Been a hot minute so lemme give a big update and show and tell where I stand today.
After the last time on Dragonball Z, I had finished dissembling the cabinet into pieces. Since then I have had a lovely time finding a sandblast /powdercoat place I could trust. The original quote and place I went to changed owners this year sometime and hes a new young upstart redheaded piece of work. Quoted me $800 for the job. I said $400 ( I realize I was lowballing ). He said some stuff like "I don't see the local guys as competition" and "I'll be here when you come back". The runaround story was "oh if I take your $400 and then my guys spend 5 hours blasting it then I lose out". He said to meet him in the middle at $600. I didn't wanna pull the trigger on that just yet and shopped around. While I loved his workers, he himself was a douchebag. The worker I had originally talked to asked me to bring him JBWELD and he would take care of the holes in my cabinet. Weird but ok. Told the owner I would get back with him.
One other outfit I contacted had me sent them pictures but never got back to me. He was a smaller place and even outsourced his sandblasting so I knew it was no good.
Scared of all this I started doing my own work in the meantime. I bought some CLR (Calcium, Lime, Rust) remover inspired by
@radiantsvgun thread here. Put it in a big plastic bin I bought from Goodwill for a few bucks. A gallon of this stuff costs $20 on amazon. I put 1/3 of this mixed with about 2 gallons of water, maybe more. It is a really big bin. In order to fit some of these pieces in as you can see below you have to turn over the pieces after a couple days to get the other side (unless of course you don't mind using the whole damned bottle). WARNING: This stuff will tear up your cabinets paint! Some pieces more than others. I had some that were stripped to bare metal, others didn't look like it phased the paint.
@rewrite
I was gonna post a picture of the bin after all was said and done but it was so gross I will save you from that imagery. Just imagine rust colored bath water
This step is probably unnecessary as the sandblasting guys eventually told me they can get that kind of rust off no problem. I was just a bit paranoid.
Eventually I went to an industrial park I know just a little further south from the original place and found a place run by a nice old man. Said he wasn't looking to compete in prices with the original guy I went too as they were not friends or anything but they weren't on bad terms either. He said $600 was fair and he would do it. I mentioned the JB weld idea and he had mixed reactions to that, said it never worked out for him in the past and not sure what the other guy was on about. He tested the pieces I had in the back of the truck to give him a fair idea of what kinda job it would be. One time he said a guy paid him for a job that "should" have only taken a few hours but ended up being a 16 hour job. You can never really know how hard this shit is gonna be to get off until you get it in your hands. He also mentioned any blasters/coaters that ask for pictures over the phone are no good. It's hard to tell the size and complexity of a job just from some pictures. He had some springs someone showed him in a picture, he thought they were the size of a ballpoint pen. They turned out to be huge 40lb industrial springs :/
After he sandblasted a small portion of two of my parts he said it came off easy. I already liked him better at this point because he did not give me the runaround story that the first guy gave me of "oh if I take your $400 and then my guys spend 5 hours blasting it then I lose out". This went down last week.
Oh and the original guy? Called him back and he just laughed at me like "see I knew you'd be back!". Little does he know I went with someone else.
My guy called me a couple days ago to tell me the JBWELD idea did not work. He went to 4 different stores to find the high temperature JBWELD and even though this stuff is rated for 550 degrees Farenheit and over it still ended up bubbling and looking like pliable bubblegum. At this point he said he would hit up a welder guy down the street that works on porches.
Sounds expensive. Asked him to get me quotes before doing anything.
Today I went in to see what was what. Turns out his pal already took care of a few of the pieces and only the large cage remained. They were in the middle of sandblasting some of my other parts, while others had just come out of the oven!
For the speaker grills he turned down the psi and hit them softly as not to tear them apart!
Here are some pieces that were sandblasted and getting ready to coat. They were blowing out some of the hinges and will hit them on both sides.
They put plastic caps on the mounting screws so as not to coat them like with
@hoagtech coaters did. Said that's just lazy, and prep work is half the job!
Finally here you can see the weld marks covering the holes left by the coin bars :
BEFORE:
Notice those f#$king screws!!
AFTER
Take note these are still just blasted not coated. They are sanded flat, but even with the paint, there may be pockets of air. I can't seem to find the picture of the smaller coin door that was done with these welds on it. The paint did not bond and there was what looked like a hole in the paint. He said he could go over it again but may require more funds. So far he hasn't said anything about elevating the price even though hes been doing a LOT of legwork and even going so far as sanding down some of the sharp edges to get better paint bonds and less risk of myself getting cut up
Anything can be done to perfection but it's all a matter of how much you are willing to spend, and I am not trying to go for Jay Leno's Garage quality here.
Sadly the smaller coin door while worlds apart in before and after quality, still paint cannot cover up just how creased and mangled the door originally was. My decision on whether to pay him a little extra to go the extra mile and buff it down again and repaint, or try to shoot for some YATON part that is in less bent condition and sell mine.
After this, all that's left is to clean up the wires and reassemble. The monitor has already been recapped and same with the PSU. I will aim for a fresh plank of wood to screw everything in.
Any other recommendations or advice?
@8bitforlife