Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

After weeks of on again off again thinking about this stage of the project, I finally committed to starting it this morning.

Up to this point in time, 98% of my military vehicle and restoration work has involved, stripping, repairing and repainting steel items. The front panel of the Coil, Aerial Tuning No. 2 A , as I noted earlier, is 1/8-inch aluminum Plate and the reliable green chromate primer I had last used for aluminum nearly 50 years ago, has all but disappeared from the consumer market.

Adding to that was another concern that my usual approach to stripping away old paint was by use of a pair of old steel putty spatulas and touching up with sandpaper as needed. I had visions of these blades cutting into the much softer aluminum and creating no end of problems, so decided the safer approach was to sand down the old paint carefully before the repaint work started. This idea came about as I was going to have to hand sand the small spot welded reinforcing plate behind the tuning knob due to the many weld dent in it.

The first photo today is the starting image of the bare front panel assembly prior to any sanding and the next two are various stages as I worked down through the Gloss Navy Grey top coat, a grey primer coat and the original initial Green Chromate primer.

The last photo is of the new base coat of a modern (hopefully reliable) flat white aluminum primer. I shall let that hard cure for a week and then give it an overcoat of flat grey primer.



David

[David Dunlop]

With 48 hours of dry time out of the way this morning, I gave the front panel a ‘2nd coat’ of primer, but this coat was the grey primer needed to go under the final colour top coat. If everything goes well, I should be able to get that done next weekend.


David