Antique Tractor Restoration Tips
“ Restoring & Painting Emblems ”
Nothing ads the final touches to a antique tractor restoration project like nice looking emblems. Sometimes replacement emblems are not available or are very expensive. So the one of the few options you have is to make your old emblems look new again. Sometimes this will involve straightening ones that are bent up, having them re-chromed or just a basic clean up and repainting.
With our Farmall Cub restoration, the hood emblems were a little bent up and pitted and the paint in the lettering was either gone or badly faded. I figured the first option was to look for new or reproduction emblems. I searched all my usual places online, parts suppliers, auction sites and found one. It was priced around $60 and in no better shape than the ones that came off the 1959 Farmall Cub so the idea of new emblems was abandoned.
That left the next option, which was straighten the ones we had and make them look new. This wasn't nearly as hard as originally thought. All it took was a little for thought and patience. First things first. clean up the old emblems and make them straight again. The straightening part was actually quite simple since these emblems were thin aluminum and it didn't take much more than a little push against a flat surface to restore the original shape.
Once we were working with a clean flat surface we painted the emblems with some aluminum paint (we could have polished the aluminum instead). Now, the problem how to paint the black lettering on these Farmall Cub emblems. I did some research and read numerous articles on how to paint them. This involves a steady hand, a good quality modeling paint brush and some paint. If you don't have a steady hand like me this can involve quite a mess and lead to a lot of clean up work with messy results. One day just by chance I was watching a television show about how golf clubs were made and I noted how the lettering was done on them. Brilliant, they used nothing more than a syringe filled with paint. Easy to do and mess free. Since we didn't have a syringe and did have something we could substitute with, we went with the easy way out. Using an empty glue bottle and the needle from a sewing machine oiler we rigged up our painting tool. I would have preferred using a syringe but this worked just as well and does not require a real steady hand or very much clean up.
The process is simple. Make sure you are working in a cool room (around room temp) with un-thinned paint. Fill the syringe or whatever you devise on your own and simply trace the inside of the letters as you fill them with paint. Let the paint flow in and you have a professional looking final result. If you are unsure of your skills on something like this find something to practice on until you have the hang of it. This one is easier than you might think.
