3. Pedal to the Metal
It’s been a while since my last update… The first couple of updates were things that were able to be attacked relatively quickly and easily. The harder tasks have faced us now.
I use the word “us” lightly LOL. We are so lucky and blessed to have Dennis Mathews, our friend, help with the welding and metal work. We took the trailer to Dennis‘s house a while back so that he could start addressing the areas that needed attention as it relates to metalwork. He has been fabricating, welding, and patching necessary metal stuff. Clearly, I am not a whiz with metal vocabulary.
Surprisingly, the rust on the trailer was not as bad as we thought it would be for being 40 years old. There were, however, some areas of pretty bad rust which required some complete metal replacement. Other areas were able to be fixed with patch-up work.
In the pictures, you can see the shiny new sheet metal are the pieces that were completely replaced. In some of these other photos, you can see where some of the metal simply had to be cut out in small pieces and small fixes with patches of sheet metal were welded in
Dennis completely fabricated the shelves which will be on the side of the trailer and will serve as a small counter. Right now, you can see they are just framed metal. (Chris will finish them off with wood to make them complete - but that will be a while yet). Also, the fabrication that got me the most excited was the pop-up serve window. Dennis 100% created the frame for the service window. He still has to fabricate and attach the piece of sheet metal which will lay over the frame and then will lay flush with the trailer when it is close… But, I was so excited after I saw the window which is why I am sharing this blog post to show you all the progress thus far.
Both sides of the trailer will be identical: service windows and shelves. This is so I won’t be limited with accessibility or presentation despite any one location. And dear god, let’s hope this lessens the amount is times I would have to to back the trailer up! LOL
While Dennis has been busy with the big boy metal stuff, Chris and I have been busy cleaning up the trim pieces. I wanted to save as many original pieces and parts as I could - which equates to a little more elbow grease. We scrubbed down then trim pieces with steel wool and the polished them up with a buffering compound. The shine that came through was almost as good as new!
Dennis still has some metal stuff to do. Once he has completed all he is doing to help, we will be sending the trailer for sandblasting….then on to primer, powder and wrap!