Card Cabinet Restoration

[dfiler]

Motivated by some really great projects seen here on garage journal, I spent the past two months watching craigslist. My goal was to score a heavy duty card catalog and use it for tool/part storage. I am happy to report... mission accomplished.

I was lucky enough to find a heavy duty, steel card cabinet made by The Security Steel Equipment Corporation of Avenel N.J. It has 8 drawers with 3 rows of cards per drawer. The first day it was listed, I snapped it up immediately. At $100, it wasn't an excellent deal but it was exactly what I wanted.

The cabinet was somewhat rusted and frankly looked pretty bad. I wasn't worried though, it is heavy gauge steel and I assumed it would clean up nicely. There are full dividers between every drawer and reinforcing square bar vertically on the inside of both left and right sides. Tiny swivel casters were added at some point and are useful but undersized for my liking.

It was fun to see the old index cards that had been lost years ago. There were receipts from the 1920s and even a card dated 9-20-16. Wow! That card could have been lost for many years.

 

[dfiler]

The first step in restoration was to vacuum and inspect the entire cabinet. This is when I found the cards mentioned earlier.

I also discovered that some of the rust wasn't rust at all, but rather a wood grain painted finish. The entire cabinet was originally painted like wood grain. Later on, when cleaning the cabinet, I discovered that it had a shellac finish over whatever had been used to paint the brown and black grain.

The plan was to wire wheel off the rust but I couldn't find my wire wheels. No problem, I'm stubborn enough to brush off the majority of rust with a metal bristle brush. The brush had very few bristles by the time it was done. Then a hand sander was used to remove the remaining rust and rough up the paint for refinishing.

Cleaning the drawer tracks revealed not ball bearings, but small metal wheels instead. The main load bearing wheels for each drawer are heavily worn but still work quite well. The wheel tracks have slight indents so **** the drawer closed the last quarter inch. Quite an ingenious design really.

After sanding and vacuuming the entire cabinet again, 3 coats of rustoleum spray primer were applied, waiting about 20 minutes between coats.

A first coat of safety red rustoleum enamel was rolled on immediately after priming. I then waited 2 more days before applying a second coat.

It doesn't perfectly match the color of my masterforce toolchest but I really do like how it turned out. I decided to leave the finish on the drawer fronts. While it was partly because I was tired of painting, I think it actually looks better with the vintage drawers with all their wear and tear.

 

[dfiler]

I forgot to take photos through much of the painting process and haven't documented the final result. Here are a couple "after" photos but stay tuned for more.

The best thing I discovered... all the nail and screw boxes available today, they fit perfectly in a card catalog. It is almost too good to be true.

Was it worth the effort? My opinion is yes. Go buy yourself an old card cabinet immediately!

 

[CNGsaves]

Even at $100 that's a mighty fine score . . . . . looks to be fabulous construction . . . and it had to be surviving nearly 100 years !!!

Yep, you earned a bona fide . . . . YOU **** !!!

I'd sure recommend saving that logo at top of cabinet (ie don't remove or paint over). Maybe you can come up with an oval shape template to paint around it . . . ie fade / blend the edges.

Looking forward to seeing how this turns out!!

 

[nine4gmc]

CNG, Looks like he painted over the logo but member Thundermug here can probably replicate that water transfer logo from a pic and print him another.

dfiler, excellent job and I like the rustic drawers on the fresh cabinet idea, I may be stealing that one soon

 

[dfiler]

What? No comments on the downhill bike? (That's what I was taking pictures of at the time)

Canfield Brothers F1 Jedi... no words can express the awesomeness.

I thought about preserving the logo but didn't bother because it was almost invisible in real life. The photo was adjusted to make it more visible. Also the logo had a rivet through it where another tag had been at one point. Sorry preservationists, I slacked off on that one.

It took about 6 different chemicals before finally finding something that improved the finish of the drawer fronts. I think this is because it is shellac and easily hazes up if the wrong chemical is used. Rubbing alcohol turns it a milky white.

In the end, I was surprised to find that WD40 removed the haze and left a semi-gloss finish. The shellac is old, darkened and cracked but now that just blends into the wood grain and bits of rust.

I'll try to follow-up tonight with pictures of the end result.

 

[Jere]

Great work! and great score! I have been keeping any eye out for them but they almost never turn up and then when they do they are way too much.

 

[sam_i02]

Very nice work!
I scored a much smaller one of these for $10, but it is missing a couple drawers. It will be a project for this winter and I have to figure out how to make some drawers that look decent.

 

[zkling]

Great job on the restoration That looks very well built. Compare it to what $100 will buy you in a tool box new at the store.

What are the dimensions of the cabinet? Hard to scale from the pics. Just be careful with those casters. That cabinet full will probably weigh in at a pretty hefty sum. To me those casters just don't inspire a while lot of confidence.

 

[PCO6]

Great work! and great score! I have been keeping any eye out for them but they almost never turn up and then when they do they are way too much.

I bought 2 from a used office furniture liquidator about 2 years ago. I had a choice from about 40 of them. I have seen very few since then and wish I had bought 2 more.

 

[Ray Kelly]

Sweet!! And you did a great job refinishing them, too!!