Wednesday, September 7, 2011

zinc alloy and the hidden riders of tomorrow

Compared to last year, there has been some serious downtime on this project over the last six months, but in the background I have been chipping away at the hardware. I've experimented in the past with doing my own zinc plating on bolts and whatnot, but it never really came out that well. I decided that I wanted a more professional look for the hardware that would be visible. The key to getting a great finish is investing some time in getting the parts as clean as possible.

I used a pair of coarse and fine wire wheels to convert...
all this rusty hardware to...
Some pretty nice looking metal.
and this...
into this.

The thing is, when you start looking around for hardware and small parts to clean up, and you have the components of a 40 year old car to pick from, you can find plenty of material. Everything got a good going over with the wire brush, and then I took the more difficult-shaped parts over to my friend Chuck's workshop and hit them with the media blaster.


All packed up and ready to drop off at EPS in Hayward:


One week later:

2 comments:

  1. Wow! Thats some meticulous cleaning with a wire wheel. Those parts turned out great!

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  2. Those are some sharp looking parts! Someone spent some long hrs at the wire wheel!

    rj

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