Coming down the home stretch with the Walker floor jack. Here are some of the more challenging aspects and parts of powder coating it.
The lifting arm return springs needed to be coated but the springs had to be stretched a bit to allow powder in between each coil. So this is the rig Don's shop came up with to do that.
One end was hooked here...
...while the other end was secured here on a "Jay" bolt. Then as the "Jay" bolt was tightened (on the far right) it pulled the "Jay" hook to the right which stretched the spring enough to allow powder to be applied between each coil. Doing it this way allowed the spring tension to be varied as necessary to open the coils just enough. Then while still stretched the whole apparatus was put in the oven to cure.
As they turned out, perfect. 1 mil of powder covers the whole spring inside, out and in between. It'll never rust now and there was not so much powder build up in between the coils that it lengthened the spring either.
Some of the parts had no good way to hang them, so Don used Cobalt magnets to provide a means to do that. The red object on the right is the magnet, the orange is tape to prevent powder on that surface. This was a pin that needed to be coated on both ends but not in the middle.
All of the nuts were coated. To prevent powder from getting on the inside threads, a silicone plug was placed there and then a wire hook pressed into the plug to hold the nut. However powder coating relies on a small electrical charge being passed through the piece being coated to attract powder to the object. The silicone plug prevented that electrical charge, so a small amount of heat was used to warm up the nut so the powder would stick.
Another tricky part was this multi joint connecting the release knob rod (say that fast 3 times!) to the jack power cylinder.
This had heavy grease build up all over it from years of use. I soaked it in a cleaning solution for a month to slowly desolve the grease. I used an old tooth brush on it periodically to help remove old, softened material. I didn't want to put it in the grit blaster to clean it up because I was concerned that I couldn't get all the grit particles cleaned out of all the joints. That would result in the joint not working smoothly and premature wear on the joints. Turns out Don still needed to grit blast it a little to rough up the surfaces in preparation for coating. But because it was already clean he only needed to use a minimal amount of grit and then throughly rinsed it with alcohol multiple times and blew it out well each time. Next a layer of only 1 mil thick powder was applied to keep all the joints moving freely which they do.
That multi joint is attached to the power cylinder and secured with this small nut and bolt. I used a dime to give an idea how small this bolt and nut are. All powder coated of course. The dime is a period one from 1967 by the way.
This is where the bolt will be installed on the joint, far right end.
Various parts in the oven prior to curing at 400 degrees F (204 C).
Many of the shafts could only be done on the ends. This is when...
... all the various parts...
...were all done. The front axle is seen below the nuts and washers; the polished areas on it near the ends are where the needle bearings will be installed. It should roll as smmoooth as a babies bu.., ah.................posterior.
This was the front axle before removal and subsequent clean up and refurbishment.
There was just a bit more work done before we'll see the reassembly and subsequent rebirth of this piece of rolling sculpture.
Thomas
Don't be afraid to post a picture or two of it if you can, always nice to see them. 
