Singer Treadle Sewing Machine - Part 2

After watching dozens of videos on YouTube, I got the general idea on how to clean a treadle sewing machine and what not to do, I felt confident I could begin. Now, a lot of the people who know what they're doing, take the entire treadle apart to clean it. And perhaps they're machine was so bad they had to but I'm not that confident and besides, I simply don't have enough room to do that and I'm more likely to loose important bits and wouldn't be able to put humpty dumpty back together again. So I'm taking it slow and doing one bit at a time.

First, I simply took the drawers out and took a soft bristled painting brush and knocked all the heavy dirt off first. The bristles get into all the small nooks and crannies of the desk design. Then I got Murphy's oil soap and some shop towels and Q-tips and started wiping everything down. 

The oil soap got a lot of grime off but not the really ground in stuff. So onto deep cleaning. I used Gojo original hand cleaner. This is a degreaser with no pumice and it worked really well. It also melts and a little goes a long way. In most areas you could see black in the wood grain or just clumped in spots. This black was no doubt a combination of sewing machine oil and dirt built up over the years and it was really stuck on there. I needed to do multiple applications of Gojo, scrubbing with scotch brite pads and I even used a set of dental picks. The rougher pads took off a layer of gunk then the Gojo was able to penetrate deeper, scrub, Gojo, scrub, wipe off and repeat. A lot.

Here you can see the dark spot just to the left behind the spindle and some Gojo is soaking on that spot. In the next photo, you can see the dark gunk is gone. And that was just one small area.

Before

After  

Here's another photo that shows a very dark streak of black along the drawer rail. The far side has been cleaned. I'm not sure but it seems like someone oiled the drawer rails so that it was easier to slide them in and out or this is just a lot of gunk ground into the wood. 

These were just a few examples of the dirt on the treadle. The drawer under the machine was completely black and after cleaning it you can see the wood grain. Most people probably just cleaned the areas they could see and not the undersides of furniture, which is to be expected. This cleaning job is no doubt going to take quite awhile and I doubt I'll be able to get any cloth to be completely clean after wiping anything on this treadle but I'll try. I have to admit, it's pretty satisfying to see something this dirty clean again and there's a satisfaction knowing I'm helping to conserve at least one piece of history.