We are now ready to clean, paint, and restore our new Grizzly G4029 10×50 vertical milling machine. After finally getting the mill moved into our shop (Part 1), we kept the mill on the flat dolly to make it easier to move and paint until we figure out where it’s permanent home would be located.
This milling machine has never been used, but it had at least 5 year old cosmoline grease on it to prevent rusting. Some of it was so thick and gummy that we had to use some razor blades to scrape a lot of it off, and then we used some rags with the Super Tech lubricant that they sell at Walmart. It really helped loosen the cosmoline and helped with any small amounts of rust that did form. It’s just like WD-40, but cost less. We have ended up using it quite a bit with the machines in our shop.
We decided to take the time to sand, putty, and paint the entire mill. There were a lot of chips and scratches in the paint and casting putty from being stored and moved around the Grizzly warehouse for years. Plus, we aren’t big fans of the green paint. We disassembled every part except the knee. We sanded everything, and used the Bondo Lightweight Body Filler to fill in the chips and scratches.
- Please Note: It is actually a good idea to disassemble spindles and critical parts of any Asian machine to clean them and grease/oil them properly. You may not believe the amount of grit and grime left from the manufacturing process in these. I would NEVER operate an Asian machine without doing this.
I like using this Bondo, because it states that it works with metal and steel, and it’s fairly easy to use and manipulate. I recommend building it up in layers on good size chips or holes (build and sand, build and sand). It’s nearly impossible to get it correct the first time for the paint.
Before we decided on the new color of our mill, we had to make some decisions about the milling head. The head to our G4029 mill had been cannibalized for parts over the years, which is a common practice at Grizzly on damaged machines. We decided the best option for our shop and time was to purchase a brand new head with the options we really need/want. I’ll discuss more about finding and ordering parts for these types of mills in the next article, but we ended up choosing the ACER E-Mill 3HP Variable Speed Head, which cost a little over $3,000. They are available in Bridgeport gray or beige.
We decided to go for the Bridgeport gray color. A good easily accessible paint that is very close to Bridgeport gray that we decided to use is
Krylon “ColorMaster Classic Gray Spray Paint”. It is also available at Walmart. It goes on easily, and we have found it to be fairly durable in the shop.
Here are some pictures of the finished results. I’ll have a lot better pictures in the next article about parts and installation of the new mill head.
Do you have any products that you like to use during your machine restoration and painting? Or do you have any recommendations for me? Do you have any tips or tricks?
Please share in your comments below.