gunk causing irreparable damage.

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MUSIC:
Improvisation in C minor by Laura Early