ltrrigging Sweet! I think you just inspired me to dig out one of safes I have and start a winter project. Nice job! Rich
Yankee That is a stunning paint job, to say nothing about the plating on the metal parts. If you would share with us just one more photo of the door lock and bolt work. Please also tell us approx. how many hours did it take to complete this project ? Again, great job.🙁clap):
NatSafeMatt Thank you Yankee…as for the hours involved…I have no idea. I don’t think want to know. All I can say is “SANDING…SANDING…” Soooo much time sanding…filler and heavy-build primer. I have a good friend of mine that paints custom motorcycles for a living. He showed me how and what and walked me through the processes. I bought the paints and he applied them. (BTW…they are House of Kolor aftermarket automotive finishes and worth every penny…luckily…the paint supplier needed his custom bike pinstriped which helped off-set some cost). Afterwords…more sanding…which was "wet-sanding with 1200 grit…then 1500 grit, then 2000 grit…then buffing. I was so afraid to wet sand because the finish was nice at that point. Then when I was done wet-sanding…I was afraid to buff it. All of this was new to me. I am (as you can imagine) glad I did. I did not have anything re-plated. All is original as far as that goes. The boltwork on the money chest door had actually been painted over a couple times with silver paint over the years. This helped to preserve it. Who in their right mind would have painted over it? but I’m glad they did. Anyhow…I purchased a heavy duty bench grinder with 8 inch buffing wheels and spent ALL winter one year buffing/polishing what was there. I recon there is approx. 2+ Hrs in each individual boltwork piece alone.The money chest door we painted & buffed outside the safe. It was held with an engine hoist. I was also very nervous while putting in back into place, but with the grace of God…all went well. I will post “process” pictures as well. This was such an involved process…had I known what I was getting into though…I prob. wouldn’t have done it as deep as I did. No corners were cut. Fortunately…there were a great number of friends involved. One made the finials, one let me barrow the engine hoist, one helped me with all the ins & outs of body work (“Painter Dave”), one let be barrow the big-dollar buffer, another is a great friend of a fella that owns a chrome shop…he gave the name plate to him and had it copper-plated…the list goes on. All in all…I have a little over two years in it. When the sign shop was very busy though…it didn’t get worked on very much so it wasn’t like I have 2 Yrs of nothing but working on it. I think it is a great example of the saying…“you get out of it what you put into it”. I am considering selling it…though I don’t really want to as iot is the first one I ever did or owned. I started this project so I could pinstripe/goldleaf it…as this is what I do..so I am looking forward to that. I hope to get to it soon. Hope I didn’t rattle on too much…thank you for all the interest and thoughts…this is a great website…glad I found it. Take care.
Dean Nickel The care and amount of detail shows. Again GREAT JOB! You can restore any of my safes… or my car! LOL😃:
NatSafeMatt [QUOTE You can restore any of my safes… or my car! LOL😃:[/QUOTE] Thanks Halflock…incidently…Dad has a 1930 Chevy 4-door special sedan we are going to start on next. I’ll bet it takes more than a couple years. LOL
