As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
So this is a tale of how trying to do something good has satan hindering every day of the way, all because of evil people reading this blog and thinking evil thoughts. The thing is that satan did these things for these evil people and will come to collect by force in time, and the thing is evil returns to the sender in a greater wave. It is the manifold increase and equal and opposite reactions.
So I was at my Uncle's place and had a very nice time with TL, when he mentioned this license plate which he had never seen. He collects all kinds of things and knows all about antiques. The license plate was
RETAIN AND ENFORCE PROHIBITION. It was not pretty like the above, but was all rust.
These plates are made of heavy steel, and I will surmise they met one of two ends, in Franklin Roosevelt melted them all down in his scrap iron seizure for his World War II, and they all ended up murdering Germans out of B 24's or being steel, they simply rusted to dust.
So he asked me if I knew of anyone who could restore a license plate. I said I did not, but that I could look online. His daughter had found a different license plate which was black letters and yellow background, but TL found the one above, as it apparently is a collectors piece in a two of a kind.
I looked, and found a few sites, but nothing close, and all expensive, so I decided I would try and the worst that would happen is that it had paint on it, and it stopped deteriorating.
So we went back and he was spraying weeds, and told me to take it, and off we went on this grand adventure. We had to go back and make sure he wanted it like the original in red letters and not black, and he did, so the first step was to steel wool the rust off and clean it up.
Cleaning revealed rust bubbles and what would be a rust crack in a few years if things were not taken care of now.
Next step was to Ace Hardware to ask a gal that looks like TL's sister, what paints would stick, what would work, and what was the price. Price was around 50 dollars with brushes and paint.
The guidelines stated primer, enamel and then a clear coat spray on. That is what we did.
As you can see the primer made it look sick and really brought out the imperfections. I was not going to sandblast this plate nor alter it by welding, so we ended up with 4 coats of primer.
This is the interesting part in the weather was not bad before this, as I needed 50 degree days to paint outside for health reasons. After this, I got 50 degree moments, and just crapper weather day after day.
After getting the primer on which was very strong scented, I was able to do the yellow underlayer and found that was not so bad, so the next coats of yellow, went inside, in one on the back, then letting it dry, and then the front, for several coats.
This yellow enamel never really would dry.
As you can see I forgot in the hell that is my life to take a picture of they yellow and we start with the red lettering in an artist's brush.
I am not an artist like Richard of Richard and Stephanie, so I put on the first coat and was about to leave it, when TL said a second coat, so a second coat it was to turn orange red into red red.
I put two coats on the letters and then did the best that I could in trying to even it out. As this is artisan work, or hand work, as the process to complete it old school was not the kind of machines I would have access to, I put the red on, fixed with yellow, then re painted the red, and then did a few touch ups with yellow.
The result is today I had it hanging on the clothes line. The reason being, the clear coat is sprayed on, and hanging in a wind storm was about all I could do with that paint stink, but with two good coats, and my finger brushing away the two runs, the end had arrived on this project.
The clear coat does not look that different from the enamel, but then it is clear coat.
Uncle was talking about putting it on his pickup. After seeing that there were only two examples left, one his rusted one and the other above in worse shape, I think I am going to hint that he has a museum piece and someone might steal it or it would be a shame to have it destroyed, and see if that suggestion works, as I put a great deal of work into this restoration to get it as crappy looking as I did.
It is a lesson on how satan resists the work of this blog and the evil which appears. It was something to smile about as soon as I got this thing done, the sun came out and as I stated it will be a nice day tomorrow once I get this thing done, and that is what the forecast is.
So if you ever come across one of these plates in a junk pile, you should probably not dump it for scrap as there is the above example an the example I restored and that is all you will probably ever see of this almost 100 year old license plate when alcohol was prohibited by an Amendment to the Constitution and Joe Kennedy made a fortune bootlegging with the mafia.
That's about it.
Nuff Said
agtG
