Exposure or Lack Thereof That Creates Gummed Machi (2024)

That brings me to two machines that I acquired. The first, a Singer 66 Godzilla finish, was picked up from a trash pile by a good friend of my mother’s in 2000. The second, a 1935 Featherweight, was left in an outdoor storage shed of a house we were working on probably around 5-10 years later. Both of those were totally seized. My mother’s friend, a professional seamstress, was telling me about this machine she had just picked up and gave it to me. She said it could be fixed and I believed her. When we saw the Featherweight I thought why not try to fix it as well. Both of those machines stayed in the laundry room until 2020 when my husband was looking for something to do. We spent about a day and a half working on them and they now work. The Featherweight needs a new paint job. The shed it lived in leaked, and the aluminum has a bit of corrosion. This experience and others I’ve read out of lead me to believe that the biggest difference between machines that live inside and outside of the house, regardless of AC, is how often it is used.

Carol Kio

FWIW to anyone, some years ago the heat exchange unit on our furnace had corroded and we had to replace the furnace.

The technician told me that I should never store laundry products such as detergents anywhere near the furnace as the fumes from detergents, even if undetectable by the human nose, can corrode the steel used in heat exchangers. He told me that the corrosion would be even worse if a washing machine was used anywhere near a furnace.

While I've no idea whether he was right or wrong, and while I can't judge the plausibility of what he had to say, if I had a choice, I would think about whether I had a better place than a laundry room for my sewing machine.

You're welcome Susan. I think both, he was taught and that he had seen it before. He was clear with me that the fumes from laundry detergents can damage a furnace.

Some further digging does indicate that laundry detergents can corrode metal. It seems that the alkaloids in laundry detergent are the culprit and that the zinc used in galvanized steel and aluminum are particularly susceptible.

I'm speculating, but it could be that the steel in the heat exchanger was galvanized.

Not alkaloids, Jeffrey, but alkali. Alkaloids are a whole range of (naturally occurring) compounds including, as examples, caffeine, quinine and morphine -- but not a significant ingredient of any laundry product. (They include the hundreds of compounds which give green vegetables their slightly bitter tastes and appear to be very good for us... but not for laundry.)

Alkalis such as soda are used in the production of real soap and are included as oil and fat stain removers in washing products, and do indeed have a terrible effect on aluminium and zinc. The biggest effect, though, of the atmosphere in a laundry room on any multiple-metals or mainly-iron item is damp air and condensation, leading to plain old rust (on iron and steel) and more generally corrosion (on all metals except perhaps gold, platinum and rhodium). Aluminium is attacked by both acids and alkalis, and, if it's in contact with other metals, by anything with water in it. Tumble dryers will rust if they don't themselves remain properly dry between uses.

Stainless steel is highly susceptible to salty water -- there's a much more expensive formulation of it for use in contact with seawater -- and suffers pitting corrosion. That will be what finished off washing machine tubs for Susan's mother. It doesn't have to be regular salt - almost anything dissolved in water will do it.

In Britain, cigarette smoke, coal smoke and damp, combined with the oxidised remains of old oil, are what caused most of the brown gum or glaze. Now that we have a lot less of all of those, even damp (at least indoors) than the average over the last century, cleaned sewing machines have a good chance of staying clean and working for more years than they have already survived. [Home use of coal has ended; the last ever coal train has delivered coal to the very last of our coal-fired power stations; trains no longer run on coal apart from the odd heritage line; coal is no longer stewed up to make stinking and poisonous town gas, and co*ke. The air is far cleaner now than it was when I was a child in Manchester, when the washing line had to be wiped clean just before hanging out the laundry, and that brought in straight away when dry, before it went grey from the smoke and soot. Other pollutants, some of them nasty, yes, we can still use and invent those.]

- Mark, Cambridgeshire, UK [studied chemistry, but that seems a long time ago]

Susan,

You are correct, the discussion was in another group, Vintage Singers at groups.io It involved some of the same people in this group. Not you though. Sorry, I sometimes get confused as to which group a discussion took place. Especially if it becomes somewhat off topic. The question that had been asked was about nylon gears, specifically referencing Touch & Sew series of machines. The person wanted to know if there was a way to preserve or increase the longevity of the gears. We got somewhat far afield in our discussion. Which is unusual for that group, as the owner/monitor usually keeps the discussion very tightly controlled. Had I remembered the question centered around the T&S obviously I wouldn’t have thought it was this group. Many of us relayed stories of growing up without air conditioning at all in our homes and in my situation, when I did live in a house with AC, only using it a couple times a year. When I lived on my own I had no money for luxuries, I was raising a child on one paycheck. I grew up in Tallahassee which has very hot and humid weather. My son was born in Bradenton, just north of Sarasota and we lived in all of those cities. Then just before my son turned eight we moved to Tallahassee. We suffered the heat, even with ceiling fans on throughout the house. Both of my sewing machines lived inside during those years. But there was very little difference in the temperature and humidity from the inside to the outside. The only real difference was actual rainfall.

Prior to 1973, I don’t have any storage history of my grandmothers treadle. She died in 1915 and the story I heard from my grandfather, was that he loaned it to a woman from her church. The woman kept it until sometime around 1973. She told him she wanted to make things right, including getting right with God, and returned the borrowed machine. It wasn’t until after I joined TreadleOn in 2019 that I became curious about the history of the King Sewing Machine company. That’s what the treadle irons have printed on them. I always assumed the machine head went with the irons, but since there are no decals left or any other identifying information this was based upon the woman indicating she was returning the machine she was loaned. I do believe that cabinet belonged to my grandmother. Where the head came from is anyone’s guess. There are so many things about the way that King conducted business that were right in line with my grandfather’s way of thinking and dealing. They directly dealt with the customer, and eliminated the middle man, so their machines were less expensive than most others. They started producing machines in 1907 the year after my first uncle was born, perfect timing for her to get a sewing machine of her own. He truly loved my grandmother and had declared when his family first went to visit after her birth, that he would marry her one day. I doubt he would have loaned the machine to anyone if he had thought out that situation more throughly, and if he had not been so heart broken. I don’t know why he didn’t retrieve the machine after hiring a woman to live-in and keep house for him and take care of his five boys plus three of her own. No doubt there was a lot of mending to do. After so many years I’m sure my grandfather didn’t remember exactly what the machine head looked like, he turned 93 that year, but I believe he would have remembered the name King. This was the only item belonging to my grandmother still in existence, and there was nothing wrong with his memory or brain. No dementia for sure.

My father was three when his mother died and sometime when he was in high school their first house burnt to the ground. They moved to a different house in a completely different area of town. It may have been a house my grandfather already owned. He owned several small houses in the same area that he rented out. Anyway, there wasn’t one stick of furniture left from the fire. There may be a small cast iron skillet that was salvaged, but I don’t know that for sure as I never asked. My older sister had already been promised the cedar chest he had in his bedroom, so he said I would get the sewing machine. One of the first things I did was remove the head to strip the brown paint from the cabinet. I suppose the woman had painted it when the veneer started chipping off. I have never touched the head, although one day I intend to try to bring it back. It doesn’t match up with any of the machines King produced. First of all, it has a top leaf tension which was unusual for King machines. Although I have found one example of a top leaf tension model that King produced, a Lessing, the head I have doesn’t have the King faceplate or a King inspection plate on the rear. There is also a different shape to the casting. I wish I had discovered this back in the 1970’s. I would have found the woman, or her family, to try and figure out why the machine head had been replaced. My guess is that the machine had been fitted with a motor at some point in time and was still in use by her or a family member. She certainly knew she wasn’t returning the machine she borrowed. So much for getting right with God. Btw, the cabinet has always been kept inside and used for one thing or another, but never as a plant stand my me. Ha,ha. I never worried about the condition of the head because I assumed it would never be possible for it to function as intended.

To make a long story longer. When I moved in with my parents in 1974, the house they owned had a very large laundry/sewing room (9 x 25 or 30) along with room for a deep freezer. Both sewing machines, mine and my mother’s 1969 Kenmore, were used in that room. Mine was only there a few years but my mother’s machine stayed in that room for 23 years. No air conditioning was ever run in that room, the vent was always closed off. She sewed all the time. She still made all of her own clothes, and sewed for the first three grandchildren quite a bit. In 2001, after my father’s death, she moved back to her hometown on Sarasota bay (think salt air) into my grandparents house which she and her sister owned. The machine once again lived in a large laundry/sewing room. That machine was fine until a few years before she died, three weeks shy of her 97th birthday. She had pretty much given up sewing around her 90th birthday. Except for one time when my sister and I were there, the machine sat unused. It was not turning over well at all, and my sister thought we would have to borrow one from my cousin to make the alterations my mother had requested. That night I cleaned and oiled everything very well, and the next day it was fine. That house never had the AC running unless she had company. She would open the living-room door, to the front porch, and most of the day there would be a nice breeze coming from the salt water. The sewing machine was loaned to a friend of my mother’s about three years ago, and I’ll be curious to see how it works when it is returned. The friend has Alzheimer’s and I don’t believe she even thinks about sewing any more. I do know that after three years of having it she had yet to use it for anything as of February. The machine currently sits in her small art studio, also without air conditioning, that is about a block from the bay.

My mother’s first sewing machine was a Singer Featherweight she bought in either 1947 or 48. That machine, although only used occasionally for buttonholes, lived in the same laundry rooms as her Kenmore. Although the metal is aluminum, the paint is intact and the machine shows no sign of corrosion. It now lives with me.

The way I think about it, is that anything that has moving parts needs maintenance and needs to move from time to time . Otherwise, the parts start to get bound up. It certainly seems, based upon my experiences, to be true for sewing machines as well as human body parts.

Jeffrey,

Is there any galvanized metal in sewing machines? I can’t think of any.

First: Mark thank you for the correction and thank you for the information. I need to re-read your post and digest the information.

Second: Susan I don't know of any galvanized metal in sewing machines, but there are all sorts of zamac parts in various machines which are zinc. The small Kenmore portables, the 158.1030, 1040 machines (if I have the numbers right) had zamac bobbin winders that lots of people report as having fallen apart, cracked and turned to dust.

Actually, Susan I do know of one galvanized metal part in a Singer which is a spacer washer that I fashioned out of a piece of galvanized steel as a sort of "proof of concept" for a spool pin holder. Otherwise, no, I don't know of any galvanized steel in any sewing machines.

One time I did consider whether to bag-up some of our less-used machines, along with some dessicant, but remembered that anything with natural rubber drive belts needs some humidity or the belts will harden/crack over time.

I seem to remember that the 'Boneyard' at Davis Monthan AFB, Arizona averages about 50% RH and they found that's about the ideal place for preserving old planes 😊.

Fumes from laundry detergents and bleaches and cleaners can and will escape from their containers and cause damage to nearby metals. Both basic (alkaline) and acidic solutions (and their fumes) will cause rust, and the higher the concentration of these solutions, the faster it will happen. The amount of moisture in the air is kind of irrelevant, although high humidity will speed the reactions up if there are already ions in the air.

I recently restored a severely rusted Grasshopper which had been stored in a relatively dry basem*nt, but had been peed on by a cat, a long time ago. Urine (especially from cats) contains a lot of chloride, which will crystallize back into salts when dried, and those crystals attracts water which releases the chloride ions to cause rust and corrosion on nearby surfaces, where they land and recrystalise over and over again. It happens very quickly and will do an awful lot of serious damage when left for 20 years or so. So, chrome was extremely rusty, and aluminum was deeply pitted, up to 3mm on a couple of spots on the base of the machine, quite incredible. I think the outside of the case had been wiped down, as there was no evidence of damage, but inside the case was a completely different story.

So, laundry rooms might be handy for all things clothes-and-mending related, but perhaps the air here is not of the best quality if there are also the usual chemicals present.

VL

For those coping with current warm to very hot weather it likely goes without saying that having VSM directly in path of AC vent isn't a good idea.

Cannot imagine what continuous blasts of cold air would do to a VSM, imagine it's not good.

C.B.

I remember running a trial to assess the cost vs benefit of background-heating an aircraft hangar compared to using commercial dehumidifiers at ambient temperature.

The dehumidifiers won & were adopted as standard practice.

Of course, on a narrowly-focused trial, no account had been taken of human behaviour...... and gradually folk began to turn on the heating again to make the work environment more pleasant. Wearing gloves/hats/bulky clothing wasn't great when doing stuff like cable repairs or component replacements in confined spaces!

Therefore, the expected cost-savings never really materialised.

Airflow is important & I think domestic AC air, by virtue of being slightly dehumidified, is probably OK.

Wirdy,

Carol Kio