Bridgeport Milling Machine Rebuild - Part IV, Sanding and Filling

The milling machine is in pieces and can easily be prepped for painting. Our main reference throughout this rebuild has been a website by Kay Fisher. He documented his mill rebuild on a website: Bridgeport Mill - Rebuild. His website has been an inspiration for us to document as much as we can of our mill rebuild, and to have it out there on the web for anyone to see.

The main priority now will be preparing all none bearing surfaces for painting. We used the following for this part of the rebuild: sandpaper(80grit, 1809grit, and 320grit), Bondo(body filler), bucket of soap water, WD40(degreaser), putty knife set, and some shop rags.

The basic process is as follows:

1. Remove all dirt and grease from the surfaces using WD-40 or any other solvent that's good for removing grease.  Finish this step by cleaning the surfaces with warm soapy water.
2. Sand any rough surfaces with the 80 grit sandpaper.  This can be finished with the 180 sandpaper, but it's not necessary at this point.
3. Parts of the surface that are too rough be sanded smooth can be filled with the Bondo.  The Bondo comes as a resin and hardener, and sets up pretty quick after mixing.  The putty knives help remove access Bondo, similar to doing drywall work.
4. Repeat steps 2. and 3. until the surface is to your likings.  Finish with 180 sandpaper.
5. The last part will be the painting.  The painting process is similar to this one, but we'll get to that later.

The rest of this post will show before and after pictures of the work for the day.

Didn't look to different after, since most of the paint is gone anyways. 

Before 

After 

Before  

After 

Here is the door and door knob for the internal column shelf. We're just going to clean it up and leave it as is before painting.

Before

After sanding

After Bondo

Video of the day:

Sanding is a pretty tedious process, especially with all the surface area of the milling machine. The knee only made it as far as being cleaned. It will have to wait another day to prepped. The other parts of the mill not featured today also need to be prepped.

...to be continued.