Restoration Help

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post, I just joined!

Last week I became the proud owner of a significant amount of old printing equipment.

I am going to restore all of it and put it all into use (myself and my wife make wedding stationery)

To name some items I got:

Cropper Minerva Letterpress (1875 I think)
Large wheel Guillotine
Small Guillotine
2 Staplers
24 Drawers of Metal Type
2 mini guillotines

Plus, loads of spare parts for all the equipment.

I am going to start with restoring the small guillotine and building a cabinet to put all the drawers of metal type into.

I will post pictures and I would love some help along the way.

First, I will restore the small guillotine. I think it dates to some time in the 1800`s. The makers mark on it says “John Haddon & CO, Sailsbury Square, London). My research on this found that John Haddon was born in the late 1700`s and set up a business in 1821.

I plan on using electrolysis to strip the rust and paint off it and then repaint it with a similar Matt Black paint. I’m afraid some people may be against repainting something as old as this? There are also a few parts to this guillotine that I am unsure if they are original.

I seem to be having a problem uploading images…

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Sounds like a nice haul.

Electrolysis is a lot of work for not much gain IMHO. If you really want to repaint, mechanically strip what rust you can, go over it with phosphoric acid (converts the iron oxide into iron phosphate), then sand/paint that. OTOH as long as the rust stays dry, it’s not going to progress. You can also paint over it with a rust-covering primer.

Also, look into “Evaporust” for rust removal; I use that on smaller parts after a good wire-brushing and maybe wet sanding (w/ mineral spirits or WD40).

There are a bunch of discussions here about rust…..