It feels good to be home, and when I say home I mean in my element once again. Saw dust on my clothes and on my shoes, power tools in my hands, and ideas rushing through my head.
Seeing that my Thanksgiving celebration happened this past Wednesday, I had the full day to work on my own projects. When I went down to the basement early this morning, I noticed some half finished railroad stakes that I was in the process of polishing up to give to Yvette as "forming" stakes. I never got that deep into Metalsmithing to try my own hand at manipulating metal into complex shapes, but she is a pro at it!
I started off with an angle grinder to get off as much pitting and rust off as possible. As you can see though, the angle grinder was not very consistent with getting a smooth surface to form on.
That is when I remembered the success that Frankie had using an orbital sander on my side covers to the Triumph Tiger Cub! A few minutes with the sander and 80grit, 120grit, and 220 grit sandpaper smoothed out the ridges and got rid of much of the pitting.
Looking good! Now the next thing I am going to do is use a 8" buffing wheel to clean up the scratches from the sandpaper.
Here is a side by side comparison of how great the stakes look now in comparison to when I originally picked them up at the train tracks early this Fall.
Its hard to believe that the stakes began looking like this. Rusty, flakes of iron oxide falling off,
To this! Wow what a difference!
I am hoping to get a whole set done, who knows maybe Yvette will be getting some forming stakes for Christmas.
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