RestorationStation

Antique Swiss Blowtorch Restoration - with testing! Oerlikon Record In this video I'm restoring an antique swiss blowtorch. Like, comment, subscribe. I found this old blowtorch, which was perfect for a nice restoration video. Before I started to disassemble I wanted to know if it still works and it did. The flame was quiet inconsistent and fire leaked everywhere. By the first look I saw that the front piece was damaged very hard, the bolt on top had a lot of slack, the handle of the pump was broken and it didn't lock. After this first look I started to disassemble. All the parts were really easy to remove and it went very well and fast. To remove the soot and patina I used a mixture of flour, salt and vinegar. This is a very effective and cheap method, it takes a bit of time but it's worth to wait. I left the parts for 7 days. I made a new bolt on the lathe and recut the thread. To make the bolt black I heated it up to around 300-400°C and layered it in olive oil after it, that makes it also rust proofing. Because I couldn't fix the front piece, I decided to make a new one and it worked very well. I made the gasket for it out of an exhaust gasket, because it had one layer aluminum in it I first made a hole on the mill, then cut it roughly out and finished it with the belt grinder. Next up I removed all the scratches from the tank with sandpaper. As I can't engrave I decided to scratch the letters deeper with a needle and then I polished it. I did the same with the same with the filler cap and made a new gasket out of cork for it. The shaft from the pump was bent very hard, so I did straighten it with a hammer and polished it. The handle was broken and it didn't lock, I decided to make a new one. I designed the handle and I was inspired by pictures of similar blowtorches on the internet, I was quiet happy with the end result. To make a new leather for the pump, I sacked a piece of leather in pure gasoline. I made a die and stamp to bring the leather in shape. To dry it faster I set it on fire and waited until the flames stopped, held it quick under water and left it for 24 hours to dry. I took it out of the die, cut it in shape with scissors and punched a hole in it. I grinded the black handle clean with sandpaper on the lathe and made a new profile on the mill, after that I polished it to make it black and shiny. I made a new wick with a cotton cord. Then I put it all back together. I used just a little bit grease on all the threads and also on the pump leather. The pump had a very good compression after assembling and I was very happy about the overall looking at the end. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

In this video I'm going to show you how I restored an old Air Die Grinder. I've cleaned all parts, polished the aluminum case, turned a new connection for the compressed air on a lathe and replaced all bearings. I grinded all steel parts with sandpaper or Scotch Brite and made them black again by heating them up and cool down in olive oil.

This is the first episode from the restoration of a 1973 Datsun 240Z. In this video you can see the full disassembly of the car to the bare chassis. This car was driven in Los Angeles California and only had one owner. It still had a California blue plate on it and the cars registration expired in 1983, so it was not driven anymore at least for 40 years. For all these years it sat in a garage in California until its owner died and then it got sold to a European car dealer, where I bought it from. It seems that the previous owner was quite a fan of this car as he made a bunch of modifications and upgrades. He installed some nice magnesium wheels, a rear spoiler, louvres, a roll bar, a racing mirror, a new steering wheel, new radio, speakers and equalizer. The original carbureters were replaced with triple Weber carbureters and also a new exhaust was installed. He also made a very common upgrade for Califonian cars, installing an air conditioning system. The car only shows 14'000 miles on the speedometer, but as it only has five digits, it's more likely that it has 114'000 miles. The European car dealer changed a bunch of parts to make the engine running again. New battery, carburetor funnels, starter, ignition coil, completely new brakes, fuel pump and oil filter. He also put on new seat covers. I wish I could have bought the car directly from California, to have a real barn find car. I really like the 240Z. It's a great classic Japanese sports car from the 70's. It's design is really flawless from front to rear and side to side. The shape of the car is really timeless. The car gives so much to customize your own style, so it's very rare to see a Z car that looks exactly like another one. I plan on doing some slight changes, but nothing that can't be undone easily. So I definitely won't cut the fenders and install fender flares. I want to keep it original, but bring my touch to it. So the car has to be better than it came from the factory. I'll make a bunch of new ones for it, yet still in a time period correct design. What I can say, that the AC unit will definitely get kicked out. These old units didn't work efficient and they break very often and since it was never original or a dealers option, I have no problems with that. I'm more a open windows driver than a AC guy anyway. Both side markers will also be removed, as this was only a US thing. The Australian models had none of them either. In the next episode will all dents be removed, all rust removed and all body work done. The car will get blasted with walnut shells and completely painted in a new color. I don't know yet which color I'm choosing, but I definitely plan on making an original Datsun color. That's a lot of work that needs to be done, so stay tuned for the next episode. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

In this video I'm turning a stainless steel M20 nut into a tiny adjustable wrench. All three parts are completely made out of one single nut. First I turned the thread and the hexagon away on the lathe. After cutting a slit into it I was able to open it up with the help of a torch. A few heats later I had a very straight and flat piece of stainless steel. I first went then on the milling machine and milled the whole part to the final width of the wrench. I then cut of a piece with the hacksaw to make the body out of it. With a tiny t-slot endmill I was able to mill the t-slot very nicely with a very low feedrate and a lot of oil. After milling the square hole and drilling the deep 2.1mm hole I started to shape the outer contour. Then I moved on by making the movable part of the wrench. I milled it all in one operation with very careful steps to not risk and chatter marks or whatsoever. After filing the square bit round I sanded the rectangular part until it fitted nicely into the body. I then cut the M2 thread and cut the piece off with the hacksaw, assembled it with the body and sanded both parts flush. Then I started rounding off all edges with needle files, sandpaper and finished it with very fine steel wool for a brushed finish. All what's left to do now was making the knurled adjuster nut. For that I forged the remaining of the nut into a square piece, which I could clamp in the four jaw chuck on the lathe. I turned it round, supported it with a live center, put the knurling onto it, drilled and tapped the hole, chamfered it and parted it off. Then it was just a matter of quickly assembling the three pieces. This was a very cool little project for me. I really like how it turned out. It's a very cool little item in my opinion. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

In this video I'm restoring a pair of antique German headphones. I've found these headphones at an online auction for $30 and I thought they look pretty cool for a restoration project. Unfortunately they didn't work anymore. I measured the coils and three of the four were broken. That fact put this little project to a whole new challenge. It required a ton of research to completely understanding every single detail of its function to remake the coils and such. After some trial and error I managed to remake the broken bobbins and rewind the coils. The tricky part was that both coils are connected with each other at the beginning of the windings in the core. I had to make a special jig, so I could clamp both coils when winding the second one. The original paint had some kind of a structure in it. It was black matte with some kind of a hammertone pattern. Unfortunately I was not able to find such paint, so I went with regular black matte. To not loose the were fine writings and logo I only applied a very thin layer of primer and coat. The Bakelite pieces just required some wet sanding and a good polish and they looked like new again. Old Bakelite might contain asbestos, that's why I wet sanded them so there won't be any sanding dust. I cleaned the membranes with scotch bright after a 24h bath in rust remover. To get rid of the pitting I sanded it with 240 grit sandpaper. I was already down to 0.13mm from 0.2mm thickness, but there was still pitting visible and I just sanded one side. To get the best possible sound at the end I decided to remake both membranes with new 0.2mm steel foil. To match the original membranes I also painted the center black matte. I nickel plated all the screws and the two brackets like they were originally. The brackets were a little bit weird, because they were two identical ones instead of pair of mirrored ones. I fixed that pretty easy by just bending the shaft on one ion the opposite direction. I was very lucky that the cable was in nearly perfect condition. It had absolutely no visible damage or fraying, just lost a bit of color. I just had to shorten them. Todays headphones all work with AC, these however back then worked with DC. Therefore the polarity matters. I also marked all endings of the cable with red and black threads, so did I made a red and black plastic cover for the plugs. In the end I'm very happy how these headphones have turned out. The color combination of the black matte with the shiny black Backelite parts look very classy together with the shiny nickel plated parts and the crispy clean looking knurling is the cherry on top. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

In this video I'm restoring a very big cleaver. These cleavers are also called „splitter“. They were used by butchers before they had electric saws to help their work. There are a few characteristics that make it very obvious that this is a cleaver: the very thick blade and the big angle on the cutting edge, the hole in the front to hang it on the wall, the very long handle to hold it with two hands. I've found this cleaver actually a long time ago and I was very impressed by its size. Now I thought it's the time to restore it. This project was pretty straight forward. After a quick disassembly I gave the blade a nice sandblasting with glass beads to remove all the rust. With the help of a hand held belt sander I removed all the pitting of the blade. On the tang I just sanded it clean and didn't went that far as it will be covered by the handle afterwards. I didn't want to remove anymore material to remove all the pitting, that would just weaken the tang. Once I hade it all clean I switched to hand sanding with finer grits, all the way up to 600 wet. I decided to go with a satin finish on the blade. There it is very important that all sanding marks point in the same direction to get a uniform look. For the handle I choose pear wood. I really like the color of it, it's also quite hard and nice to work with. I first drilled all counterbored holes before I started to rough shape it with a saw and rasps. To fix the handle on the tang I used screw-able rivets, also know as „Chicago rivets“. I machines these out of brass to get a nice contrast with the pear later. I applied Loctite on the threads of the rivets to make sure they will never ever come loose again. After tightening them against each other I filed their heads flush with the handle, leaving just a round dot of brass in the wood. Then it was just time to fine sand the complete handle up to 600 grit and oil it with linseed oil. Before applying the oil I sprayed some water onto the wood to raise the grain, which I then sanded down again with 600 grit to achieve the smoothest possible finish. Now there was just the sharpening of the blade missing. I did that on my friends belt sander with a 400 grit belt running against the cutting edge. It ended up being super sharp so it even cuts tomatoes very nice and clean. Even though this was a rather simple project compared to my other ones, I really enjoyed restoring it. I'm very happy how this cleaver has turned out in the end. I'm glad I went with the satin finish, it really has a very classy look together with the pear handles and the brass rivets. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

In this video I'm restoring a very small rusty and deadlocked Gressel bench vise. Its jaws are just 80mm wide. My friend has found this tiny vise on the steel waste and I thought this would be cool for a video. On first sight it was only seized and had some additional holes. When disassembling I also quickly realized that something on the half round part was not right and after sandblasting I also saw pretty deep damages near the jaws. To disassemble the movable jaw I quickly made a tool to open the vise. There's also a video about that on my second channel „my mechanics insights“, link below. I closed the two additional holes with slight press fit plugs and closed the gap with welding. After filing the welds flush the two holes completely disappeared. There was a bit of a mess with the threads at the half round part, so I decided to close them all with very tight press fitted plugs and cut two new M4 threads. That worked very well and these plugs will never ever come out again. On the other deep damages I decided to weld up new material with cast iron stick welding rod. That was my very first time stick welding. Was a bit tricky to get used to it, but the end result turned out very well. I was able to file and sand all surfaces perfectly clean afterwards. I decided to paint this vise in a nice red (RAL3011) with white highlights on the lettering. As the spindle only had very little rust, I was able to clean it very nicely with rust remover, wire brush, some sandpaper and Scotch Brite. For the remaining parts I first removed the deep pitting, removed the sharp edges, recut the threads and then sandblasted them to remove the remaining rust and make a nice and even texture on the sanded surfaces. To darken all these parts I used the method of hot bluing. As the rough pattern of the jaws were in pretty good condition I decided to restore them. After a night in the rust remover and a bit of wire brushing the jaws already looked pretty good. I also had to bend them as they were a bit out of shape. As they're just case hardened this worked very well. Then I sanded all the surfaces clean, chamfered all edges and applied cold bluing to darken them. In the end I'm very happy how this little bench vise has turned out. In my opinion the red looks very nice together with the black steel parts and the shiny sanded surfaces and the white details of the lettering are just the cherry on top. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

In this video I'm restoring a very stylish German desk lamp from the 1930's. This model is called „Vitalux Type G101“ made by „Osram“. Vitalux lamps always had UV bulbs. They were advertised as healthy lamps back in the 30's to get your vitamin D at home. My friend has found this lamp at the local junk yard. I really liked its design, so I bought it for $25. To be honest I first thought this should be a quick and easy project. Sure, to get the reflector back to shape would be challenging, but the rest should be pretty straight forward. How wrong I was! It took me 26 days in the workshop to complete this project. It was really tricky to get the reflector back to shape. Thanks to my two sheet metal specialist friends I was able to achieve a nearly perfect result. Getting the bead back to a consistent shape was very difficult, but with some thinking we came up with a very clever tool design which worked like a charm. The rest was just sanding. At first I tried to make a mirror polish on the inside. As I couldn't achieve a satisfying result I went with a satin brushed finish instead, which turned out looking amazing in my opinion. Creating a new logo was another big challenge. Waterslide decals were out of question because of the „TYPE G101“ text below the logo. So I wanted to spray paint the logo with a sticker template cut with the vinyl cutter, but the tiny size of the letters won't let me get a clean and sharp result after removing the template sticker. Then I tried it the other way around and cut a golden vinyl and used the logo itself as a permanent sticker, which worked very well and looked super sharp. I applied two coats of 2K clear coat to seal the sticker. On the wooden piece I applied a acrylic primer as base, which had very good coverage and saturated well, so the 2K paint was nice and easy to apply. I picked a satin jet black, it's a mix between matte and glossy. The old nickel plating was already coming off on some parts, so I removed the old plating, polished them all again and plated them new. I have found a very nice old school looking power cord with fabric insulated twisted wires, together with an antique Bakelite switch it was the perfect combination. Overall I'm very happy how the lamp has turned out. All the different finishes and colors match very nice together. The light ivory painted parts with the silver on the inside and the golden logo, the black painted wood, the nice and shiny reflector and the freshly polished and nickel plated parts. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

In this video I'm going to restore a very rusty, broken and completely stuck antique German book press. After a bit of research I was able to find out that this book press was made by Alexanderwerk in 1895. The disassembly was quite tough. All the threads have been very rusty and only got loose with a lot of heat and penetrating oil. The feet and top plate had rivet connections. Removing the heads of the rivet wasn't enough to get them loose, I had to drill them completely out. I've soaked all the threaded parts in rust remover and sandblasted the remaining parts to get rid of all the rust. The holes of the feet and top plate have not been very accurate at all, for that reason I decided to close them all with welding and remake them all. I also milled and filed all five feet clean, parallel and to the same height. I've polished all the parts that won't get painted and nickel plated them for rust protection. I applied bluing liquid on all the other parts, mainly to have rust protection where the paint doesn't cover the parts such as the upper side of the feet. Then I painted the riveted pieces with primer and black coat. To make a nice antique look I decided to add some gold decoration to the top plate and the yoke, which turned out absolutely amazing in my opinion. Reassembling was really easy, especially compared to the disassembly. I really like how this book press has turned out. The very glossy black paint with the golden details looks absolutely amazing and it fits perfectly with the polished and nickel plated parts. The brushed brass handle balls are the cherry on top. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

I remember when I first saw his video of this lighter, I really liked the design and wanted to make one myself. I have reached out to him and asked for permission to copy his design, I'm very glad he agreed. Now the time has finally come to make it. I made my design slightly different. On my lighter the inner ring is the removable part from the body and is held in place by the fake wick holder sealed with three O-rings. I also made my version completely out of stainless steel (1.4305). I did first plan to make a mirror polished finish on the whole thing, but I have later changed my mind and went with a brushed finish instead, which turned out absolutely amazing in my opinion. This was a very fun little project. It required a lot of very precise machining and had a lot of very tiny details. I'm very happy how this has turned out and I'm glad I have now finally done this project. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

In this video I'm going to restore an antique firefighter axe. I've always wanted to restore an axe since the beginning of my channel, but I've never found a cool looking one. But then, all of a sudden I came across this beautifully designed firefighter axe and knew immediately that this will be the one. I've found it at my friends place, he took it home from the steel waste and sold it to me for $20. I really love the design of those firefighter axes with the two keys that secure the axe head. To secure the keys there's always a pin/rivet going through the handle. This axe was very special, because the manufacturer really payed attention to grind the rivets flush and let them completely disappeared. Top quality I'd say. As always, the axe head is also secured with a regular wedge in the handle. The axe head had really deep holes in it. I guess it was once used as a hammer. Those holes were so deep that I would've lost way too much material in thickness if I'd grind them away. So the only way to get rid of them was to close them with welding. That was reason enough for me to try TIG welding for the first time and it worked absolutely perfect. To honor the high quality of this axe I decided to etch the name 'Victoria' back on the axe head. I used a classic font and placed it on the upper side of the back. Both keys were really out of shape and didn't had similar size. After bending them back straight I welded up material and grinded, filed and sanded them to matching measurements. The handle was far gone and way beyond restoration. The wood was very rotten and had many holes in it. Therefore I only had one option and that was to make a new one. It was quite tricky to get it to the right shape and size, but I eventually got it done. Overall I'm very happy how this axe turned out. I really like the contrast of the bright shining polished parts with the engraving to the dark wooden handle. All though I have to admit that I wish the handle was a little bit brighter. It still looks nice in my opinion and very happy to add this beautiful axe to my restored items collection. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

In this video I'm going to restore an antique German electric door bell. I've bought this door bell from an online auction for $45. It was in pretty rough condition, but it was still working, kind of. What I first saw as a quick and easy project turned out to be a really tough and time consuming challenge. Remaking the broken copper part needed a lot of trial and error until I have finally managed to completely recreate that part. Not just making the jig, also the engraving and tumble ring. The coils were very tricky as well. At first I planned just to clean them as they were still working, but I've quickly realized that the insulation was damaged and I had to rewind them. Although low voltage isn't dangerous rewinding was necessary to get the job done 100%. It was a good idea though, as the iron cores have been completely rusted under the copper wire. Rewinding required a lot of testing too until I got a satisfying result, as it was my first time doing it. Finding the old newspaper was very cool and even better to actually find a date on that newspaper „1902“. A follower on Instagram was actually able to find that newspaper from 1904 when it was printed. It was actually a patent description. If you click the link below you're actually able to find the exact patent with the exact same text like you can see in the video on the newspaper. With all this information this door bell must have been built somewhat around 1904-1906 in Germany I guess. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

In this video I'm going to restore an antique adjustable wrench. My friend found this wrench at the steel waste and I bought it from him for $10. It was rusty and all movable parts were completely stuck. The jaws seemed to be in good condition. I had to soak the whole wrench in rust remover for one day to get it unstuck and I've put it right back into the rust remover for another day after I completely disassembled it. That removed all the rust and the parts almost looked sandblasted after that treatment. The movable jaw had a lot of play in the t-slot of the body and that's where this restoration begun. First I sanded the guided part of the movable part clean and then I made the t-slot smaller by squishing it together with forging. That all went surprisingly well and it ended up with a perfect fit. I then could file and sand the whole thing completely smooth and gave it a nice coat with nickel plating for rust protection. The knurled adjustment wheel took quite some time to restore. Especially refiling the whole knurling by hand was very time consuming. I'm not 100% satisfied with the result of the knurling but it was not too bad, still quite an improvement. The spring was really unique, as it was rectangular shaped. I only sandblasted it and also nickel plated it. Sanding it clean would change the strength of it. I had to make a new washer because the original one was not thick enough anymore to fit in the body. Overall I'm very happy how this adjustable wrench has turned out. I really like the brushed finish with the nickel plating. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

In this video I'm restoring a very unique looking antique italian coffee grinder. I recieved this coffee grinder a few weeks ago as a gift from a subscriber from Italy. He sent me a picture of it, asking me if I want it on Instagram and I said yes immediately. I really liked the unique look of it and its design. At first I thought this would be a very simple straight forward project. It would soon turn out how wrong I was. The two big wooden parts became a real challenge to restore. It would be rather easy to make new ones, but I really wanted to keep the original ones and restore them. As the bottom piece was warped a lot and was also 3mm oval I couldn't just machine it all clean right away, otherwise I would need to take off way to much material. I decided to try to bend it back flat by soaking in water for a day and than clamp it flat and let it dry. Fortunately my plan worked out and the pice got almost flat again, to my surprise it also became round again within 0.5mm. The reliefed stress made a few cracks appear. I filled them all with a mix of epoxy glue and sawdust. After that I was able to machine it nicely and didn't loose to much on its original size. The wooden top was rather easy to restore compared to the bottom. Because it had a very loose fit in the body, I decided to machine that diameter clean and glue on a sleeve. That worked very well and then I just had to remake the slots in the sleeve with my rotary tool by following the existing ones. The color choice was also quite a difficult task on this project. I changed my mind a few times and even repainted the body. First I painted the outside in corn yellow, but that looked very bad with the dark wood. After alot of thinking I decided to püaint it in light ivory, which in my opinion was the absolute correct decission. It matches the dark wood very nice and also works nicely together with the gold. Overall I'm very happy how this coffee grinder turned out. New Video Every Tuesday And Saturday At 6pm ET

In this video a rusty oil lamp is brought back to life.

In this video an antique shear is brought back to life.

In this video an old time oiler is restored to perfection.

In this video an old rebar cutter was brought back to life.

In this video an antique soldering iron was restored to its prime.

In this video a stainless bolt is cut into a small machete.

In this video a rusty cleaver is brought back to it's prime with a mirror finish.

In this video a broken lock was brought back to life.

In this video an antique kitchen scaled was fully restored.

In this video an antique coffee grinder was restored.

In this video a rusty antique scooter was brought back to life.