A Bit More Scrubbing

I haven’t had a lot of time to work on my treadle machines this week, but yesterday I wandered out to the red barn for a little meditative scrubbing on the Singer 12. Here’s what she was looking like when I started:

I’m finding myself taking a lot more trips to the auto parts store just down the road. Okay, I’d pretty much never shopped there at all until I started playing with the treadle machines. I found a great pack of three brushes: nylon, brass, and steel and they have been really putting a hurting on the grime and metal oxidation.

Yep, this machine is STILL dirty! I was thinking after the extensive apple cider soak and long scrubbing session with James that it was clean. Nope. Every time I rub a Q-tip over anything it comes off black and coated in grime.

*Sigh* this is going to take awhile.

It’s a good thing I’m not in any hurry. This is just my weekend puttering project and I’ll be happy if it’s all put back together and working again by Christmas.

Here’s what the machine looked like when I closed up the barn:

What? You don’t see a difference? Yeah, I didn’t accomplish much, but it still counts.

I polished up that bar that controls the feed dogs. I think my favorite part about working on this machine is learning how it works and understanding the relationships between the gears, feed dogs, and stitch length setting.

I have a lot of the parts that go in this area taking another apple cider vinegar bath and hopefully today I can pull them out for a quick scrub too. It’s amazing what you can accomplish in 10 – 15 minutes at a time.

What are you working on today?

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day