It Begins!

[Stephen Stumbo]

Sometime's you have the chance to get that awesome piece of equipment you need for your shop at a great price, but something about it needs work. This happened to me recently, I was able to score a nice Lincoln welder for a great price, but it had been very poorly repainted in green.

 

I really didn't like either the look or the quality of the paint job, and as this is a great welder that should outlast me, I decided it deserved a better paint job.

 

 

This is how it looked orginally.

 

 

 

First you need to pick a good paint and a way to apply it. I have a spray gun so I decided to use it instead of rattle cans, cheaper and better control that way, a project this size would have used quite a handful of rattle cans.

 

As for paint, I decided to X-O Rust, an oilbased paint, similar to Rustoleum, it's sold at Truevalue stores, and as I work at one, I was able to get a decent price on it (Money's always tight, spend it wisely). I looked at an industrial PPG Fastdry35 enamal, but decided it wasn't worth the extra bucks.

 

To spray X-O rust you need to thin it, it was recommended to me to use mineral spirits, that's what I'm using, and I've had good results. Also, if your using an oil base paint, you can use a product called japan dryer to help cut dry time, sometimes by as much as 1/2.

 

 

When repainting pieces like this, you need not strip off all the paint, but you do need to have the surface smooth, I stripped off all the green paint as it would clash with the red, thus making it harder to cover, and most of the old red, making sure that any paint left on was smooth to the surface, thus I don't have old paint sticking out in the new paint job. For this task I used a palm sander, wirebrush on an anglegrinder, and some hand sandpaper for those tiny areas.

 

 

This is how it looked once I get it all prepped (except for taping off the places I don't want painted)

 

 

 

 

 

You do want to use a primer, especially if it's a red finish coat your using, the grey primer helps bring out the red in the final coat better (don't ask me why, but it does).

 

 

This is how I stand now, primer coat on, and I'll be doing at least one red coat tomorrow.

Edited December 23, 2012 by Stephen Stumbo

[B Finnigan]

Those old welders are certainly worth maintaining. My Powercraft 230 is 52 years old and still going strong. The metal strip with the power setting numbers wore away so I just put them back on with a Sharpie.

[Sam Salvati]

good work man, it's nice to clean up old machinery and give it a new life, I think it helps the machine last another 20 years with a new coat of paint and some TLC. What about fixing the switch?

[shawn patterson]

Im a welder.. At work i have all manner of high dollar high powered Millers and i love them. But at home, the only one i own is a 70's era Lincoln and it does great.

[Stephen Stumbo]

I got the first coat of red on today, now we're starting to look more like a Lincoln!

 

 

 

[Stephen Stumbo]

Alright, Got her all put together today, but before we get to the finished pics, some "under the hood" pics were requested, so we'll kick it off with those.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've got some more, just lemme know if you wanna see the rest. Now to the grand finale!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MSchneider]

Wow, that looks great!