It's hard to imagine no one has jumped in to help. This is what I do. Let me say first that sandblasting is not good for all things. A nice box like that needs to be handled with care. Soda blasting or lower pressure media blasting such as walnut shells would not warp or harden the metal.
Why not look up Cudachick on this forum and send it to her?
Zeke,
I've been looking at her work. Pretty amazing stuff. There are a few automotive projects farther down on the to-do list that her powder work would be absolutely perfect for. For these boxes, though, I'd really like to stick with paint.
We appear to live on opposite sides of the country, but is this the type of job you would take on?
You and I both brotha...........but, the offer stands.
Thank you, twertsy.
I would say you're not getting many takers on the the deal because you have mentioned you want them done really really good but haven't mentioned paying a really really good price.
I think I indicated my intent when I titled the thread.
Not trying to sound like a jerk[,] but depending on what you call really really good, a man could wind up with every bit of 20-60 hours wrapped up in that toolbox alone working out every minor warp in it, making it better than the day it was made. Then spray the perfect color match to the original color in the best automotive single stage paint. Afterwards it would be sanded/ buffed inside every nook and cranny by hand that a polisher won't reach. That is going to run into money, heck the polish job would probably be 15 hours at least because most of the inside would have to be done by hand.
Technically, a man could also shave off his eyelids, develop an addiction to being bitten in the ******** by small, venomous snakes, sell his family, leave behind all of his belongings, and apply to join Cirque du Soleil as an animal husbandry expert. Making such a suggestion might be fun (from a certain point of view), but it's not realistic to expect either that I'll pursue it
or that I'll accept the notion that in a black-and-white view of this situation my options are strictly limited to either being charged as much as the GDP of Switzerland in order to have a surer hand than mine media blast and paint a small metal box...or simply attempting to complete the task on my own without the needed measures of time, experience, tooling, or materials.
It is possible to stretch and milk a small job indefinitely and call it quality-added. It's even possible to charge for every minute of the process of stretching and milking. That's not what I'm after. Price is to be set by the qualified workman, and is a conversation I'll have with persons who are both capable of and interested in personally completing the jobs at hand.
People tend to overlook the fact that when we work on our own stuff, we put that time in because it's our own stuff. It would rarely, if ever, be economically viable to do that work in a business sense unless the customer had seriously deep pockets.
I understand what you are trying to say, but I don't agree with you on either point. People in general are very mindful of the notion that if you, as the owner of a job, want a job done to your own liking, quite often you must complete it yourself in order to get the desired result. It's become common language. This type of work (or any type of work) becomes economically viable in a business sense when a business is geared toward doing it. Have a 30's Cadillac at home, and need to have its transmission rebuilt and restored to factory condition? There is someone for the task. They won't complete it for free, but that's not what we're going for here.
Here's something I'd like to have restored, but can't justify spending the money on. It's and old water cooler/drinking fountain from the Zephyr Water Co. of Los Angeles. The glass jug inside was broken in transport....What do you think of this, Zeke?
Tucko,
That is a very nice water dispenser. It probably deserves its own separate restoration thread. Let's see what we can do about getting your posts on that topic moved there.
An expectation of perfection requires a suitably large wallet. It's a simple fact. There's nothing in that list, bar possibly the jack, which wouldn't cost far more than they're worth to be done to the level which the OP appears to want.