Click Rebuilding Desert Cooler for all related posts.
Today you will be finally able to see at least something lustrous emerging out of the rusty frame!
It is all about cleaning so far. Things got worst when I reached the L bars that made up the frame. Rust there was metaphorically 'knee-deep'. Same was the case with insides of water reservoir where dust and salt deposits had made quite a thick layer.
Needed some Special Work And Tools here!
Hand-held grinder came to the rescue with its standard Carborundum wheel for the L bars:
It is all about cleaning so far. Things got worst when I reached the L bars that made up the frame. Rust there was metaphorically 'knee-deep'. Same was the case with insides of water reservoir where dust and salt deposits had made quite a thick layer.
Needed some Special Work And Tools here!
Hand-held grinder came to the rescue with its standard Carborundum wheel for the L bars:
The left side of the image above is about a couple of millimeters thick layer of rust. On the right is what Grinder did to it. Purpose was to remove most of the uneven paint and corroded metal which was served well. I had to topple the frame many times to grind all the 4 bars on all 6 sides of the frame that makes the cooler.
Then came the water reservoir, remember a small grinding pad I told I purchased? This one?:
This time grinder wheel was switched to this one and it did manual sandpapering work in fraction of a time and still lesser effort! Here is the thing at work:
Left is the side that grinder has worked upon, the paint here is not flaking much so did not made much efforts to remove all of it. The layer of grit is however completely gone. Good work Black n Decker! :-)
A note of caution here, the grinder sends the sparks and small pieces of rust flying. The spindle turns at few thousand revolutions per minute. Also the dust is very fine and caused some coughing till I used a cloth to mask myself. Also wore big goofy glasses as well to avoid debris getting into the eyes. Another nuisance is noise. Metal being ground makes so much noise that I owe sincere thanks to all neighbors who put up with the ruckus for three-four hours I was at it.
Then came painting, a thick coat of Red-Oxide primer, 4-5 hrs of curing and then a dull blue for the body and lo! Just click this image for a blown up view:
Pretty satisfying to see a sturdy, neat and shining piece coming up. Painting is going on during the moments stolen from the after office hours.
Later will be assembling the components together. Mostly tidy work Maybe a major chunk of this weekend will go into these activities. Stay tuned. :-)
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See you again later.
Good night.
