The Craftmans Shop > New from Old
Versatool Cabinets
awemawson:
It'll certainly help, but actually rotating it isn't quite as straightforwards as you might think - nowt to hold on to. I do have some powerful lifting magnets that might help tilting it but although it's thick I'm not sure that that panelling has enough meat for all the magnetic flux to be useful.
seadog:
You could put a piece of thick plate on the inside.
nrml:
Putting vintage steel cabinets on wheels is just going to increase its yuppie appeal. Better hide them deep in your workshop, well away from prying eyes.
awemawson:
At long last I have got round to sorting out the second Versatool cabinet for the Beaver TC20 CNC Lathe tooling and documentation.
Of the pair that I bought, one was in fair condition just needing a bit of cleaning up, but the second one had been painted blue over it's original silver hammer finish, and was rather tatty and scratched.
Firstly I gave it a really good clean up with 'Mr Muscle' to get rid of the oil and examine the over paint. I decided that if it was given a very good rubbing down with 'wet and dry' paper and soapy water it could stand another coat of silver hammer finish without the complete grit blasting that I had initially planned for it. This was slightly influenced by the fact that the weather still isn't good enough for outdoor grit blasting.
Saturday morning was very cold, but bright and sunny with no rain forecast, so the cabinet was wheeled out side, given a wipe down with a rag soaked in Industrial Thinners, and a coat of hammer finish paint applied. Note that this is NOT 'Hammerite', which since they changed the formulation I don't find any use at all. It is an industrial Xylene containing tough rough equivalent of the original Hammerite formulation.
I'd just about finished when the heavens opened :bang: Not rain but heavy hail :bang: Nothing for it but to leave it to it's fate. Needless to say there was rather more hammer effect than intended, and the doors were a real mess as they were the last bit I'd sprayed before the hail.
Fortunately this is very fast drying paint, and yesterday afternoon I was able to give it another vigorous rubbing down with wet and dry and get back to an acceptable finish for another coat of paint.
16:30 and the sun was shinning brightly, so out it came for another coat. Doors done first this time - I'd just finished then decided to blow over it's top - it didn't need painting as it is over lain by a 12 mm plywood insert, but I did ! Silly boy - just finished and, you guessed it, rain - only light this time but still rain. I gingerly wheeled it back into the workshop to dry off, and apart from a few blemishes to the top surface, and a very little bit to the door tops where they got a bit of over spray, I'm passing it out as acceptable.
awemawson:
So this morning (Sunday) I was down at the local B&Q collecting a suitable bit of 12 mm plywood. Literally half the weight of the original and the grain running the wrong way, but it's all that there was.
It's been cut to size and had it's first coat of yacht varnish - it will certainly get one more coat and likely a third over the next few days - in contrast the original looks extremely tatty !
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