Plugging Holes

The last step before removing all of Ms. Rusty’s paint by bead blasting is to protect threaded and machined areas.  I’m choosing to use heat resistant tape and silicone plugs so they can stay in place during the powder coating step, which requires Ms. Rusty to bake in an oven at high temps to cure.

The flat areas are best covered by the heat resistant tape, as shown in the photo below.

One particular area that was tough to cover was the exposed surface in the bobbin area.

To cover this I cut a piece of tape larger than the area to be covered and placed in over the hole.

Then using an Exacto knife, the excess tape is cut away

 

All other flat/rounded areas were covered in this way 

Plugging holes was relatively easy using the variety of plugs I recently purchased (see previous post).  I used the caps to fill in longer holes like the one shown here: 

However, some longer holes were an odd size and instead required the use of two plugs.  This next photo shows how one plug was the right size in diameter, but wasn’t long enough to completely fill the hole.

So I took two identical plugs and cut them in half so I had two shorter plugs of the same diameter.

The two shorter plugs covered both ends and protected the interior from bead blasting & coating. 

For added protection, I covered/plugged several of the interior holes. I’m not sure these will be actually exposed to sand blasting or powder, but I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Photo inside of arm:

For those of you interested, here are 12 photos of Ms. Rusty from multiple angles so you can see what holes were plugged and/or covered.

Top on my agenda for tomorrow – blast and coat Ms. Rusty!!

Plugs and Caps for Blasting and Coating

My plugs have arrived!  I ordered the 110 piece silicone plug and cap kit from Eastwood.com to finish prepping Ms. Rusty for bead blasting and powder coating.  This post will cover the contents of the kit and the sizes of each plug/cap, since the Eastwood site doesn’t provide this information.
Here is the complete kit contents as it arrived from Eastwood:

Here are some photos of all the plugs and caps in the kit for comparison purposes.

All the plugs in the kit are tapered so they can fill a range of hole sizes. The smallest plugs (green) have a diameter of 1/8” at the smallest end and taper to 1/4” at the long end and are 3/4” long.  All the other plugs are 1” long.  Here is a table of all the plug sizes

Color	Small End	Large End
Green	1/8”	1/4”
Red	1/4”	3/8”
Black	3/8”	9/16”
White	1/2”	21/32”
White	13/16”	1”

Next are the caps. They differ from the plugs in that they are the same diameter their entire length, and they are hollow on the inside. For each of the caps I’ll list the inner diameter (ID), outer diameter (OD), and length (L).

Color	ID	OD	L
Gray	1/8”	3/16”	13/16”
White	5/32”	1/4”	1 1/8”
Blue	3/16”	9/32”	1 5/32”
Green	1/4”	11/32”	1 3/16”
Yellow	3/8”	1/2”	1 1/4”
Green	1/2”	9/32”	1 3/4”

There were 10 pieces of each size plug and cap, so hopefully this will give me enough variety to protect most the smooth machined holes and screw holes in Ms. Rusty.  I already know there are a few holes that are smaller than 1/8” diameter, so I plan on using some wood and/or bamboo skewers for those holes. 

The next post will finish up the protection of Ms. Rusty’s delecate surfaces.  Unfortunately, this prep work is taking much longer than I anticipated, but it should be worth it in the end.  I guess we’ll find out soon enough :)