Badge Restore later D-Series

YTSupport · Jul 28, 2018

I'm restoring the hood side badges rather than replace them with modern replacement parts. The letters and background are faded beyond hope. I thought I'd run my plan by others to see if they have done these and how they did it.

1. Have them low abrasive media blasted to clean and shine. I frankly don't know who would do this, a gunsmith? Just the residue of sand in my cabinet would destroy them. Going to check with my gunsmith and see if he has ideas, but any thoughts would be appreciated. I already tried Maguiers polish and they need more than that, it doesn't shine the bare aluminum enough.
2. Mask the entire thing, cut out and remove the low spot's tape so it can be sprayed with cream. Spray em.
3. Cut out and remove the letter/dash tops masking tape and pad paint letters/dashes with semi-gloss black.
4. Remove the remaining tape.

Any better ideas to restore these? That is a lot of detail work to do but Kim wanted to save the originals which I kind of agree with, I hate throwing away something that is perfect aside from paint. But they are fragile and bringing out the shine has me baffled.

David R Inman · Jul 29, 2018

Cant help on the cleaning of the Aluminum. The rest of the paint, if you cant do free hand with a brush, I agree with the masking, and with the large area of the cream, being able to spray it may turn out better too.

We had a series 1 15 with the Aluminum plates, but we pulled them off and instead I hand painted "Allis - Chalmers D-15" on it. Can't find any pictures of it right now.
I've hand painted decals on an IHC M & Super M, a MF TO-35 special and a Case DC. Some of them I used dollar store gift tissue paper to trace the existing decal pre new paint, then used a copier to transfer to printer paper. Once the new paint was applied, I cut the copy out, and used a pencil to mark the outlines. Then I free hand painted the letters. At least one of the IH's we just painted over the old decals, and even after painting, they were still taller than the surrounding sheet metal, so I used that as a guide. On the Case, I used automotive pin stripe tape for the stripes.

YTSupport · Jul 29, 2018

I'm impressed with others who can free-hand paint, but my hand is no where near steady enough to do it. I'd considered doing that with the black but I know I'd be starting over repeatedly. I also thought about using a pad painter free hand on the letters, but controlling the quantity of paint might be difficult. These badges just don't have crisp lines or that could work. I do better with exacto knife on tape, probably because I can rest my hand solidly and there isn't the element of a quantity of paint on the brush. I guess I just never learned to use a brush well.

Yes, I am going to spray the cream, flooding it with heavily thinned paint is another option I've used on nose badges, but the depth of paint makes the lines at the rises waver a bit if the rise is not a right angle.

I appreciate the input, thanks, and good job on your machines too, the free hand work is really something, wish I had the skill.

Badge Restore later D-Series

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