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Restore Along Part 24: Tech Support to the Rescue!
Welcome back to the Restore Along with Julia & Tulip (and now Jill!) Julia painted the second coat of primer on Jill, her practice machine, to get her ready for the colored paint coats! If you are tuning in, you can catch up on last week’s progress here:
Previous Post: Restore Along Part 23
Julia’s Featherweights don't have perfect bodies. Jill, like many Featherweights, has casting flaws: sand-type bumpy areas in the motor mount and bobbin areas, a few little pointy bumps on the base around the column area, and a very uneven area around base's edge on the handwheel side. Since Julia hasn’t done any bodywork on Jill, the red paint will reflect these flaws.
Julia has come to terms with this fact, but now she faces a different dilemma - the Soul Red Metallic paint comes in two coats, and the second "candy coat" of the red paint is meant to be painted over the first coat of brownish-red paint while the first coat is still wet. That means Julia can't paint each side of Jill while turning her horizontally after each side is dry, like she did with her last primer coat, to prevent the paint from running. Julia knows a professional painter is skilled enough not to have to worry about making drips, and she knows how not to get drips, but Julia is not a professional painter, and sometimes it's hard to get the hand to do what the brain wants it to do.
Last night Julia was thinking aloud. Maybe it was time to make a mom invention or repurpose something to use a tilting, rotating table she can attach to the oil drip pan to allow her a full range of rotation and access to all angles of her machine while painting. Perhaps a wall-mount TV stand or something like that attached to a large board would suffice.
Fast forward to this afternoon: Tech Support walks in from work with a CB radio mount for his truck, which had decommissioned a while back, mounted on a sturdy board. He had overhead Julia’s musing last night and pieced this paint stand together this morning. A true handyman!
Together, Julia and her husband test out using a super-strong magnet on the mount, but it isn’t strong enough to hold Jill. Fortunately, Julia’s other "resqued" machine Q can donate an oil drip pan, which Tech Support attaches to the mount. As a prototype, it seems like it will work okay. The oil drip pan will attach to Jill via the original center screw, and a little side to side sliding on the mount is possible if needed.
There may still be room for improvement on the prototype, but at the very least, Julia thinks the added height will help a lot while painting under Jill’s arm and bobbin area. With this plan in place, Julia feels much better about applying the final coats.
Come back next week as we get one day closer to seeing that beautiful red paint!
