How to Oil Sewing Machine

Oiling sewing machines for beginners can be a complicated task. One should know which part to oil and which part to ignore.

Before oiling your sewing machine, there is one thing you need to keep in mind, and that is to clean the machine properly.

As you work on your machine it leaves some lint (small pieces of threads). Lint can ruin your machine if it is gathered in large numbers.

Now, the question is why you should oil the sewing machine.

• Oil your sewing machine will help your sewing machine work more smoothly.
• Through proper management of your sewing machine, the sewing machine will run it like a horse, and you will work well with it.
• If you oil it regularly, the chances of your machine being rusty will reduce. It will long last the growth of the machine.
• To avoid the noisy sounds machine makes and unnecessary friction that occurs, oil it regularly.
• To keep your machine in good shape and if you want all parts of your sewing machine moving, it’s important to oil it.
• It does not matter if you have the most expensive brand machine. If you don’t oil it, it can cause some faults in your machine and then you will have to spend extra money to fix it.

Now, another question is raised, are industrial sewing machines different from regular sewing machines? Do they need to be oiled or not?

It hardly matters if you use the industrial or regular machine; they both need to be oiled for their long life, taking good care of your machinery will only increase its lifeline. That is why you need to oil it whenever you see your machine needs oiling,

Just oiling it from time to time will not make any difference if you will not clean it regularly; both of these activities need to be done by a sewist every once in a while.

How often you need to oil your sewing machine?

 

As I have said many times, oiling ‘regularly’ is important, but how frequent that ‘regular’ is? This completely depends on how ‘regular’ you use it.

Hypothetically, if you use it every day, you need to oil it three times a week. If you use it once a month or you use it in 15 days, then you should oil it twice a month or thrice.

How to oil a sewing machine

The first thing you need to do is grab the tools, such as your oil (any sewing machine oil) and a brush to remove the fabric lint.

Step 1: Clean the Sewing Machine 

Start by cleaning the lint from your sewing machine, from the surface to the top of the machine. 

• Take a pipe cleaner and go inside your tension disks and clear out the lint or thread balls. 
• Then go down to your needle bar system. 

 The needle threader of the machine tends to gather a lot of lint when you sew or quilt. 

• Take the presser foot off, take your screwdriver and take out the holder, and do not forget to take out the needle just for safety purposes. After that, please take off the stitch plate, and once it is removed, clean the feed dogs nicely.
• After you clean the lint from feed dogs, take out the dropping and bobbin case and clean gently; make sure you clean the bobbin case as well. It sometimes has some lint stuck at the back. 

Step 2: Oil the parts

• Apply a few drops of oil on the part where the bobbin case sits on. 
• Apply oil mainly to the area where you see friction happening. Any area where the metal is touching metals has chances to get rusted, so make sure you put oil on those areas.
• If you use an old-style machine, apply oil on the hand’s wheel and move it back and forth so that your oil can go deep into the sides of the wheel.
• You can also put some oil on the cloth and then clean the metal parts you took out, such as the bobbin case and holder.  
• Each machine has its particular instruction for oiling if you want more detail. 

  Step 3:Take away all the extra oil 

• Wipe away all the extra oil left on the machine or parts, and you don’t have to apply more than 2-3 drops.
• Your fabric or project can get stained through the excess oil left in the machine or parts. 

Final verdict 

Only apply sewing machine oil; you should never apply the three in one or any other type of oil in your sewing machine as it can badly damage the parts of the machine. Each brand refers to a particular type of oil for their machine. Overall, this article tells you to do only three steps for a healthy, long-lasting sewing machine that will improve your machine’s quality. First is Clean, Second is Oil the parts, and Third is removing the excess.