Dumpster Doom

Many many moons ago my friend Jerr, whom I get many fans and fan tip offs from, had me over for something or other. He lives in this fantastic old Victorian home. He collects a great many wonderfully historic items. We were visiting and were about to leave to come back to my house when he said, "hey, I wanted to see if you wanted this old fan..." See if I wanted it... as my children say, "Duh!" He told me that he was just going to through it away.

I know it looks decent now, but picture it solid rust and covered in cobwebs, dust, and grease. It was missing its oscillator arm. I asked him if it ran and he said, "I don't know, I was afraid to plug it up." "I am not afraid," I said as I grinned from ear to ear. Something about this cheaply made, undesirable fan that appealed to me.

I took the fan home and Jerr and I took it to my work shop to plug it up. It ran great.

The fan was dismantled that night and I made a promise to it to clean it up and restore it.

As with many of my projects, I start them and then they sit on my workbench until I get back around to it. My break lasted probably more than a year this time. I usually think of colors and necessary repairs during this period.

One day I caught the fever to paint and so I talked colors with the wife. She said, "Red and Black..." I was thinking Dark Green... You can see who won. I went to the store looking for paint. I have several folks talk about using enamels, but never had. So I bought a couple cans of Rustoleum Enamel Red.

I was really pleased with the ease of application. It really flows smoothly and delivers a great gloss finish. A couple coats of white primer, a couple coats of red, and a coat of clear. Bought all new hardware. Fabbed a new oscillator arm from one off another fan. Drilled a new whole and shortened it... I made the new badge using a computer generated image I got from a fellow fan collector, Todd Mann. I changed the colors on the computer to match my fan colors and printed it on a sticky ups label. Then I cut it out by hand and stuck it on the badge. Then I painted over it with several coats of clear.

Finally reassembly. The little fan that was almost no more, now has new life.

LH