Restore: Paperboy: 'Exclusive!' - Restore with enhanced side art

[griffindodd]

Griff, I think your side art will be a splendid upgrade. I think it'll look better without chrome. Kudos on your choice.

Thanks bro let's see how it all pans out.

Today us time for electrical magicalness tub building. Here's the bits and pieces


Fitting the plastic gutter guard inside the tub to stop shorts. Stripped the mini clamps of their rubber insulate and wired them up high above the electrolyte line


Drop the electrodes between the two and clamp them


Wire up the suspending gantry for the pieces to be treated


Suspending the piece to be treated from the negative gantry. This is the cap from the top of the paperboy handlebars


Mixed my electrolyte solution of 1 tabkespoon washing soda per gallon of water . The tub holds 3 gallons but I just made 2


Connect the charger to the poles, positive Ti the bath electrodes and negative to the piece being bathed. Submerge the piece in the electrolyte


Everything's ready to go!

So I flicked the switch and......







Nothing

Turns out my 'smart' charger doesn't like the setup and refuses to give out any current. So I'm off to take it back to the store and look for a 'dumber' power source.

Well you live and learn

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[griffindodd]

Ohhh birthday gift from Mom, she knows what I need


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[Nephasth]

Ohhh birthday gift from Mom, she knows what I need

Sprinkles?

[jmike]

Ohhh birthday gift from Mom, she knows what I need


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Sweet!!  Happy birthday Griff.

 

[griffindodd]

Thanks man, its not until the 21st but its always nice to get a gift for the tool kit

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[griffindodd]

OK power supply changed, thank goodness for the local Fry's.


BUBBLES BUBBLES I SEE BUBBLES!


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[Slig]

Way cool man! Love the art! I can't wait to see this finished.

[griffindodd]

Lots of goop coming to the top after almost 2 hrs


Pulled the piece out and took a wire brush to it, the paint is starting to dissolve away


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[griffindodd]

Well its working and I got this far before I started blowing fuses on the 6A supply. As the conductive surface area increases I assume so does the amp draw.


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[Le Chuck]

Griff, that process looks really labor intensive.  To strip old paint or powdercoat (that's the goal here right?) I use Jasco Aerosol Stripper or a similar strong rattle can stripper available at your local bigbox.  I stripped R2's dome in an hour total and it was cold that day (45).  If it's above 70 in your spray area the stuff should lift off pretty easy.  I wipe off the first coat of stripper after 15 minutes and only remove what paint comes off with the rag.  Then I immediately reapply for 20 more and had fantastic results.  The paint falls off leaving bare metal - and in that case it was powdercoat, not the easiest stuff to remove. My total expenditure to strip the dome to bare metal with no sanding and only light scraping...$8 and one hour.

I might be missing an advantage to the process but your electrical magicalness seems to be way less magical and way more work. 

[griffindodd]

Yeah man you are right, it was a fun experiment but its pretty messy expensive and mostly useless lol. I'm going to return the power supply and use the money for an old toaster oven from CL for my powder coating.

Also found a local guy to nickel coat the handlebars, said he'd do it for about $70

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[rablack97]

Yeah I was looking for the reasoning behind the process myself.  Paint stripper and elbow grease...

Man your getting the tattoo addiction, Revolution was your first tat, now your adding onto with new tats....

This is like an OND II thread, 2 Mcgyver's doing weird stuff for simple tasks....

Well i've got my tickets for the 3rd installment of Griff's Arcade Whips.....

[griffindodd]

Yay Rablack glad to see you back.

Yep these processes may be complicated and not always work the best but its a big part of my learning curve. While I love building the cabinets they really are exercises in teaching me to be a better craftsman. The restoration skills are especially fascinating to me as you can use them in so many places. So its all good, I'm having fun and building my skills as well as my tool collection lol.

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[rablack97]

No i gotcha, just giving you crap....

Well it looks like the craftsman has always been in the genes......

I'm always looking at your work i just don't post as much due to work....

Experiment on man, its a joy and learning experience to see what you do next......

 

 

[PL1]

I might be missing an advantage to the process but your electrical magicalness seems to be way less magical and way more work.

AFAIK, electrolysis is better for removing rust than stripping paint.

As always, it's a matter of choosing the best available tool in your arsenal for the job at hand.


Scott

[mcseforsale]

Either use Aircraft Stripper (it's the strongest stuff I've used), or to de-rustify, use oxalic acid.  It's called deck-wash at the home depot.  Get the crystals and put some in water...a cup at a time, until you see some action.  Will not hurt paint, or chrome.

For chrome, 0000 steel wool is good, too. 

AJ

[griffindodd]

Figured I'd clean up something else I used to like spending my time doing in the eighties


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[griffindodd]

Strippers make everything better


Pffft only 15 mins and no chance of electrocution and you call that fun?


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[Le Chuck]

 

I love stripper jokes.  Looks nice in the buff too!

[griffindodd]

Pulling apart the controller.

Contacts on the switches are soldered


Hard to know if these are original or not, good shape though

Ugh. Looks like fix it Felix has been here


Wiring is pretty worn I may have to remake this loom


This thing is built like a tank but I guess it needs to be


Not strong enough though, looks like we need a reweld


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[griffindodd]

Ready for the trip to the plating shop


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[mcseforsale]

Yeah, I need to pull mine down and clean it up too..



Or, I could ride this:



AJ

Figured I'd clean up something else I used to like spending my time doing in the eighties


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[griffindodd]

That bmx is schweet

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[mcseforsale]

Thanks.  It's a full restore of my old show bike in this pic:



Took me almost 3 years to source the tires.

AJ

That bmx is schweet

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[griffindodd]

Nice bro, I was never good enough for that madness but I did regularly crush my nuts on my crossbar jumping down flights of stairs on a regular basis

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[mcseforsale]

Yeah, that's the ramp that took me off vert forever.  15 feet to face.  I lost about 3 days on that one.  Now that I'm in my 40s all the old connective tissue injuries that I didn't know I got (because of the 7+ concussions) are starting to rear up.  Old is fun, no?

AJ

[griffindodd]

The older you are the better you were

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[griffindodd]

Pulled the boards from the monitor. Time to get them shipped off to Chad at ArcadeCup to see if he can save them.


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[mcseforsale]

Pretty crispy!  Amazing that the fuse is still working..

Can't wait to see his work.

AJ

Pulled the boards from the monitor. Time to get them shipped off to Chad at ArcadeCup to see if he can save them.


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[griffindodd]

I might be missing an advantage to the process but your electrical magicalness seems to be way less magical and way more work.

I guess the etching is a good way of cleaning really intricate parts when it may be hard to get right in there with any physical mediums. I'll hang on to the tub, you never know when I'm feel the need to play with electricity in water 

[griffindodd]

Started to strip down the PSU for some love, these things are not very user friendly at all




I really want to preserve the stickers while restoring the metal, not sure on the best approach



The underside of the brick looks great but the top needs some attention



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[mcseforsale]

Test with 0000 steel wool.  When I do chrome BMX parts, the 0000 usually leaves them alone, or at least allows me some room for error.  Here's an example



Here's a upclose of the shop sticker...I REALLY scrubbed this frame:


This might take off the zinc coating, though.

AJ

[griffindodd]

Hrmm, I don't think that paper serial sticker is going to stand up to that

[griffindodd]

First printing original manuals arrived today with an Atari coin box. The manuals are in fantastic condition


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[griffindodd]

After chatting with my wife last night I came to the decision that this cab is going to be strictly coin operated and all coins that go into it will go into our daughter's college fund, even friends that want to play when they come over will have to bring their piggy bank. 

[Nephasth]

Sounds like you need a change machine for guests!



I've got nearly all my machines set up for any sized tokens. Even though there's a large Krampus bowl full of tokens in the game room, most guest still moan n' groan about having to use tokens to play the games... lazy asses.

[griffindodd]

Well they can always go home and play on their arcade machines.....oh wait, no they can't 

Lol to be honest it's more to force me into putting extra into her fund, so I figured thsi was a good way to do it and very very wife approved. I may consider doing this for all classics moving forward.

[rablack97]

I may consider doing this for all classics moving forward.

Yep addiction......

Although i like your addiction, cause i get to see pretty photos on a daily basis....

[griffindodd]

cause i get to see pretty photos on a daily basis....

And, after all, isn't that what really matters 

[rablack97]

So true...........nice work as always man....

One of these days i'll get back in the garage, been being a nerd and fooling around with Eagle and photoshop....

Looking at doing the ms pacman design with an xbox, move the sticks to one side instead of the ends with a trackball in the center....tilt the screen up a bit.....

Still thinking about it, but thats the next adventure...