Wednesday 27 October 2021

Rust Removal (the kind 'eye' despise)

As you may have gathered from the tabloid-worthy pun, I have once again found myself with a small piece of shrapnel embedded in my eye! 


I am pretty down on myself for not following my own advice and allowing this to happen once again. Readers, please, always wear eye protection when doing metal work. Those minuscule metal filings will find a way to target in on your ballseye if you risk even the smallest task it without adequate PPE.

So, off to the eye hospital I went. The assessment swiftly concluded that I had a flake of metal just on the outside of my iris on my left eye. Anesthetic eyedrops administered, the doctor set about scrapping it out with a needle. It wasn't the vibrating one this time around, but still unpleasant nonetheless as you literally see everything:


Still have a follow up appointment tomorrow to pick out the remaining rust once the ointment helps move it all towards the surface. I appreciated the irony in the reason the doctor wrote on the appointment card 'rust removal':


Back on topic, and I shall give a little update on the endeavour that led to my unexpected trip to the emergency department... 

Mounted the spring clips into the brake backing plates by lightly filing away one edge to allow them to slip under the crimped points:


Added some 'weld through' zinc primer in between the surfaces to help mitigate against rust developing in between:

I was then able to plug weld them into position:

Using the Dremmel I dressed the welds flat (hello stupid metal filing!) and then ran them back through the shot blast cabinet to clean and key ready for paint:

2 comments:

  1. in my beetle restoration, I had this happen to me twice, too. It seems to be inevitable with beetles, trying to embed themselves in the restorer's eyes.

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    1. I feel for you Kosti! My hope is that my two incidents will be the only ones, even though there is a lot of metalwork still to come.

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