This old weed digger spent the winter outside, and it's looking the worse for it.
The shank and ferrule are rusty, and the handle's paint is peeling in spots -- shameful. I'll have to set this right.
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My wire wheel machine took care of the rust in fairly short order. I've sanded the handle. (By rights, I ought to strip the old paint off entirely, but I'll just repaint over the old paint and hope for the best.)
There are a few little details about the ferrule that could stand attention. One is this needless void at the shank end of the ferrule.
I'll fill that with five-minute epoxy and create a sealed fillet that won't admit water.
And here we are.
Much better.
There's a deep dimple in the side of the ferrule.
I imagine that was done for retention of the ferrule, but it's beyond being just a dimple -- it's a puncture. I'll fill that with with five-minute epoxy to seal and level it. I'll apply CA adhesive around the ferrule/handle interface to seal that.
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Here's the dimple filled and ready for painting.
What I did there was I overfilled the dimple with epoxy. Once it hardened, it was easy to file and sand it level. Epoxy is a superb filler -- that's mostly what I use it for.
Now I can mask the handle, and paint the ferrule and shank gloss black. Once that paint has thoroughly hardened, I'll mask the ferrule and repaint the handle yellow.
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All Done -- SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 2013
Here it is fully painted.
Much better.
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