It’s been a little while since my last update on the restoration of the platen press (sorry about that!) – while I’ve been useless at writing posts about it, I have at least been making decent progress, which I will write up into the next few posts.
So in a brief recap of the last post which you can read here, I had got the majority of the press parts identified, started cleaning, applying primer, and designing in the repair parts.
All about that base(coat)
As with a lot of things in life, it’s almost all in the prep work. Every part of the platen press was scoured of any greasy grimey residue, then scraped back to remove any of the old grey paint.
The use of abrasives was very tempting, but particularly on the paint, I was watching out for creating too much dust.
As much as I love the read oxide, I was itching to try out the new paint colour I had chosen for this press. Diverging ever so slightly from the traditional dark blue, I opted instead for a peppermint green.
And good grief, it was green alright.
Minty Fresh
So why peppermint?
This colour goes back to my dad, and a story he told me about a car he once owned in this particularly eye-melting hue.
Apparently, he ordered it in to the dealership without ever seeing it (pre-internet here, people), and when he and my grandfather went to collect it, the people at the garage said “Oh, that’s YOURS is it?”… Ominous.
Then he said the car came rolling round the corner, and it was bright. Blindingly, sunglasses needed, bright.
That is exactly what I needed a bit of for this century-old machine. I have a growing reputation for using obnoxious colour, so I figured any press of mine also needed to be on-brand!
I had the exact Ford paint code mixed up as a brush-on tin, but one thing I hadn’t reckoned on was the smell. The red oxide, could barely tell I was using it. This minty green? Pure evil. You could smell it down the corridor for days after I’d been in (Sorry, studio neighbours!)
There was a particular evening where I might have been pretty well lubricated with ale from the local pub, and high as a kite on the fumes, I merrily painted pretty much the whole thing. Great for productivity, probably less so for my lifespan.
The flywheel was particularly satisfying to see painted up – I still haven’t quite settled on ideas for pinstriping yet, but perhaps some fluro pink? I think there’s definitely some space on the counterweight for a directional arrow (and I’d better get it pointing the right way…).
So with all the parts cleaned and ready to go, the next step was to put it all back together again into one piece, which is a process we’ll cover next time!
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