In my ongoing quest to find bits and pieces to complete the restoration of my grandmother’s Singer 99k knee-lever sewing-machine, I have two kinds of lubricant, with which to tantilise you.

When you ambled into your friendly local Singer Sewing Center and left with your brand-spanking-new sewing machine, it would’ve come complete with all manner of wizzlewozzles and doohickies, doodads and thingdoodles.

Today, few vintage machines have these bits and pieces still with them. They’ve been used up, lost, thrown out, broken or just forgotten about, and you can’t just go back down to your local Singer shop to buy them anymore. So instead, you have to seek them out all individually and separately. It’s frustrating because you don’t always know what to look for. But sometimes, you get lucky.

Using the BRK motor-manual which I bought last week (see other posts in this category) as a guide for what to look for, I headed out into the world of the local flea-market. While there, in the pre-dawn chill of a Melbourne winter, with only my torchlight to guide me, I chanced upon this:

Holy mackrel! It’s a Singer oil-can!

After anywhere from 40-90 years, there’s obviously no OIL left in the can. But I bought it anyway, for a couple of dollars, for the sake of completeness. Why did I buy it?

Because, even though it’s as dry as the Sahara Desert, it is, nonetheless, the original style of oil-can that went with my machine when it was brand-new.

This is a a standard Singer bentwood case:

On the inside of that case, on the back left-hand side (if the ‘SINGER’ logo is facing you), is a little bent wire bracket, screwed into the paneling.

If you’ve got a Singer machine with a bentwood case and ever wondered what that bracket was there for…well…take a look at the picture of the oil-can up above. Keep it well in your mind, and then scroll down…

Yup! That little bent metal bracket is to hold the oil-can! See how nicely it sits in there and how HAPPY it is to finally be back home? You can tell it’s smiling. You can just tell.

When oiling your vintage Singer sewing machine, be sure that you oil all the moving parts which are MECHANICAL. That means NO OIL should go into the electric BRK machine-motor at the back/side of the machine. If you do that, horrible things will happen. It will heat up, start smoking and will probably catch fire and blow up, because the oil’s gone all through the motor, interfered with the electronics (such as they are on these old machines) and started an irreversible chain of catastrophic events.

Oil the pistons, shafts, cranks, levers, wheels, hooks…anything that’s mechanical. But do NOT apply sewing-machine oil to the motor. Or you’ll live to regret it.

But hold on. I told you I had TWO types of lubricant!…What’s the other one?

You might remember this manual from a previous posting:

Having read the warning, you’re sitting at your desk wondering “What the hell is this ‘motor-lubricant’ stuff?”

The motor-lubricant, which is the only thing that should be used to lubricate the BRK Singer sewing-machine motor, is a thickish, pasty substance. Originally, it came in this tube, which I purchased today for a paltry $1.00:

The tube is, structurally, in excellent condition, without cracks or leaks, and it’s almost completely full of its original supply of paste! This is the lubricant which you should use to lubricate your Singer BRK machine-motor.

If you can’t find any of these neat little tubes of paste, then nick down to your local sewing-machine shop (if you have one) or hardware store (if you don’t), and ask for good-quality motor lubricant. It should be like a soft, gel-like paste which can sit inside the motor and keep things nice and smooth, but without dribbling and leaking everywhere like oil would.

Once you have it, take it home and apply it sparingly, to the oiling holes either side of your Singer BRK machine-motor. The oiling-holes are these little metallic holes at either end of the motor:

See it? It’s that tiny little steel-lined hole, above the big, fat, black plastic screw-head. That’s why the nozzle on the paste-tube is so small, because it has to fit into that miniscule little opening.

Still hunting for more bits and pieces…