My Bridgeport refresh

Your Mill looks great, you did a wonderful job with the refresh.
 
Awesome refresh. I have a question for you. I very muxh like the idea of no bondo’d painting. I’m wrapping up a south bend 13” lathe restore, and once done i will be restoring my new to me bridgeport. I hate the idea of having to do body work on a bridgeport after stripping it. Do you have any close up pics of the j head after paint? Just wondering how bad the casting is and if i will as well enjoy the look of a non-bondo’d bridgeport. I hate body work and as long as there arent any unsightly voids in the casting, i’ll be following in your footsteps as well. Thanks for the close ups if you have any!
 
chrispyny said:
Awesome refresh. I have a question for you. I very muxh like the idea of no bondo’d painting. I’m wrapping up a south bend 13” lathe restore, and once done i will be restoring my new to me bridgeport. I hate the idea of having to do body work on a bridgeport after stripping it. Do you have any close up pics of the j head after paint? Just wondering how bad the casting is and if i will as well enjoy the look of a non-bondo’d bridgeport. I hate body work and as long as there arent any unsightly voids in the casting, i’ll be following in your footsteps as well. Thanks for the close ups if you have any!
Click to expand...
I can get a close up picture of whatever you need. Do you want the side of the head or front? The casting for me was fine. No giant holes.
 
Hope these help. These are closer shots. The photos make them look worse than they are. Im very happy with the overall look with no bondo. If you dont want to mess with bondo, I'd just sand the paint and not sand the filler. I kinda regret going down to bare metal.


 
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Looks fine thanks. I think i will knock off the cracking bondonwith paint over it, lightly fill in the major voids, and paint. Thanks!
 
I recently took my wells-index 745 down to bare metal and then did the full filler and paint work. It was a LOT of work. However I think oil soak is a legitimate concern that could affect the longeveity of your new paint job if you just paint over old paint/ filler... Unfortunatley stripping the old paint and filler is a BIG job and you will want protective equipment as the old paint may have lead in it.

If you really don't want to deal with filler, you could do about 4 coats of high build primer and sand before you paint the top coat. That will cover most of the casting imprefections and only leave the large ones. Might be a good compromise.

Good luck with your Mill!
 
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