Paintstripping Portholes - yuk!

[The Bigfella]

This is one of those jobs that I'd been putting off - stripping the 1/8"+ thick paint off the portholes. I'd done a few, but there are fourteen of them all up on Grantala, so I did another four today:

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid222/peffd386a3d7138b2c37e53415606db31/eb1e354c.jpg

I had been planning on chroming them, although, according to an ex Prime Minister of ours, the original finish would have been Nickel plating (he's a bit more anal about these things being done to original spec than me) - but there's evidence of a couple of hammer attacks and a bit of corrosion evident. I'll give them a polish and see what happens.

Ian

[boylesboats]

What are they casted of? Bronze, brass, copper?

[The Bigfella]

Bronze, methinks.

[boylesboats]

Would be good looking if polished? Like a shiny bell.....
Try soaking it DOT 3 brake fluid, the paint will slide without harming the metal.... degrease the ports before painting... I have use brake fluid to remove paint from plastic model cars, it a cool trick to do.. Much better using paint remover..

[boylesboats]

Any more luck?

[The Bigfella]

I've been doing other jobs - had finished those ones. Another six or so to get to, but currently laying out the stairs from the salon into the fornicatorium. Doing some chalk lofting on the driveway. Four steps, 104cm drop, but trying to maintain 2m headroom across a beam near the bottom of the drop.... and, I want to buiild access ports for the fuel filters off each side.

[The Bigfella]

If the faces are dented up from hammer blows, bring them down to your local machine-shop and have them turned in a lathe to take the marks out. They can give you a #30micro-inch finish on the lathe with a fine enough cutter, then sandpaper down to a #5 or better (#0 is dead flat finish which is the shiniest mirror possible)...

Why didn't I think of that - I get invited to my friendly engineers' Christmas Party every year - his main contribution last year was steering related work.