Al -
Most all 2-Bs have those scratches! :-) The new ones were painted, not
powder coated.
One thing that will help is to bake the paint. An hour or so in a 125 -
150 degree oven will really harden it up. If the XYL won't let you use
the kitchen oven for an hour or so, (not all that unusual!), a decent
job can be done in several hours with a cardboard box and a 100W light
bulb. But hurry, while you can still FIND a 100W light bulb!
I repainted a Teletype machine cabinet many years ago with spray paint,
baked the smaller pieces in the oven, and baked the big cabinet with
'brooder' (heat) lamps, moving them around to heat the entire cabinet
over a day or two. 30 years later that paint is still unscratched.
73, Garey - K4OAH
Glen Allen, VA
Drake 2-B, 2-C/2-NT, 4-B, C-Line&
TR-4/C Service Supplement CDs
<www.k4oah.com>
Schichler, Alfred (GE Energy Services) wrote:
I recently acquired a 2B that was in fairly decent condition, but the
cabinet needed a paint job to look good because it had several little
scratches and blemishes.
Anyway, after sanding the whole cabinet down, priming it, and spraying
it with Rustoleum Satin Black paint, It came out pretty nice looking,
I let it sit for close to a week before putting the radio back in the
cabinet.
The problem is, no matter how gently I put the radio back in the
cabinet, the paint on the inside bottom of the cabinet gets scratched
badly. Mostly in two places - bottom left and bottom right. Just the
front 3/4" or so. I originally thought it was the chassis scraping it,
but I found out it's mostly the bottom of the front panel. (the
edges were kind of sharp, but I subsequently sanded them lightly). If
I try touching up the scratched areas with a brush or Q-tip, those
spots are still very noticeable, and don't look too good.
After re-sanding and re-spraying the inside bottom several times, I
finally found out that if I put painter's tape along the inside bottom
(front) of the cabinet, I can slide the radio back into the cabinet
extremely carefully, and still have the paint intact. (I managed to do
it once anyway). Now I'm afraid of ever taking the radio back out of
the cabinet for fear of getting the paint scratched. I know the
original paint was much more durable, but I believe they used a
powder-type paint.
I'm not sure if the paint is ever going to harden to the point that it
won't easily be scratched, or should I maybe consider using an
expensive spray paint that is supposed to be real tough and actually
harden to the point that it can take a slight bit of abuse. I don't
have the luxury of having an oven, compressor, spray gun, or other
professional painting equipment.
Thanks for any help,
Al, WA2AS
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