A while back, I posted about a
mostly complete SK 1/4" set I'd found, in a home made wooden box. Our GS host bmwrd0 sent me a spinner and a small box to complete the set in exchange for other goodies. The box he sent was less than pristine, by his admission, so it needed a little cleanup. To protect it's homeliness, neither he nor I took any before pictures. IT was dented, bent, rusty and had lost most of its exterior paint. I spent some time on and off straightening it up, taking the bow out of the lid and bottom, using adjustable wrenches to smooth the side rails, couple of taps on the ASO to square up the corners. Degreased in SG, little dip in Evaporust to help with one corner that would not yield the rust, some sanding and other abrasive methods, removing all the paint that seemed inclined to come off, then started to paint it. [BTW, I hate spray can paint, and I think it's mutual.]
I planned on following the regimen of black wrinkle paint on the base coat, then top coat it with the Signal Corp green from Midwest Military. The VHT paint suggested a warm day would work best, so I had to wait a while for an 80° day with sun, a rarity in my corner of the world. Read the directions, 3 heavy coats at 5 minute intervals, feel free to overcoat it you don't get enough wrinkling. Sprayed on 3 coats, horizontal, vertical, and angled, and a few minutes after, noticed I was getting wrinkled paint, but irregular wrinkles. So I went back, and tried to recoat between the wrinkled area, got nothing new to wrinkle. And the base paint that I had not completely removed was starting to peel at the edges. Argh. I was hoping to do a wrinkled exterior, and smooth interior, so I let it go, and moved on to the SC green overpaint. I was kinda surprised there were no directions on the can, or easily available on line to tell me recoat time, but since I wanted wrinkles, I didn't much care.
The green went on easy, the first coat was quite thin, but built quickly. Unfortunately, the texture and lack thereof from the VHT seemed to telegraph through the SC green, giving a less than pleasing final product. But it is head and shoulders above where it was when I got it. So, I am punting for now, unless another sunny warm weekend pops up, when I may try a quick sand and repaint. But the tools are off the bench, out of the hokey wooden box, and look quite at home in their new digs. Thanks again to bmwrd0 for the box and spinner, it looks nice and full in the box.
Did I mention I hate spray can paint?
The box will now go live in
the larger SK box I have, after the paint has a had a bit more time to cure.
Those auctions happened weekly in a large building outside of Iowa City. People would bring in their stuff and lay it out on long rows of tables and auctioneers would move down the rows until it was all sold. They would start off with the larger items and then let people bid for their choice of what was left, so you did not know whether you and your competition were bidding on the same item! After that, they would let people bid on the remains of each particular lot. It was a lot of fun.
