About the only area's I would have had a problem painting was the top lip on the drawers. I solved that problem by barely opening the top drawer just so the top lip was exposed. Then I opened each drawer below just beyond the drawer above it so it looked like the steps on a stair case. I bought a quart of sherwin williams dimensions line acrylic enamel. Once the paint was reduced and hardener was mixed in it gave me 1-3/4 quarts of sprayable paint. This easily gave me 3 coats of paint (note I taped the back side of the boxes so they did not get fresh paint). On the spots where I had a good amount of bare metal exposed I used epoxy primer on for adhesion purposes. The only place I had to totally strip to the metal was the top box lid. It took a lot of heat in the fire and was covered in surface rust. First thing I did to the lid was use a wire wheel in my drill and get as much rust off as possible that way. Then I went over the lid with 80 grit sand paper. After that I used rust mort (a acidic compound) a product by SEM that converts rust back to metal on the lid,followed by epoxy primer. After epoxy primer I used a 2 part (hardener-primer) urethane primer on the whole box. Once sanded the urethane primer acts as a sealer to seal all that crappy factory paint underneath it. Then one advantage of using acrylic enamel is the primer can be finished out in 220 grit sand paper as opposed to base coat clear coat having to be finished in 400 grit. After sanding with the 220 and being sure all my imperfections were gone it was time to spray. Using the urethane primer made it to where all the old paint was sealed under the primer so mainly what I was sanding out was scratches and chips.
Yours turned out great, glad you saved some of the stickers.
I got a similar set that was in my grandfathers shop - tractor dealer.
He passed in 1990 and his shop sat basically unused for a long time. His shop was a quonset hut barn. A few years ago a tornado came through and basically blew the barn away. Fortunately, tools are heavy, so most of them stayed.
This set was his personal toolbox. The paint was still decent, but the tornado beat it up pretty good.
Here's how they look now, sitting next to my Craftsman box that I bought in '91 right after graduating from college.
His were made in 73, I don't think he bought them new (he was a big auction guy), but I remember them being in his shop when I was young.
