Gideon's Make-Over: The Stripping and the Priming
 

Well, I bit the bullet and decided to try my hand at repainting Gideon, my poor battered 201-2. We've gotten past the easy parts, stripping off the paint and priming him for the paint, but there's still a lot of work to be done!

The Stripping:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-o...1%2520copy.jpg
Gideon with the paint I'm planning on using.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-g...3%2520copy.jpg
It's really amazing--the paint stripper got on a little bit of his serial number, and took the 'brassy' color right off it! I wonder what it was... Unfortunately I wound up having to remove the rest of the brassy color on the serial number, but does anyone know if that's normal?

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-n...4%2520copy.jpg
A little rust popped up when I was wiping him down... Good thing I'm using Rustoleum!

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-H...5%2520copy.jpg
Much as I loved the flavor of the signatures that were scrawled into his finish, I'm glad they didn't go all the way through to the metal. I don't have the materials to sand him that smooth!


The Priming:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-g...6%2520copy.jpg
All primed and ready to go!

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-W...7%2520copy.jpg
Forgot to cover his model number and serial number... Luckily I was able to clean them off with a quick application of paint remover!

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z...3%2520copy.jpg
Managed to miss his underside completely. D'oh! I'll just prime it quickly before I apply the black; in theory that won't hurt him one bit!

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-w...5%2520copy.jpg
Everything went on very smoothly. While it's not going to be a perfect job (as I wasn't able to remove all the paint), I think he'll look much much better than he did when I got him. At the very least this paint job will be enough to protect him and make him pretty until I have the money to take him to an autobody shop to be professionally repainted!

I'll update this post when I do the black sometime either this week or this weekend--depends on how the weather holds up!

Looking good!!! I have a question.
How you get the pictures in with the words in beween?
Is there something in the set-up I am missing when I load photos?

Is it possible to buy new decals somewhere? You'd think with so many people doing stuff like this someone would have produced gold Singer decals or decorative bits. Fascinating job! Looking forward to seeing the results.

Interesting. I thought most people repainted with automotive paint and primer???

I've been fooling around with BBCode based forums for a while, so don't feel like you're missing anything!

You need to have a photo host of some sort; I use Photobucket, but you can use any site, even Facebook, that lets you right-click on an image and click "copy image location". Once you have that URL in one form or another, you can post it by using the following template.

That's the easiest way to do it; it also reduces the stress on the forum, as you're not making the forum host the images. Hope this helps!

Yup! I got mine from an eBay seller, Keeler Sales. I had some eBay bucks to use, and it was actually cheaper to buy them on eBay than from their actual website. The more you know!

Most do, and I definitely considered that. However, I got super nervous after reading tons of horror stories about using automotive paint and not checking to make sure you weren't trying to use an acrylic on top of a water based primer, or enamel instead of lacquer--I only want to have to do this myself once, so I decided to go with Rustoleum. There's another person who used Rustoleum (link here, if you're interested), and they seemed to get pretty good results with it. I'm not looking for a show quality machine when I'm done, I just want a machine without chipping and gouges in the finish. Assuming all goes well I should have a high gloss finish that will last me some time, and will remain pretty until I'm ready to take Gideon to the autobody shop to get powder coated.

Thank you for saving another old soldier. I love my 201-2. Very dependable and steady, like an old faithrul horse or dog.

I really like the color that she chose. Which color are you going to go with?

Yeah, I almost went for the colonial red; but I figured I'd play it safe and go with a color that would be more traditional (and hopefully more forgiving if I messed it up)--classic black. :) Sadly it doesn't look like the weather's going to cooperate for at least a couple weeks; the humidity needs to be below %50, and after weeks of near drought conditions it looks like we're finally getting that rain. Sigh. Why must you thwart me Mother Nature!