Cleaning up the stripped items

Shine a light it’s been cold this week. I was away for a few days so didn’t get to doing anything until today. I popped over to the workshop and retrieved the pieces I’d stripped earlier in the week, and brought them back to the comfort and warmth of the house to tinker with them in the cellar. I washed the parts in soapy water and removed the remainder of the paint with a small wire brush. Everything’s looking much better for being stripped, although the top alloy casting is still rather rough as it’s obviously been abused somewhat over the years with tools and other clobber probably resting on it. I’m in two minds with this casting – should I leave it as is and just paint it again, or should I use some filler and sand it down to a nice smooth finish. Half of me says just paint it up, the other says that as this is the ‘crown’ of the lathe it really should be paid some attention.

I know – maybe I’m being way too precious about what amounts to a lump of cast iron, alloy and a few other bits. But I like to look after my tools and so feel I should put in the effort. I’m not going to spray paint anything as I don’t have the kit (hmm, maybe an excuse to buy some new tools!), so the paint finish won’t be spectacular anyway.

I’ll ponder this for a while longer – no sense rushing things and I have plenty of other bits to sort out.

In the evening I took the alloy casting back over to my workshop and used an angle grinder and wire brush to remove the remaining spots of paint and this also flattened the majority of the larger marks on it – so much so that I’ll only fill the three holes at the front that are no longer required and leave it at that. These holes were where the pop-rivets had been. I’d purchased some filler and a small tin of Hammerite primer and set to with both when I got back to the house.



The switch is also looking way better with all of the paint removed...



I’d also brought back the bed of the lathe but decided it was way too cold to paint it at present, so would leave it overnight in the cellar to warm up a bit. My workshop is a bit like a fridge, and I could feel the condensation forming on the bed when I brought it into the warmth of the house.