A few months ago, I started this project with part 1. It has been slow going!
I started stripping the loose paint and rust from the toolbox with wire brushes. That part was easy! Paint and rust was flying, I thought I would make quick work of this thing and have a shining show piece in no time.
I bought a pack of foam sanding pads, fairly low grit, though I don't know the exact specifications. I have had several hand sanding sessions over the last few months, probably twenty hours or so total, just getting the outside stripped. The paint has now been mostly removed, but those rusted areas that I mentioned in Part 1 are very concerning.
The rust is very deep and has pitted the metal.
There are also areas of oxidation that are raised up above the metal, where chemistry has converted it into something harder than the original metal.
I sanded until it felt like my arm was going to fall off with not much to show for the effort. I got discouraged and hadn't touched the toolbox again for the last couple of months.
I got an e-mail today from a fellow toolbox restorer inquiring about updates. So, here we are! Today, I finally gave in and threw an electric palm sander in to the mix. I put on a sheet of 60 grit paper and went to work.
Textured areas before (sorry for the blurry pictures)
And after the electric sander
Significant improvement in a very short amount of time. Maybe an hour of going over the whole toolbox with the electric sander. You can't argue with results like that!
So, in future updates, I will approach the inside of the box, which is painted and rusted exactly the same as the outside, only in a much more confined space, along with a little shelf welded in to hold the top tool tray. That will be much more awkward to try and work around. The Dremel will definitely be involved in stripping the inside and grinding away in all the joints in the various pieces of metal. Also, I need to do some more research and figure out how to approach those pitted areas that are still full of rusted metal. Rust never sleeps! If I were to just cover it up with filler and paint, it would be no time before the rust had taken over again, undoing all this hard work.
More updates to come in [hopefully] quicker fashion.