Serger Problems? The 10-Minute Deep Clean and Oiling that Changes Everything

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Are you having serger problems? Maybe your machine's making terrible, clunky noises when you try to sew. Maybe it's skipping stitches. Maybe it's having some other kind of a problem. I'm going to show you my easy 10-minute deep clean and oiling. Usually doing this process fixes any problems your machine is having.

The first thing we're going to do is cut off any strings that are threaded through the serger currently. Then we'll pull them through the machine at the needles.

Next, we'll open the front door of the machine.
We'll open up the side door, too, if you have one.

There's a lot of dirt and lint in there, and that's probably causing some problems. So, to clean this out, we're going to need a brush. These usually come with your machine, or we sell them here, or you can use a paintbrush. And you're going to need a paper towel. I like to use a paper towel because there's just too much lint and stuff in there for this little tiny brush. I like to get all the big stuff out with the paper towel first. So, let's do that. So, everywhere you see all this dirt, just get it out.

You might be tempted to blow in there. Some people say that's bad because it gets moisture in your machine. If you want to blow in there, go ahead, though.

Now I'm just going to give the wheel a rotation over here on the side so that everything moves.

Now that you wiped out some of the bigger dirt, we can use our brush and start getting the smaller dirt out. Just kind of go through here anywhere you see dirt and just get it out of there. Look at all this. You're going to you're going to get tons of lint.

The stuff down here at the bottom isn't as much of a problem. It's more what's up in the machine parts here. So just get all around them and lots of lint will come out from every crevice because the serger cuts with the blade which produces lint. So they need cleaned out even more than a regular m sewing machine. See all this lint?

Look at all this lint.

Your machine's going to be so much happier without all this.

Just keep cleaning and just get the lint out of everything that you see.

Then you might have to take the paper towel again and just kind of get all the lint to fly out of there. It really collects really bad down here in the doorway. It's although it doesn't matter as much, we still want it out of there. We want all the lint out.

Make sure you check for lint here at the feed dogs. You can take off your presser foot if that helps. I just hit the button on the back to release the presser foot. So now, see there's a bunch of lint here in the feed dogs. Sometimes there's so much lint in between the teeth of the feed dogs that it is a wonder it can even pull the fabric through because it like so much lint that it turns into little pieces of felt. So just check in there. Look, I got some lint coming out of the back of this hole here. Just stick your brush everywhere and just get the lint out of everywhere. Look at all that lint coming out of there.

Then I'll wipe it away.

Look, there's a bunch of lint in my back feed dogs coming out. So, sometimes you can get it out. Sometimes you just have to push it through so it falls down.

And then you can also go from up underneath. So like I'll go in here and go in underneath there for a deeper clean. You can take out these screws on the needle plate so that we can take this silver needle plate off.

There's our needle plate, and we'll want to inspect it, feel it, and make sure there are no burrs on it.

Clean it off on both sides, and then we can really get into this area and clean out more lint.

If you have a side door on the machine, let's go ahead and open that and we'll clean this side, too.

So, same thing. I'm just going to start with a paper towel and get most of this bigger lint out.

Once you got the big stuff out of the way, go in with your brush and just look for any lint that's lodged in your parts. Here's our actual chain looper. The end of it, it's got dust all compacted around it.

I'm going to turn the flywheel so I can get things to move and keep cleaning. Lots of dust in this section on mine. Look at that. Yeah, this doorway is the worst part on mine.

You should have a mess that looks something like this. In here by the presser foot, I have a thing that raises and lowers my blade. I can see that is really dusty right now. So, I'm going to get some of that worked out of there.

A lot of dust tends to form up here above the needles. Here's the needles. See how this dust needs to come off of here?

And on this needle bar here, see how stuff kind of occurs here? So, we want to get that all. Now, I'm going to lower my blade back down.

And I'm going to check out my blade edge.

Get anything off of that. Same for the lower blade down here, and all around it.

Make sure you inspect the blades on your machine. Make sure there's no dents in the blade and that it has a nice cutting surface. Make sure they don't look rusty and pitted like these ones that I actually took off of this old machine. Once you feel you have the dust eliminated, it's time to oil the machine. So, we come over here to the real parts. Okay, the first point that we have to oil is this shaft that goes through this ball thing. So, if I turn the wheel, I'll see that shaft moving through that piece. So, the parts that are metal on metal that are moving are the things we need to oil. So, there's the first one that's shown here. And now the second one is if you come straight down from there to this that works kind of like an elbow joint. And that's it. So here you can see a little more stuff is screwing on there. I want to get it all clean before any oil goes on because the oil will just attract the dust. Okay. Once you're ready to oil and you've identified where you're going to oil, we'll get our oil out.

I got my oil here, and I'm just going to take this cap off. Then I'm just going to take this. And we use very little oil. So, one drop per spot. I'm just positioning that spout where I want it to go. I'm going to let one drop go on. Same thing down here. Just one single drop.

Now we will turn the wheel a few times to let that work in.

I'm going to show you how to change your needles and how to clean your tension discs because those could be other things that are causing you the problems. If you're already in here cleaning, you might as well do this, too. I'm going to take these needles out and replace them with new needles.

You might see that I have five screws here and your machine probably only has two because this is a cover stitch combo machine. So, I have the needles in the cover stitch position right now. I'm going to take them out.  I'm just rotating these to the left and pulling them out. I'm going to put new needles into these two screw spots for the surging. And then if you have a little needle insertion tool, these are nice. It's just on the end of the brush, you have a little hole and you just stick your needle in there. It's just so you have something to hold it with. It's not necessary, but it's nice. We sell these on our website. Now you're going to orient the needle so that the flat part is to the back. Then just stick that up into one of these holes. If it won't go, you probably just need to loosen the screw. I'll just loosen it a little bit just to make sure I can push it up all the way. All the way. And now I'll tighten it.

So just turn it to the right to tighten it. Okay. And then we can pull that out and we'll do the next one.

Same thing. Just make sure the flat part of the needle is to the back. Then just slide that up into that other hole. If you don't have the flat part to the back, it won't go. Okay, there we go. That's all the way up in there.

Oh, one of my screws fell out.

This is my screw. I think it fell out. I just have to get it back in there.

I couldn't even I didn't even know that.

Oh no, I just keep dropping it. So, I laid it on its back. Okay, that was tricky. I kept dropping it and then I laid it on its back and now it's in there.

Okay, so hopefully your screw didn't fall out like that. And if it did, hopefully you got it back in. So, now that we have the screw, I'm going to put my second needle in. So, here's my needle. Here's my needle insertion thing. Just stick the needle into that hole so you have something to hold it with. Find the flat edge of the needle and turn it to the back. Then just stick it up into this hole.

Make sure it's all the way up in there. Get your screwdriver and tighten that screw by turning it to the right.
Get that nice and tight. You can pull this out of the way. You'll notice the two needles do not hang evenly, and that is correct.

One more thing that you can do if you're having trouble is clean the tension discs of your serger. You're going to need a clean piece of paper. We're going to come to these tension discs, each one of them, and we're going to take the paper and put it in the tension disc and slide it down. Right now, these tension discs are open because the presser foot is lifted. When we put the presser foot down, it closes the tension discs. So, now there will be more resistance. If I go in, I can feel resistance now. Pull down. Every once in a while that will be helpful because something might be lodged in there.

Well, I hope that helped you get your machine cleaned and oiled and working good as new. If you would like a little checklist that you can download and check off everything that you do during this process every time,scroll up and sign up to get the checklist I made for you.

If you had any other questions, maybe your machine's not working good as new, please below the video and leave me a comment and I will do my best to assist you and try to get this figured out. If you need to pick up any sewing machine oil or needles, scroll up to those links for the individual items down below as well.
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