Swapping the Engine in the '67 F250 Part 3

The last episode ended with getting the replacement yellow engine ready for painting. However, while that process was ongoing, I was also working on preparing the parts I removed from the orange engine for reassembly on the yellow engine. Everything was coated in a thick layer of greasy dirt:

I dragged all the non-electrical parts out to the back patio and gave them a good going over with the pressure washer:

Post basic cleaning

After that everything was subjected to more detailed cleaning, rust was removed where necessary, and then all the parts were painted. I used some appropriate high-temperature resistant gray/silver paint on the headers:

The timing chain cover and the very small engine parts were painted with several coats of Ford "Old Blue" (Dupli-color DE 1621) and then clear-coated, which will hopefully prevent some of the chipping I've suffered with the Mustang. 

The fan, water pump, pulleys, engine mounts and so on were painted with Dupli-color semi-glass black (DE1635) and clear coat for a custom look. All the painting was done in the vented booth I built in my workshop.

The oil pan was the largest piece I have to transfer, and it wasn't in the best shape when it came out of the truck:

I did my best to clean off the rust and the loose paint, and I discovered the oil pan dates from 1973, so a year older than the block. The oil pan was too big to fit inside the booth, so I took it into the backyard and painted it there. The pan was carried back into the workshop between coats to prevent contamination with dust, leaves and so on.

The first step was painting with rust converter/primer. The finish was strictly "good enough." If I was making a show vehicle, I would have taken off all the old paint and used body filler etc. to get the pan perfect. 

Several coats of Ford "Old Blue" (Dupli-color DE1621) later: 

Most of the engine hardware was in pretty crappy condition, for example the header bolts were all different sizes, two were studs instead of bolts and one was missing.  In fact, there was a lot of missing hardware. I didn't realize at the time how lucky I was with the hardware on the Mustang - it was 99 percent original and 100 percent complete. The F250 was missing bolts and other hardware all over the place...

The hardware that was complete or will be difficult to replace was cleaned up on the wire wheel:

before

after

All of which led to a very satisfying array of clean new-looking parts:

Now for the engine....which was also too big to fit into the paint booth.  I didn't want to paint the block in the garage or in the driveway (too messy!) and it was too big to move in and out of the garage more than once.....so I ponied up for the cheapest 4-sided canopy I could find online and had Amy Sheep help me erect put it together. The canopy is 10' x 10' which is a little bit bigger than the patio.

I hung the four side panels on my own and it took ages - all the attachment points are fiddly bits of Velcro. The canopy comes with canvas bags which can be filled with sand and used to hold the structure in place, but I chose to use a couple of five-gallon buckets filled with water. Neither the buckets nor the water came with the canopy.

I laid an old carpet and some sheets on the patio inside the tent and also did the final masking:

After that I applied several coats of Ford "Old Blue" followed by a bunch more layers of clear coat, which took most of the afternoon. I painted clear coat on the oil pan at the same time as the engine block. After that everything was left in the booth overnight to cure.

Striking camp the next day....the rug looks like it's had a blue rinse, but the canopy worked perfectly and there was no trace of  paint anywhere else.

Refinishing a Vintage Dresser

About seventeen years ago, when I bought my first house in America, I acquired a few bits of furniture as part of the sale. Most of it was crap the previous owners couldn't be arsed to move, but there was one nice piece in there that I still have. Mostly it has been used as a bedroom dresser, although it was also a TV stand at one point, and I used it in my office for storage when we lived in Berkeley. This is what it looks like with two thirds of the drawers removed:

Over the years it has suffered some damage, most notably at the right side of the top panel, but there are dings and scratches all over the piece.

At the start of the Christmas vacation, I emptied the dresser and, with some help, moved it downstairs to the workshop. I started by sanding the top panel to 120 grit; this made relative quick work of the varnish and wood stain.

There were numerous imperfections that cannot be removed this way without sanding through the veneer:

The rest of the cabinet was sanded to 120 grit next...a lot of the sanding had to be done by hand which was super tedious, but Amy Sheep was keen to help and that kept me motivated.

The next step is treatment of the top panel with an oxalic acid solution. This is a technique often referred to as "wood bleach" which is very effective for removing stains from wood. After a thorough application, particularly in the stained areas, the dresser was left to dry overnight.

The next day all the stains were gone. The oxalic acid residue was removed by rinsing the top of the dresser with copious amounts of water and left to dry. The cabinet was always a two-tone piece, which we intend to keep. The sections which will be darker were all sanded to 220 grit in preparation for staining:

We tried our best to tape off the areas where the darker stain meets the lighter stain and then applied Varathane classic black™ in the appropriate areas.

Overall, it came out well:

There was some bleed where the tape didn't quite perform as hoped for; these areas will have to be sanded later.

While the stain was drying, we moved on to the drawers. The three (3) flat-front drawers were straight forward to sand down to 120:

The others were a bit more complicated. I started with the raised perimeters. One down, eight to go...

That's better....

The Dewalt™ random orbital sander is too big to fit inside the inlaid drawer fronts, so I broke out the pneumatic sander I typically use in the garage. The pad size ranges from one to three inches in diameter, so I was able to get right into the corners.  

The tiny bits I couldn't get to were sanded by hand, and then all the drawers were sanded again to 220 grit:

There were a number of examples of damage at the drawers including chips and dings, several loose dovetails and one broken runner. All such issues were marked with blue tape at the initial sanding stage, and then I worked through all the various fixes.

By this point in the project the black stain at the dark sections of the cabinet was long since dry, and the small sections of bleed over mentioned above had been sanded clean. But there was a problem! While using oxalic acid on the top panel successfully removed all the stains, the moisture also lifted a section of the veneer. I tried to glue the lifted section back down and clamped it overnight.

It sort of worked, but there was still a section of the veneer which was proud. Keeping the very thin veneer and making this area flat would be extremely difficult: 

Instead, I sanded all the way through the veneer until the top of the cabinet was perfectly flat. Then I went down to MacBeath Hardwood in Berkeley and picked up a half sheet of flat sawn white oak veneer. Back at the shop the veneer was trimmed to the precise length and about half an inch wider than needed:

The underside of the veneer and the top of the cabinet were covered with contact cement and left to dry; the veneer was very porous so two coats of cement were needed. 

The main section was installed first:

The end pieces were added with perpendicular grain alignment to replicate the original cabinet top:

There is an overhang of about 0.25 inches at the perimeter of the veneer which will be removed with the router and a flush trim bit after the contact cement has fully cured.

There were tiny gaps where the sections of veneer meet which were eradicated with white oak wood filler: 

Time for the rest of the stain. The sides and front-facing edges of the cabinet were stained with Varathane English chestnut. The veneer we used on the top of the cabinet was a slightly different shade to the remainder of the piece, so this area was stained with a 1:1 mixture of Varathane gunstock and English chestnut which gave a closer match.

Came out nice:

The drawer fronts were stained with Varathane English chestnut:

The brass hardware was cleaned up with a mixture of brasso™ and two (2) tins of elbow grease:

After the stain was cured, we applied three coats of water-based urethane "Enduro-VarII" flat from General Finishes.  The drawers part way through the finishing process:

This is a few weeks later after suitable curing time: