No 32 scope tin repair/ refinish

[bigduke6]

Some may of seen this on ebay some time back ?? thought it would of been snapped up but it was missing the internals..... thought it would be easy to make the internals, even easier would of been to copy the ones with brass spigots, but as the tin and the finish was the same as another tin I have, decided to copy the internals from that, although it was a last minute measure most of it worked out ok, need to turn a few MM of the front spigot but apart from that all seems ok, just a question of welding the spigots on the backing plate and to rivet to the base of the tin.

Some will say the base was spot welded to the tin which is correct but speaking to Peter Laidler the type of repair would of been rivets.

First job was to kill some of the rust so used the electrolysis process, the pics don't show it but the tin was covered in rust and the only cure was the process its going through now.

Pictured bottom is the tin in question the middle one is what I copied the internals off and the top one is a repro tin that had been hand painted in Bronze green, this is more of an undercoat before spraying and to test the paint just needs a slight rub down.







The pics here show the fabricated spigots and back plate compared with the ones I copied, this needs to be set up and so I can weld the spigots to the plate and then rivet the plate to the tin.





Next thing was to use the electrolysis process to remove some of the rust think its a bit more gentle than heavy sand blasting....



After many hours tin come up better than expected,





After this a good wipe down it was cleaned up with the sand blaster,





Next step is the parkerizing/ phosphate , had to put this on hold as typical bank holiday weather in the UK, rain and more rain.... will update this over the weekend as intend to get at least some primer on the tin.

( I was surprised to see when the paint was lifting off the red primer underneath don't know if the tins were supplied just in primer ??? Maybe one of the Armourer's will know ?)

Regarding the finish for this tin I,m looking at the original colour which on a colour chart showed it to be olive drab, but when it was mixed it was a mile off so the paint was mixed by eye to match....

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