Tooling Cabinets - restoration

[Micktoon]

Hi All , I have aquired some tooling cabinets but in a quite rough state so decided to give them the once over, as usual this has lead to a bigger job than first expected, here is the progress so far.
The photos are after I have steam cleaned about 30-40-50 years of oily crud off them.

The three cabinets, Grey one far end rough, blue one middle quite rough and the silver one closest not too bad. They are all Versatool cabinets, they seem to go by various names in general. As you can see in the silver cabinet they have swing out shelves, there are boards that fit into the shelf frames with cut outs for collets/ chucks etc, I have shelves and board for all of them. The shelves can also be altered height and gap wise as they fit into the holes on the vertical angle members.




I had got some H/D castors 100KG rating each castor so fitted them to the two tall cabinets, I still need more for the other cabinet, I am trying to get as many things as possible on wheels.




They all have wear and tear issues the worst part being the corners of the blue one, someone has been using the corners as a anvil for removing morse taper tooling probably with a knock out wedge.




The other thing was missing door locking rods and door stays missing to stop the doors opening more than 90 degrees. I got round and flat bar to make replacements.




Forged the ends down



Then bent and shaped the bars to fit.



Seem to do the job ok





Next was the sickening job of paint removal, the grey one had about five layers of old horrible paint, I was going to paint strip it off until I found out the all the nasty chemicals have been removed out of Nitromos paint stripper now so it no longer works. I decided to try a paint scraper with a carbide tip I got from a car boot sale, it worked but was hard work to say the least.





Next job , pieced in and welded up the damaged corners and a few holes that had been drilled in here and there.





Then hours and hours of DA (dual action) sanding to get all the rest of the paint off, Noisy nasy dirty work but I have had too many nasty surprises with old paint reacting over the years so now just do things that hard way and get to metal when I can.





Then filled in any dents and scrapes that were left.



Give them all a sand off and they are ready for primer, well the two tall ones, the smaller silver one is having castors fitted then sanded but this one should just need a good sand off as is in better condition.



I plan to get the last cabinet up to this stage then have a big tidy brush up of all the dust and mess then start painting.
Cheers Mick.

[doubleboost]

Why not just varnish them
Some tedious work you have put in there
John

[Mayhem]

Nice work Mick.

[f350ca]

Thats a lot of work but you'll have fine cabinets when your done.
Did similar to a set of parts bins a few years back, tore them down sanded and painted, good thing its not costing by the hour.

[TomG]

Nice job Mick.

Nothing beats the quality of that era. That is the reason why they are still around and serviceable.

Tom

[DaveH]

Wow Mick they do look nice and not even painted.
Really nice job

DaveH

[RobWilson]

Mick ,wondered what you had been up to

Rob

[awemawson]

Mick I hope that you've not got that nice Harrison L5 all dusty from the rubbing down :)

[Micktoon]

Hi Lads , thanks for the comments ,
Rob , I like to keep busy , every time I prepare something for painting I remember why I said I would never do it again last time
Andrew, I do have the Harrison covered over but only after I noticed it covered in dust still it will clean off.

Tom , you are dead right about the older gear and even within these three cabinets you can tell the grey one is the oldest as more heavy gauge metal and the blue one is next heavy and the silver one a touch less again but overall up until the point the silver one was made they seem to have stuck to the same basic design in most areas which I like , as why fix it if its not broke You can still get these cabinets new today I wonder if they will be as robust or spot welded thinner metal now ?

I have ordered more castors for cabinet 3 so will wait till they come to get more done.
Cheers Mick.

[krv3000]

good job mick