Can you stand another Vidmar redo?

[cbacres]

Finally got around to painting & tweaking the 11 drawer Vidmar I bought last May. Still need to grease the bearings with some lithumin grease.

Some of the drawes were a little stif and hard to go back in the last few inches. All that was needed was the machine bolts on the rails needed to be tightened.

I just wiped down the whole box with mineral spirits and sanded with 180 grit and came back with some 220. The paint is Rust Oleum 7400 alked enamel. Lays down nice with the spray gun, had to thin a little. Color is
safety blue.

Now I'll be able to transfer this weekend when I blow apart the shop to clean up.
Started with this.

 

[PETE14]

Loolks great. Nice job.

Pete

 

[rshadd]

Lookin' good. Well done.

 

[mustanginky]

after having cs, and oc training last weekend, the last thing i want to see is the words "inert OC" lol.

may i ask what your line of work or hobby is?

 

[brianpgriset]

Looks great. Can't wait to see this finished. It's good motivation for me to finish my Vidmar resto.

 

[cbacres]

I'll post photos when I get it back together. I still need to figuire out the handles, They are plastic and I will probably just paint black for now.

I have another 11 drawer that I hope to get done around the holiday, it will longer as it has some bent drawers.

Then its on to the bench high Lista and what I think may be an Equipto.

It'll be the last time I'll have to mess with boxes as these will outlast me .

 

[Bull]

I can always stand another industrial box/cabinet thread.

The handles on the Vidmar are plastic?!

 

[cbacres]

Bull, some of them are plastic, the rest are alum.

I never seen this before on these boxes. I'll look for some more alum.

 

[Bull]

Bull, some of them are plastic, the rest are alum.

I never seen this before on these boxes. I'll look for some more alum.

That's odd. I thought they were always aluminum.

 

[cbacres]

Here it is almost finished. I'm very pleased with the finish of the paint. I cleaned every bearing with brake clean until the bearings spun freely. I used lithium grease with a needle point on a grease gun to lube each bearing. About four shots for each is plenty. I used a Zep Dry Moly lube on the rollers and a sealed bearings, just to get a little lube on the shaft. I also found that cleaing the tracks ( wire brushing) made a big diffrence on the smoothness of the drawers. I still need to repair one bearing that is loose on the track frame. I need to tack weld the shaft as it has worked loose.
This has turned out to be a good box. The next one I have to do will take a little more tweaking.
I was looking to use Permatex Ultra Slick, but could not find in time. It may be all that is needed on these bearings.

Cleaning tracks and coating with silicon spray.

Greasing one of the six open bearings

Back together.

One of three ways to finish pulls. I'm leaning hard on the semi gloss black on top.

As I mentioned early, most of the pulls are plastic. If anyone knows of some aluminum ones, I need about seven of them.

Craig
Next I have some left over laminate floor underlayment that I'll use for liners.
Then I'll filler up.

 

[nine4gmc]

freakin sweet!

 

[Bull]

Looks really nice.

Personally, I like the aluminum looking pull, but you need to go with what your eye says is best.

 

[alpinewhite]

Any updates, OP?

 

[cbacres]

My ongoing Vidmar redo

Well it's been a little while since I've been here, but I haven't done anything new except buy a bunch of boxes. I'm gearing up to redo all 12 of my Vidmars and Listas, and a Vidmar shelf cabinet. They all won't be done right away and progress will be slower than I like, buts that's life.

Anyway, here's the newest box I picked up last week.

It's a 14 drawer Vidmar that I could pass up up, even after the seller said it was sold. I had bought two others a few weeks back and looked at this one while there, but for some stupid reason didn't buy at the time.

So I called the seller to see if the other buyer picked up, he had not and by the end of the day I paid for it and picked up next morning.
Here it is.


It has plenty of dividers.


This completes my Vidmar/Lista line up, I'll will only have one drawer unit that's not this style, everything else will be gone. So I actually freed up some floor space, that's my justification to myself.

I'm gearing up to clean and lube the bearings in all of them, some 500 plus bearings, not at once of course. I've been reading up on diffrent grades of grease and I'm trying the Super Lube syn grade 1 grease. Vidmar recommend Ultra Slick syn, which is a grade 2.I'll try that next. Can't really tell the difference between the two. My thought is to use a lite lube as its does operate better than a standard wheel bearing grease I used four years ago. I've seen the use of 3in1 oil by some guys whole deal with these day in out. What set me on this trek was the 13 Drawer I picked up for Shorty was very smooth operation and the bearings had grease, but a very lite grease.

I'll be painting each one with Rust Oleum quick dry alkyd that's designed for fleet vehicles.

Anyway, I'll update soon on that progress.

 

[fatfillup]

Sweet, can't beat them for efficient storage

 

[Richard Cranium]

love the lista's

 

[cbacres]

Sweet, can't beat them for efficient storage

It still amazes me how much a single drawer will take compared to the box I took the stuff out of.

love the lista's

Yes, I've become addicted to them.

 

[cbacres]

I'm updating this thread on a 60" wide Vidmar I just repainted and put to use.
In short, here's what I started with.

A couple in progress photos. Sanded and ready for primer.

Primer coat on.

Lubing the bearings with Superlube

Finished product


Please visit my shop thread below for more photos and details.
Thanks for stopping in.

 

[LXCam]

WOW that turned out flipping killer! What a huge difference. Are all of them matching and this will just be a refresh?

 

[cbacres]

LX, thanks! this is number one of 13, so I have 12 to go. Some are Listas, but will have the same theme. It's been a long time coming for me. I did another earlier in this thread, but it is a diffrent shade of blue, it'll be repainted the same.
I need to restore my photos from fuk bucket.

 

[ADSR]

Nice work! I dig the blue.

 

[cbacres]

Nice work! I dig the blue.

Thanks, I looked for the blue for a while, it's a mix from Rust Oleums chart.

 

[Strouty]

I do like that color combo!!!!!

 

[cbacres]

Old yeller being sanded. Box number two of thirteen.

This one was painted by the PO, not a bad job, but a lot of runs that needed to be taken down.

 

[pcmeiners]

"Thanks, I looked for the blue for a while, it's a mix from Rust Oleums chart."

Nice color. What do you mean by mix? what colors are involved?

 

[cbacres]

"Thanks, I looked for the blue for a while, it's a mix from Rust Oleums chart."



Nice color. What do you mean by mix? what colors are involved?

I had a color chip chart, can't put my hands on it right now. I got it from a Rust Oleum supplier. I think most of the industrial dealers would have.

Rust Oleum has base tints just like you'd get at Home Depot for house paint. They mixed mine from the chart number.

I think mine is 1853, I'd have to look at the invoice. Been a year.

Here is the one I picked from

 

[cbacres]

I finally found the lighter weight Superlube grease to use on the Vidmars/Listas drawer bearings. This latest grease is a NGLI 0 viscosity rating. Typical grease is a 2.

The reason behind the effort to get this particular grease is to get the best operation of these drawer that I can. The regular #2 grease is just too heavy in my experience and you can feel the difference. There's recommendations of using 3in1 oil because it's a lite oil and permits easy and smooth operation of the drawers. I've used this also and it works fine. But I'm just overkill in a lot of things I do and with around 400 bearings to eventually clean and lube, I only want to do this once and have it last a long time. After researching and reading up on this, the synthetic grease won't dry out like regular grease and the grade 0 should cling to the bearings and still be low friction. The last round of cabinets I bought has a lite grease and the drawer action is incredibly smooth, this is what prompted me to find this grease.



The tube on the left is a #1 grade, but it didn't seem lite enough. The tube on the right is the #0 grade, which is quite a bit looser by feel.


A side by side of the two grades.


I also called Vidmar and asked what they used, white lithium grease I was told. The Superlube is supposed to not attract dirt according to their specs. I guess time will tell.

I realize this effort may seem extreme, but I hardly have time to get this done now, much less later with removing loaded drawers to regrease the bearings.

I'll update how this works soon, I have a feeling there'll be a box I can try this out on.

 

[pcmeiners]

Yes the 1853 matches one of my blue cabinets. 1834 matches another cabinet, I prefer the 1853 color. Thanks for the info.

 

[cbacres]

I just wanted to update where I bought the Superlube from as a few have asked.

MSC is the only place I found that has the Superlube in the 0 grade and they ding you on shipping, but unless you're buying a case, it's the only place.

Good luck and here's to smooth drawers.