Serious amounts of paint stripping, sanding, and polishing have yielded fine results for the dome aisle light lenses. Timm and Mike spend a Sunday afternoon making these 'happy finds' return to their original appearance. Next step will be redoing the electric components with LED lighting. It will be a special day when the totally finished aisle lights are mounted into their places in the dome seats pedestals and the lights are turned on. We plan and hope that will be in mid-Summer, 2018.
A view of all 7 sets of inside and outside lenses. 5 were painted and peeling, and 2 were pitted and corroded without paint. All of the inner housings are going to need cleaning and restoration. The inner felt seals will need to be replaced. The electrical components will need to be added, however 2 had the original lights and sockets which looked their age.
One of the painted outer housings before stripping the paint and sanding. At this stage, it's hard to imagine they could look like anything nice.
A view of how the inside of the inner housing looks, complete with 70 year old inner felt seal and original light socket and bulb. This will all be replaced with new insulating seals and modern LED lighting before being installed.
Here is how one of the pitted lenses looks before sanding along side one of the fully finished lenses. The glass shields were removed while they were being worked on. The metal is actually a cast white metal, typical of the era, but when restored take on a stainless steel or brushed nickel appearance.
This pictures shows a comparison between one of the painted, the pitted and the finished outer housings.
The final finished outer lenses ready to be sprayed with a protective coating.
