Touch-ups

This past week I removed all the plugs and tape from Ms. Rusty and was surprised how well they worked.  Not only did they (the plugs and tape) do a good job of preventing powder coating from going where it shouldn’t, but they were also very easy to remove.  Here is a photo of the interior of the needle area after all the plugs/tape/etc. have been removed:

However, there were a few areas that needed some touching up.  One area was the serial number plate.  I had forgotten to cover it with tape so it was completely covered with powder coating and clearcoat.  I tried using an razor knife to scrape it clean, but I ended up putting a gouge in Ms. Rusty’s new skin and I nearly cried.

Decals!!

Today is the day I describe how I applied decals to Ms. Rusty.  The decals I’m using are waterslide decals that I found for a Singer 301 (3/4 size bed) so they aren't quite long enough nor have enough corner decals for the bed of a 201. However, they have the same design and Ms. Rusty originally had and one sheet of decals is enough for two 3/4 size machines so I'll have enough extra decals to make them fit my machine.
One sheet of decals: 
The first step in the decal process is to cut out and trim all the decals.

Bubble Repair

As I mentioned in the previous post, the powder coating process was mostly successful.  The problem was that bubbles appeared on the bed surface. 

   

I discussed possible causes of the bubbles with my husband, who has much more experience in powder coating than I do.  He said it could be due to any number of reasons, including either porous metal or contaminants trapped in the metal.  The air or contaminants (such as oil) trapped in the metal would start to expand as the metal is heated in the oven at temperatures up to the 400°F that is required to liquefy and cure the powder coating.  The bubbles then form as the contaminants escape through the powder coating.  However, he points out that this is all speculation on his part and the true cause remains unknown.  All I know is that Ms. Rusty looks like she has a bad case of acne and I need to fix it!

Holes, Holes, and More Holes!

Ms. Rusty has moved from my workbench in the garage to my kitchen table.  Partly because I felt guilty for neglecting her for so long, partly because the garage is still full of stuff from the kitchen remodel that is destined for a huge garage sale, but mostly because of comfort.  This time of year it is MUCH warmer in the house than out in the garage!

Ms. Rusty looks happy, don’t you think?

The next step in Ms. Rusty’s make-over is prepping her for bead blasting.  The good thing about bead blasting is that it is a fast way to remove paint and surface rust.  The bad thing is that it removes the paint using an abrasive powder that can get into all the nooks and crannies and it isn’t selective to just paint.  This means you need to protect surfaces that require tight tolerances, like smooth machined surfaces and threaded holes. 

Another bath

Well, the heat of summer has taken its toll on me and Ms. Rusty.  It’s been too hot to work in the garage the past several weeks, not to mention I’ve had a huge project due at work that kept me from doing much tinkering.  As a result, Ms. Rusty hasn’t been getting much love lately and has punished me by rusting again. 
To be fair, she didn’t have much choice in resorting to rust given that I hosed her down with water after her last Evapo-Rust treatment.  My mistake was that I didn’t give her another quick dip in the stuff to coat her surfaces to prevent rust from reoccurring.  Here are some photos that show the result of my neglect.

        

Initially I wasn’t too worried because I thought I would just sandblast all the rust off.  Then after a few days of denial I came to my senses and realized that there are some parts that will NOT get sandblasted, such as thread fittings (as in screw threads, not fabric threads).  That’s when I decided Ms. Rusty needed another bath.
This time I opted not to do mop bucket method, like last time.  While that worked ok, it required more Evapo-rust than was really necessary to get all of Ms. Rusty submerged.  Instead, I did the “bag-in-a-bucket” method (I made that name up just in case you are wondering).

Update:  I can't take credit for inventing the "bag-in-a-bucket" approach.  I saw the concept first mentioned on one of the Yahoo! Groups I belong to.  Coincidentally, Dragon Poodle outlined a very similar approach on her blog the same week as this post (http://dragonpoodle.blogspot.com/).  I wish I had seen her post prior to giving Ms. Rusty her second bath so I could have used some of her tips, like using bubble wrap instead of towels and a sweatshirt :)

I started off with one bag in a short bucket, like so: 
While it might have been ok, I was concerned with the height of the bucket not being sufficient to hold the Evapo-Rust (ER) if it happened to leak out.  That then made me think that maybe 1 bag wasn’t enough.  So I went to plan B – triple bag in a tall kitchen trash can.

  

I then poured a gallon of ER on top of Ms. Rusty, but this only covered her rear arm.

So, to displace some of the air and make the fluid rise up higher, I tied up the bags and stuffed towels and an old sweatshirt (just happened to be on my workbench at the time) around Ms. Rusty outside the bags .  It worked pretty well as the ER ended up covering over half of Ms. Rusty.

Mummified Ms. Rusty -

After a 90 minute soak, I took out the towels and other stuffing and unwrapped the bags.  Surprisingly there were no leaks!  I then turned Ms. Rusty over on end to make sure her other side got the ER treatment.  Again, I tied up the bags and stuffed towels and such around her to make the fluid rise to the level I wanted.  After another 90 minute soak she was done.

This time when I took out the towels they were more than damp so a leak had sprung somewhere during the second soaking step.  However, most of the ER liquid was still in the bag.  After wringing out the towels in the bucket and returning that, along with the “bag” liquid to the ER container, I ended up with a nearly full container!

Ms. Rusty was placed on my workbench and was NOT rinsed off.  I did wipe her down with a towel, but I left the residual ER to help prevent the return of any surface rust.  She definitely looks better after her second soak and is ready to be prepped for sandblasting.

         

Hopefully it will cool down a bit this weekend so I can spend more quality time with my old girl.  There is a lot of prep that needs to be done to plug up threaded holes and machined edges that should not be exposed to sandblasting.  My goal is to get that part done before I go on vacation in 10 days.  We’ll see……

Ketchup Anyone?

This post is all about cleaning up the nasty looking badge I removed from Ms. Rusty.  Initially I cleaned it up using the usual kerosene but it didn’t do much to improve the appearance.  I then  purchased some metal polish, specifically Eagle One Nevr-Dull because it is supposed to work well on all metals.  One a side note – I wonder why all these automotive type agents have hyphens in their brand names? (Evapo-Rust, Break-Away, Nevr-Dull, WD-40, etc.)  Is it a requirement that I don’t know about?

Using the Nevr-dull improved things a little bit, but the badge still didn’t look very good and this new product was taking more elbow grease than I’d like.  So I searched online for ways to clean tarnished brass.  Several different recipes of salt/vinegar combinations came up in my Google search, but my favorite “remedy” was to use ketchup!

So, I took the badge and soaked it in a dish of ketchup overnight.

mmm – tasty

After rinsing the badge it actually looks pretty good!

Front  Back 

It was after the ketchup treatment that the Nevr-Dull really showed it’s stuff.  I spent about 10-15 minutes polishing the badge and it looks much better.

Front  Back 

Now the badge isn’t perfect, so it will need a bit of tinkering to get it bent back into the correct shape around the edges.  I also need to spend some extra time to get the tarnish out of the crevices on the back.  Hopefully I can figure out how to do that, and get it done, by the time Ms. Rusty is ready for her “new” badge.

Powder Coating–Part 2

In the last post I covered the equipment and set-up for powder coating so I’ll jump right into the powder coating itself!
The gun is connected to electricity and to an air compressor.  First one has to push the electrical button, and while holding it down, pull the trigger on the powder coating gun.  The air compressor feeds the powder out of the gun in a soft cloud or “dry mist”.  Through the magic of electricity, the charged powder is electrostatically drawn to the charged metal parts.  As a result, the powder sticks to the part and the excess falls harmlessly to the ground.
The photo below shows my husband demonstrating proper powder coating technique by coating the lamp cover. The close-up shows the texture of the powder “stuck” to the lamp shade.

Bead Blasting

This weekend I decided to wrap up some loose ends on pieces that needed finishing.  This gave the wonderful opportunity to learn how to bead blast (aka sand blast) and powder coat!  My husband’s hobby is building airplanes, so he happens to have all the equipment I need right in his shop.  If you don’t have such a convenience, then you can either contract it out at a local body shop purchase the equipment yourself.  I don’t recommend purchasing the equipment if you are only going to use it once, but if you plan on using it on a frequent basis then it may be something to consider.  If there are enough questions about it, I could do a post on what equipment I used and how to purchase it.  However, for now the focus will be on the process rather than the equipment.

Here are the parts I wanted to strip and refinish (clockwise from upper left):  terminal bracket, rear and front gear covers, lamp shade/housing, bevel gear front cover, and tension indicator.

view 1 view 2

Each of these pieces have been previously soaked in kerosene to remove any grease, and then soaked in Evapo-rust to remove any surface rust, and brushed down to remove any loose paint.  Some of the pieces look like they are in pretty good shape, so you may wonder why the bead blasting is necessary.  The primary reason for it is to make sure the surface is smooth, yet textured enough, to promote adhesion of the powder coat.

Here is a photo of me bead blasting the other parts in the blasting booth.  The parts go into the booth from a side door.  Then after it is sealed shut, my hands go into gloves from the outside, so the person doing the blasting is completely protected. There is a window in the top to see what you are doing.

Here is what the front gear cover looks like before and after bead blasting:

Before   After 

Surprisingly, it only takes off a very thin surface layer and doesn’t have any negative impact on details like engraved SIMANCO part numbers.

Before   After 

To better demonstrate this, I’ve posted a video on YouTube showing my husband bead blasting the lamp shade.  Here are a few photos for those who prefer pictures to video – see how just the layer of paint is removed from the surface?

Here are the parts after blasting. I was careful to not touch them with my bare hand to ensure no trace oil was left on the surface which can mar the powder coat (or paint if you choose to go that route).  Aren’t they pretty!

Next time – Powder coating!

Evapo-Rust to the Rescue!

Remember these very rusty bobbin winder parts?  Well, I decided to these to test out my new bottle of Evapo-Rust. 

 

After only a quick 40 minute soak it was already clear this product was working well

 

Soaking them for an additional overnight soak, the difference was nothing short of amazing!

 

I then turned my attention to my chrome trim pieces.  I had previously used Turtle Wax Chrome Polish And Rust Remover and was reasonably satisfied with the results.  However, it required a ton of elbow grease and I still couldn’t get all the rust off the nooks and crannies of these pieces – especially the rear plate cover.  After taking these pieces and soaking them in Evapo-Rust for a few hours they look nearly brand new!

Before:        After: 

If you look really close you will notice that there is still some residual rust on the edge of the face plate, so I may give it another soaking just to evaporate the last bit of rust

I am now officially an Evapo-Rust fan!

Motor Gear Cleaning and Reassembly

In this post I tackle the ugly job of removing all the nasty, 60+ year old grease gumming up the works in Ms. Rusty’s motor. 

I need to point out that this step really should have been done prior to all the wiring and motor disassembly that I did, but hey, I never claimed to be a professional!  However, because I did this step out of order there were a few precautions that I took, including:  protecting the new wiring from any grease/oil since that can cause premature deterioration, protecting the inside of the motor from any grease/oil since that can cause smoking, deterioration, and all kinds of other problems.

Ok – here we go! I first removed the grease caps which are located at the bottom of the gear case.

I also then removed worm gear by simply lifting it out carefully with a pair of bent nose pliers (recall that the armature was previously removed from the motor).

Then came the nasty job of cleaning the gear area and grease wick area.  This was done with the use of paper towels, Q-tips, toothpicks, and very small amounts of solvent (only when necessary).  The fruits of my labor can be seen below.

I then tried to replace the worm gear, but without all the grease it fell to the bottom and wouldn’t stay put.  So I then tried to put the armature in a bit and then use that to guide the worm gear.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t successful in replace armature, as it felt like something was in the way. 
At this point I felt absolutely stupid because after all this cleaning I had forgotten about the grease wicks, which of course with their springs, were in the way of the armature. 

(Now, if I were really clever and wanted you to think I was a genius I would have re-written this post and re-arranged these pictures to make you think that everything had gone according to plan.  However, life never goes according to plan and I am not a genius.  So I’m going to blog everything just the way it happens – for better or for worse!  Who knows, maybe some of you are reading this blog hoping nothing goes well much like some people watch an accident waiting to happen, or love American Idol tryouts just to watch the bad singers, and if so, I’d hate to disappoint you!  Anyway, I digress…)

Here are photos of one of the grease wicks in it’s tubes (also notice the brush tube to the left) and a picture of both grease wicks after removal from the tubes.

Surprise, surprise, the armature slide right in after grease wicks removed  
  Worm gear replaced 
The adjusters manual tells you to make sure that the “flat” part of the armature shaft can engage one of the two set screws.  The position of the “flat” part of the shaft is indicated by the “flat” at the cover end of the shaft.
  
At this point everything has been cleaned and/or repaired on the motor except for the motor cover.  That has bubbled and pitted paint due to rust and will need to be bead blasted and powder coated (or stripped and painted), but I’m putting it back on for now just to protect the coil and wires on the armature.  Isn’t it pretty?