Thread: ABC Chain Hoist 1.5ton - Restoration

Well done, nice to see something old new again and useable

Thanks - I took a decent amount of time (I'd say about 8 - 10hrs in total) for something thats probably only worth $150 but it'll be a useful bit of kit for the rest of my life so what price do you put on that?

Charlie, I had a not totally dissimilar experience with an old snatch block. It had been sitting out in the weather in my late uncle's home for at least 50 years and goodness knows how many before that when my grandfather was alive. On picking it out of all the other rubbish the sheave amazingly moved freely!
The first thing I tried was numerous applications of penetrine to the locking flap which, to my surprise and pleasure freed up.
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So far so good. The next challenge was the swivel which was rusted solid. Again, many more applications of penetrine before the engineers hammer came out. I then started giving the swivel half a dozen or so taps in either direction along with more penetrine. It took many weeks but eventually a crack in the rust 'weld' appeared. Then out came the club hammer and more penetrine. Slowly but surely the crack increased in length around the circumference and movements slowly happened. Eventually this is what happened.

Unfortunately my video doesn't upload, but trust me it now spins freely.

This is now what it looks like. I will probably take the sandblaster to it and then some paint, probably a bit more sombre than Charlie's though!
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Originally Posted by Charlie_6ft

Thanks - I took a decent amount of time (I'd say about 8 - 10hrs in total) for something thats probably only worth $150 but it'll be a useful bit of kit for the rest of my life so what price do you put on that?

My god you're fast! Or are you running some kind of Apple type sweatshop with thousands of peons toiling away?

I often spend 8-10 hours just looking at something and thinking "what am I going to do here?" let alone actually getting the work done! ;-)

huon_pine_fan thats a stunning bit of iron! Looking forward to it restored

aarggh, Perhaps it was a bit more than 10hrs. I did it up over the course of a few weekends:

1hr to pull it apart
4hrs sandblasting
2hrs wire brushing the chains once they came out of the rust remover solution
4hrs of painting inclusive of undercoat
1hr to assemble

I've often thought about doing one of those rusty tools restoration YouTube channels - Some guys get over 2.5million views which is insane!

Originally Posted by Charlie_6ft

I've often thought about doing one of those rusty tools restoration YouTube channels - Some guys get over 2.5million views which is insane!

Yeah, I know what you mean, I'm working on a leg vise at the moment, I reckon at my rate if I streamed it I could make it go for about 2-3 seasons worth! ;-)

Not so squeezy cleaning a hundred years of gunk of pitted and slightly rusty stuff without destroying some of it's features. Although so far the cleaning has revealed a really nice makers mark and a serial number, which were completely hidden prior!