Before you learn how to oil a sewing machine, we think it is more necessary for you to learn why to oil the sewing machine. Otherwise, you will hardly feel the necessity of oiling your machine properly, you may even consider it meaningless and time-killing.
However, a proper oiling of the machine ensures that all the moving parts function smoothly as those should. Then, the oiling parts rarely or never produce friction, which prevents the untimely corrosion of those parts. This even deducts the noise issue considerably.
So, what do you think now of oiling your sewing machine? Don’t you find the oiling to be an excessively important task? If you do, then kindly keep following us to learn the decent ways of oiling the machine to make it function in the best possible way.
How to oil a sewing machine?
A proper oiling of a sewing machine includes some pre-oiling tasks that most of the fashionistas don’t know. Hence, they keep oiling machine repeatedly but never get that expected outcome. So, here we have included all the pre-oiling and oiling tasks for your better sewing experience.
Pre-oiling
Clean the machine
Cleaning is undoubtedly an important pre-oiling task that includes two vital sub-parts: gathering the cleaning tools, cleaning and choosing the right oil.
Gather the perfect cleaning tools
- Stiff brushes, for example, tooth brushes or lint brushes
- Soft fabric and dust cleaner
- Compressed air for unreachable parts
Cleaning
- A healthy cleaning of your sewing machine before oiling it is a must. Otherwise, the mixture of dirt and oil will create a more complicated situation for you jamming the parts very badly.
- At first, make sure that the machine is disconnected from power connection. Then, remove the additional or removable machine parts so that these can’t come to the way of cleaning. For example, you must remove the needle, stitch plate, bobbin case and bobbin, hook and excess thread.
- Start with the brush to remove the dirt particles from the reachable parts. And adopt the the air machine when the parts are at an unreachable distance. Don’t forget that you must hold the machine at a shallow-angle and it must be 15-cm away from the to-be-cleaned components. Otherwise, the dirt particles will go deeper into the machine instead of blowing away.
- Are you done with the dirt particles of the inner parts or the unreachable parts? Well, it’s time to clean the large parts with the piece of soft fabric. You may wet the fabric piece to clean the dust more easily and effectively. But, in that case, make sure not a dot of water is left or go inside the machine.
Choose the right oil
- There are basically two types of sewing machine oils – petroleum and natural. Petroleum oil contains the elements of crude oil and minerals while natural oil is made of silicone, olive or coconut.
- Both the oil types are worldwide accredited yet our recommendation goes for the one that your machine manual suggests.
- In case, you are using petroleum oil try to reduce the exposure of your eyes and skin to a great extent.
Oiling
- No matter which oil type you’re using, use a few drops at a time. Remember that application of an excessive amount of oil doesn’t bring goodness. Instead, this is often held responsible for slowing down the machine’s performance. Besides, excessive amount often produce scum, which prevents the inner parts from performing naturally with natural speed.
- In case, you drop an excessive amount of oil, try to mop the amount using a dry fabric. Be sure that the fabric is clean, otherwise, its dirt will mix up with oil to make machine operation tougher.
- Don’t forget to leave some drops of oil inside the hook race for oiling the shuttle hook. Keep in mind that this is the ring area that lets the bobbin hook set into the place. Hence, by oiling this area, you can be sure that the tiny parts won’t rub one another and wear.
- To oil the far away parts, it is mandatory for you to use a tube as an extension of the oil bottle.
- After oiling every part, you must move that manually. This will spread the oil in every inch equally.
Tips
- If your machine is brand new that you have oiled never before or you’re merely a beginner, you should seek assistance from the manual of the machine. In it, you must check how to open up its parts, remove those and close or assemble. In case, you don’t get any of the points, don’t take risks rather contact the seller or anyone learned to get the point clearly.
- Need to dissemble some parts to oil? Then, disassemble those one-by-one instead of all together. Otherwise, you will become confused about which one to join to which part.
- Avoid oiling every part of the machine because all the ports aren’t for oil. To get a detailed idea of the oiling ports, you must check out the manual again.
- After each oiling session, oil the machine again after one month if you use the machine once a week. But, if you use the machine once in a month, you can oil it again after 3 consecutive months.
Warnings
- Before you jump to the cleaning of the machine, check and recheck that the machine isn’t connected to electricity. It goes without saying what might happen to you if the power is on.
- Avoid using any type of oil for example, car oil or regular cooking oil like soybean oil. Any of these can cause deep damage to your machine making you simply helpless.
Final words
To sum up, oiling a sewing machine isn’t a childish task rather a task of great responsibility. This requires you to have a good and clear knowledge over how to oil a sewing machine. Otherwise,you may end up causing permanent damage to the machine’s performance.