1955 Craftsman roller cabinet refurbishment

[abie]

Hi guys, I picked up this vintage 1950's Craftsman toolbox over the weekend. It's in somewhat rough shape and I could use some advice putting it back to it's former glory.

As you can see, someone's rattle canned it red. I found it in the 1955 Sears catalog, and according to the description it's supposed to be 'machine gray'. Indeed, I found traces of gray under the side handle. The interior of the box and the rear portions of the drawers are grey as well.

Here's what got me confused: The paint under the side handle seems to have a hammered finish, but the stuff on the inside is a flat grey that looks like what you'd find on an old time file cabinet. Does anyone know what the original finish would be? I picked up gray and silver hammered paint from Ace, and the gray is close to the original color but not exact (original color seems to have been a touch more bluish) The silver is too bright.

Anyway, my plan is to strip off all the old paint using chemical strippers and sanders, use a very thin coat of bondo to fill in all the shallow dents and repaint it. If anyone knows what the original finish and color would have been, that would be super helpful. Thanks in advance!

In pics: S - Silver, G - Gray. The last picture shows the back of the drawer with what I believe is the original finish

 

[Ricky Joe]

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[JoCoSawdust]

Good luck! That era of boxes had a hammered finish on the outside while the inside of the drawers were a slightly darker gray with a non-textured finish. The exterior color is a tough one to match. None of the available rattle can colors match properly (although people do use them despite being the incorrect color). I have a couple of boxes of that era that need paint. When my schedule allows, I'll attempt to match (using a pristine patch of original color under the tray of a top box as example). If you come up with a good recipe in the meantime, please let me know. Thanks.

 

[FJ 432]

Able

Any gray will do. It will never match what once was on there and rest assured that whatever you paint it it will look newly painted.

After restoring many of these I would suggest painting it whatever the hell you want to paint it. Paint it to match another cabinet you own or a color scheme of your garage. It will never be more than a $50-$100 roller.

My comments sound angry but they're not. Place importance on doing a good job and show us when you're done. Welcome to Garage Journal.

 

[fullthrottle24]

Recently, I stumbled upon this hammered clear. Perhaps you can find a gray/silver match and topcoat with this.

 

[Oldtuleguy]

This is one I did with rustoleum hammered silver

 

[Garcky]

Well, if you're planning to enter your roller cabinet in the tool chest concours d'elegance, you'll need to match the original color precisely. Otherwise getting reasonably close will probably do, I'd think.

 

[Ricky Joe]

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[Garcky]

I repaired a front porch for a lady once. She made a big fuss because the mortar I used did not match her fifty year old mortar on the rest of the porch (brick porch). She refused to listen to the logic that new mortar would never match the old. She refused to pay me for the job as a result of that. She didn’t want the porch to look repaired.

Love it!

 

[Oldtuleguy]

I would have unrepaired it!

 

[FrankLee]

I would suggest painting it whatever the hell you want to paint it.

Exactly.

 

[Ricky Joe]

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[abie]

Good luck! That era of boxes had a hammered finish on the outside while the inside of the drawers were a slightly darker gray with a non-textured finish. The exterior color is a tough one to match. None of the available rattle can colors match properly (although people do use them despite being the incorrect color). I have a couple of boxes of that era that need paint. When my schedule allows, I'll attempt to match (using a pristine patch of original color under the tray of a top box as example). If you come up with a good recipe in the meantime, please let me know. Thanks.

Thanks! That's just the info I needed. I'm going to go with the Rustoleum gray which is a hair darker than the silver. I'm not trying to do a 100 point concours restoration, but I'd like to get as close to the original as possible.

 

[abie]

This is one I did with rustoleum hammered silver

That's a beautiful job, I hope I come close with mine. Mine looks to be the same model as yours, but has an oval logo without the horizontal lines on either side.

 

[abie]

Able

Any gray will do. It will never match what once was on there and rest assured that whatever you paint it it will look newly painted.

After restoring many of these I would suggest painting it whatever the hell you want to paint it. Paint it to match another cabinet you own or a color scheme of your garage. It will never be more than a $50-$100 roller.

My comments sound angry but they're not. Place importance on doing a good job and show us when you're done. Welcome to Garage Journal.

Oh totally, I'm not trying to get the color spot on, but I'd like it to put it back to as close to the original as possible. I'm just starting to build out my tool collection and this is my first larger piece of storage, all my stuff is scattered across multiple smaller toolboxes.

I looked at Craftsman boxes at Lowes, and even the US made ones are apparently built from the same stuff that they use to make tin cans. This thing is built like a tank in comparison, well worth the time and effort that will go into saving it.

What's your process for restoring toolboxes BTW? Would appreciate any hints as I've never tackled a job like this before. Cheers

 

[thehorse13]

Welcome.

All of the old school crinkle paint boxes will never precisely match. The S-K guys will testify to this as well.

The best you're going to do at a reasonable cost will be one of the big box store hammered spray paints. I used Rustoleum hammered grey on a 20 dollar roller that I picked up. This chest is a user in my garage so I just wanted it to look presentable.

 

[FJ 432]

What's your process for restoring toolboxes BTW? Would appreciate any hints as I've never tackled a job like this before. Cheers

Just understand that this is not easy. I use paint stripper to get most of it off. Then sanders, scrappers, etc. You will start to hate it when you're working on the inside of the drawers. Just remember if you don't get all of the paint off the result will suffer.

 

[abie]

Just understand that this is not easy. I use paint stripper to get most of it off. Then sanders, scrappers, etc. You will start to hate it when you're working on the inside of the drawers. Just remember if you don't get all of the paint off the result will suffer.

Yeah, it's proving to be a ton of work. I got it all taken apart and I'm working on it a little bit at a time as time permits.

The bottom was nasty, there was 75 years of caked on grease and gunk there. Scraped off most of the crud and found some light rust, so I painted on some Evaporust and let it sit overnight under saran wrap. It worked really well and got me a nice clean surface. Sprayed on some etch primer and then some truck bed coating, should be well protected for another 75 years now.

 

[abie]

I've been working on this as time permits and so progress has been slow. There were at least three layers of paint on this thing, but I got it down to bare metal finally. Process was to rough up the paint with coarse sandpaper to give the stripper a chance to bite, followed by two cycles of applying stripper and scraping. To get the last little flakes off, I used a grinder with a paint remover wheel

 

[abie]

I was going to toss these casters in the trash because they looked too far gone, but then I found out new ones were $15 a piece, eek. I soaked them in soapy water and scrubbed off the gunk, and had to use the paint stripper on them because someone had painted the plastic black for some reason. Also to remove the red overspray.

Next, I wire wheeled the surface rust off and gave them a lick of paint. Finally I forced some superlube grease into the bearings and sprayed some GM super lube liquid into the axle sleeves. This stuff sets from a liquid into grease after application so it should hold up. Casters work pretty well now! Removing the paint revealed some markings 'Nagel Chase Mfg Co Chicago'. I'm glad I kept these in retrospect, it's nice to have original hardware.

 

[Jayman17]

hard to believe those are the same casters, nice job bringing those back to life!

 

[softailgarage]

Welcome to the Garage, stick around, you'll learn alot.

I'm surprised those wheels are still round, I think every roller I've ever come across had flat sections from being parked for years.

 

[abie]

I'm surprised those wheels are still round, I think every roller I've ever come across had flat sections from being parked for years.

It's probably because they aren't rubber, it's a very hard and dense plastic of some sort

 

[hobbyistcollector]

I was going to toss these casters in the trash because they looked too far gone, but then I found out new ones were $15 a piece, eek. I soaked them in soapy water and scrubbed off the gunk, and had to use the paint stripper on them because someone had painted the plastic black for some reason. Also to remove the red overspray.

Next, I wire wheeled the surface rust off and gave them a lick of paint. Finally I forced some superlube grease into the bearings and sprayed some GM super lube liquid into the axle sleeves. This stuff sets from a liquid into grease after application so it should hold up. Casters work pretty well now! Removing the paint revealed some markings 'Nagel Chase Mfg Co Chicago'. I'm glad I kept these in retrospect, it's nice to have original hardware.

@abie - I just picked up the same Craftsman cabinet, but mine is missing the casters completely. Any chance you took measurements of the original casters on yours? I'll be doing a similar restoration to yours, but haven't had any luck finding true original casters, so I'm hoping to get new ones as close to the original size as possible.

 

[abie]

@abie - I just picked up the same Craftsman cabinet, but mine is missing the casters completely. Any chance you took measurements of the original casters on yours? I'll be doing a similar restoration to yours, but haven't had any luck finding true original casters, so I'm hoping to get new ones as close to the original size as possible.

@hobbyistcollector Let me know which specific dimensions you need, and I'd be happy to measure them for you.

 

[abie]

Got a bunch of work done over the last week, started by removing the slides and 68 years of grease and general crud from the inside. The bottom was in bad shape, there was a deep layer of corrosion that I had to grind off with a 40 grit disk. Took ages and kicked up clouds of dust, this was the worst part of the job. Anyway, the inside is now clean, premiered and painted. There was a general unpleasant odor coming from inside the box at the time of purchase, this is now gone as a bonus

 

[abie]

Getting the outside down to bare metal and etch priming it unfortunately revealed several shallow dents all over. Nothing major, but I'd have been annoyed every time I looked at them. So I watched a bunch of videos on how to do bodywork and used bondo to fill them in. My technique was probably not the best, so I had to bondo and sand a couple of times to get everything perfect. I finished up by filling in the little imperfections using glazing putty and then used high build primer to cover up my sins. I don't see dents in the primer so it worked I guess.



I'm also working on the drawers in parallel, a couple of them had dividers that I didn't want so I found and drilled out the spot welds to remove them. Same process as the body for the drawers: a couple of rounds of stripper, sand down to bare metal, etch prime and filler prime, both inside and outside. Removing the emblem from the body revealed a nice easter egg: a large swatch of the original finish, and the words 'Advertising metal display Co, Chicago USA' and the number 55. I'm assuming that this is the company that actually built the toolbox for Sears, and 1955 is the date of manufacture.

 

[hobbyistcollector]

@hobbyistcollector Let me know which specific dimensions you need, and I'd be happy to measure them for you.

What's the total height of the caster assembly and what are the wheel diameter/width measurements?

My cabinet has drill holes spaced 1" apart on center (width) and 2 1/8" apart on center (length). Looks like yours had the same drill holes in the bottom, but another set of holes was drilled for larger caster mounting plates somewhere along the way.

The progress on yours looks great so far! I just brought mine home this weekend and won't be starting the restoration for at least another month (rebuilding my workshop at the moment).

 

[Kelly144]

Hi guys, I picked up this vintage 1950's Craftsman toolbox over the weekend. It's in somewhat rough shape and I could use some advice putting it back to it's former glory.

As you can see, someone's rattle canned it red. I found it in the 1955 Sears catalog, and according to the description it's supposed to be 'machine gray'. Indeed, I found traces of gray under the side handle. The interior of the box and the rear portions of the drawers are grey as well.

Here's what got me confused: The paint under the side handle seems to have a hammered finish, but the stuff on the inside is a flat grey that looks like what you'd find on an old time file cabinet. Does anyone know what the original finish would be? I picked up gray and silver hammered paint from Ace, and the gray is close to the original color but not exact (original color seems to have been a touch more bluish) The silver is too bright.

Anyway, my plan is to strip off all the old paint using chemical strippers and sanders, use a very thin coat of bondo to fill in all the shallow dents and repaint it. If anyone knows what the original finish and color would have been, that would be super helpful. Thanks in advance!

In pics: S - Silver, G - Gray. The last picture shows the back of the drawer with what I believe is the original finish

Hi, I just found the exact rolling cabinet and am trying to restore it. I am missing one from cabinet drawer handle and have no clue where to find it. I would like to stay original and have handles re-chromed but would consider buying new replicas if i knew where to look. Any suggestions?

 

[Kelly144]

hi, another question - how did you remove that drawer?

 

[flyingblind]

Hi, I just found the exact rolling cabinet and am trying to restore it. I am missing one from cabinet drawer handle and have no clue where to find it. I would like to stay original and have handles re-chromed but would consider buying new replicas if i knew where to look. Any suggestions?

You might have to make a handle from scratch, finding one will probably be not possible. And the slide can be removed with a piece of thin flat stock/shim stock, slid in as you are pulling out the drawer.
ETA I used metal banding.

 

[Kelly144]

Much thanks for the reply. The problem with replacing handle is it’s 4 1/4” center to center spacing. If I could find three handles with that spacing that look similar -would just get those.

 

[Kelly144]

I can't believe it. I found the exact handle on Ebay. I’t coming in mail and I will take all three and the 13” side bar/handle and have them all re chromed. I am going to use red spray paint. Almost feel I should take it to auto shop and have it professionally done - the guage oof the metal is so great. I am now looking for an additional side handle for the opposite side. What’s with those springs inside cabinet? Do i have to find those as well?

 

[abie]

What’s with those springs inside cabinet? Do i have to find those as well?

Hi sorry for the late answer, I just saw this. The tool box has a mechanism that prevents the drawers from opening when the door of the bottom compartment is shut, the springs are a part of that.

 

[lwgana]

This is one I did with rustoleum hammered silver

That’s a gorgeous job, brother. I have a 1955 that looks like it was machinery gray. I’ll go back with hammered gray or hammered silver. Nice job!