SignalZero
Well-known member
A couple weeks ago I picked up this top and bottom set up off craigslist for $60. Thanks to jakemac, I found the top box was date coded May 1980 and the bottom is April 1980. A previous owner had spray painted the entire left side of the top box black, for some reason, and the bottom box had some overspray and a little surface rust. The keys were also missing and the steel casters were pretty well worn, so the brakes barely worked. Otherwise, the boxes were in pretty good shape. The drawers slid nicely and the paint on the top box was still decent. It had some Saturn logos stenciled on the right side. I'm not big on patina, but I thought it'd be neat to keep the Saturn logos' especially since Saturn is defunct and it part of the boxes' history, maybe from the '90's. So I decided to do a "half restoration" by cleaning it up and painting the parts which required it.
I sanded the black spray paint off the side of the top box and taped it off. The parts that needed paint were primed and painted with Rustoleum Sunrise Red. It's not a perfect match, but it's pretty dang close for an off-the-shelf color.
I used rubbing and polishing compound on the rest of the top box as well as all of the drawers; they all shined up really nice, especially the top box and the "door" for the bottom box. I had to sand, prime, and respray the whole exterior of the bottom box as it looked like a lot of the red was a bad spray paint job. I pulled the slides, cleaned them in the parts washer and installed them and the drawers with wheel bearing grease.
Today at the flea market I found a new set of casters, exactly like the ones on my 2007 Craftsman box. It was complete luck that I came across them and picked the whole set up for $20.
I looked for a replacement lock set from Sears, but for this particular pair I would have to piece a working pair together from 2 kits ($40 total) or order the parts individually from searspartsdirect (~$16 a piece). A local locksmith told me he could cut the keys using the lock #'s for $10 a piece and I'd get two keys for each lock. So I cleaned them up with the Dremel and took them in. When I picked them up a couple hours later the bottom lock only had 1 key. Long story short, they miscalculated their costs and instead of sticking to their word and eating th cost to stick to the deal, they figured I should compromise with them without having asked me.
Either way, here's the finished product. They're not showroom new, but not bad for 36 years old and they should serve me well for a long time since I'm not one to beat up on my boxes.
I sanded the black spray paint off the side of the top box and taped it off. The parts that needed paint were primed and painted with Rustoleum Sunrise Red. It's not a perfect match, but it's pretty dang close for an off-the-shelf color.
I used rubbing and polishing compound on the rest of the top box as well as all of the drawers; they all shined up really nice, especially the top box and the "door" for the bottom box. I had to sand, prime, and respray the whole exterior of the bottom box as it looked like a lot of the red was a bad spray paint job. I pulled the slides, cleaned them in the parts washer and installed them and the drawers with wheel bearing grease.
Today at the flea market I found a new set of casters, exactly like the ones on my 2007 Craftsman box. It was complete luck that I came across them and picked the whole set up for $20.
I looked for a replacement lock set from Sears, but for this particular pair I would have to piece a working pair together from 2 kits ($40 total) or order the parts individually from searspartsdirect (~$16 a piece). A local locksmith told me he could cut the keys using the lock #'s for $10 a piece and I'd get two keys for each lock. So I cleaned them up with the Dremel and took them in. When I picked them up a couple hours later the bottom lock only had 1 key. Long story short, they miscalculated their costs and instead of sticking to their word and eating th cost to stick to the deal, they figured I should compromise with them without having asked me.
Either way, here's the finished product. They're not showroom new, but not bad for 36 years old and they should serve me well for a long time since I'm not one to beat up on my boxes.
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