A continuation to this restoration sees our parts coming back from a long stay at the sand blasters. Once I got the parts home, they then got prepped, primed, and painted! The weather was nice enough that I was able to get a lot more done than I anticipated. Usually trying to ventilate the shop when spraying this much paint is a winter time project. Usually in the summer I would have a hard time maintaining a comfortable temperature and a low humidity level.
This fall (September) was about as perfect for painting as I could ask for. It was low humidity with temperatures that were only getting down to the 60s at night (when I was painting). It worked out perfectly for venting the shop without worrying about humidity affecting the rest of my tools.
Below is a write up with some additional pictures of the process.
First thing I did, obviously, was drive out to the sandblaster to pick up the parts. There are 4 cabinet pieces, a table top, 2 extension wings, and a bunch of miscellaneous internal parts in the tote.
After getting the parts home, I started by vacuuming and cleaning the parts with acetone. Then I dove in to priming the parts by brush. I used Rustoleum Farm & Implement Red Oxide Primer.
There were a lot of parts to prime. The bottoms of the table pieces were among the more obnoxious and time consuming. With all the nooks and crannies from the reinforcements there were a lot of details to pay attention to.
Everything was primed inside and out with one good coat followed up with touch ups as needed.
In the first round of painting I just had a drop cloth and some plastic draped on everything around it. This time I used a pop-up gazebo with DIY plastic walls and a drop cloth floor instead. It worked great to contain both the over spray and smell.
Inside I had a pair of exhaust fans. One was made with an old dehumidifier fan, and the other used a high volume blower fan. These were vented outside through some ports in my garage door. They worked great to hold negative pressure in the enclosure and extract things efficiently.
With everything set up, it was time to get to painting. I had a low platform on the floor that I used as my painting area, before moving parts elsewhere.
Everything got two coats of paint twice. I would spray a first coat and wait 15-20 minutes for it to flash off a little. While the first coat was still tacky, I would come back in and spray a second coat. I would let that dry 24 hours and do a second pass at it the same way.
Some of the pieces, like this main internal casting, were a little more challenging than others. I used a brush to help clean up any runs on the inside before it leveled out. There were a lot of internal voids to get painted on this one.
Once I had all the parts painted, I took the makeshift spray booth down. These are all the parts that have raised details cast in to them. I planned to give them a special treatment.
All those raised pieces cast in to the flat panels got painted with low gloss black. I used a firm foam roller to paint just the tops of those surfaces. It’s a nice accent that breaks up the castings. Not original, but neither is the base color, and I’m a fan.
With those accents now painted black and curing, that will wrap up this phase of the restoration work.
I was quite happy to have made it through painting all these parts. When I ran in to the delays with the sand blaster initially, I figured I couldn’t get to these until winter. My main concern was the raw sand blasted cast iron parts rusting quickly, as they’re prone to do. If I got everything primed so I could wait until winter I would have been happy enough.
With a stretch of nice weather in September, it turned out to be perfect for painting. The 70-80 degree (F) days coupled with 60 degree nights and very low humidity was all I needed.
It took about a week to get all the parts primed. With giving everything 2 coats of paint, it took another 2 weeks or so to get all the parts painted.
I am ecstatic that I had the time and weather aligned to get that done. I’m a few months ahead on this project vs where I thought I would be. Hopefully I can start getting things put back together just as quickly!
Thanks for checking it out!
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