Painting

The artist has returned.

It turns out there’s an art group in Buchanan.  Who knew?  They meet once a week to do art.  SWMBO has been attending and she has started painting again.  She also drew Gray Hawk anchored in a bay with crayons.  (she drew the picture with crayons – Gray Hawk was anchored with an anchor)

I’ve been painting too.

I got the little tractor tore apart and then hung it from the rafters in the garage.

When I was in Saskatoon last week I picked up a few quarts of Case tractor paint.  I bought a quart at Hergott’s in Humboldt for $21 and 2 quarts at Redhead in Saskatoon for $56 – evidently there’s a lot more overhead at the Redhead store.  For the vintage of my tractors I should be using Case Power Red (which is actually orange) and Desert Sand (which is kind of a shitty brownish yellow).  I wasn’t able to find Desert Sand so I settled for Power Tan which is actually the Case construction yellow but its a pretty close match to the original colour for my tractor.  The whole point of this repaint is to make the tractor look better than it did.  I have no illusions that I am doing a restoration quality paint job. 

Last night I buggered around with the welder trying to patch up the rust holes in the front of the hood.  It was kind of like trying to weld tin foil so I quickly gave up, mixed up some epoxy paste with colloidal filler and goobered the hood up with that.  That went WAY quicker and once its covered by paint no one will know the difference.  I did weld the broken hood hinge back on.

This morning I started squirting paint onto the various bits and pieces hanging from the roof. 

I’ve still got all my spraying equipment from the summer when I painted the bus.  I’ve also got a lot of odds and ends of paint leftover from that project so I had plenty of reducer.  It was moderately cold this morning – about 10C – so I threw in some additional hardener as well.  I don’t really know what I’m doing but it seemed like a good thing to do and the guys at Walker’s Auto Body Supply in Saskatoon thought it might help.  I had read online that adding hardener was a good idea but I thought it might just be internet bullshit so I checked with Walker’s when I was buying gunwash.  They said it wouldn’t hurt anything and might help in colder weather.

The forecast is good out as far as they can be trusted so I hope to get the tractor back together while I can still remember where everything goes.  When I was in Saskatoon I also picked up my used Roper garden tractor complete with new Linamar (Onan) engine.  The tractor is a piece of shit but the engine runs like a charm.  I haven’t pulled anything apart yet but maybe by Tuesday I’ll be ready to do the transplant.