One of the seats rusted through and broke on this metal seesaw. Using Techshop, I was able to easily repair this. Check out your local techshop at techshop.ws !

The red seat on the left broke at the weld, and this is the final result.

Step 1: Stripping

After I unbolted it, I stripped all the paint off. Combination of aircraft paint stripper (aerosol can) and sand disc did the trick. The aircraft paint stripper worked well for tight areas, but was kinda slow.

I tried sandblasting off the paint, but that didn't work.

Total time to strip paint, 4 hours.

Step 2: Welding

I tig welded it down at techshop. They have a pretty awesome ventilation system which came in handy for all the paint that I couldn't get out from inside the tube.

1 hour to weld.

Step 3: Painting

I did do a final pass with the sandblaster to get a nice dull finish on the metal. In the areas that I didn't sandblast, the paint is a bit more translucent and I recommend sandblasting any visible areas. Sandblasting also removed tiny specks of paint that I missed.

I washed the part with simple green, remember to wear gloves to keep your oils off it. I put it in the preheating oven to dry it off. I didn't wait long enough for it to be preheated before powder coating it, so I only put one layer of powder down.

The oven was only 300 F when I put it in, and it took another 30 minutes to get to 400 F. The heater controller is pretty conservative, so setting the set point to 450 helped speed things up, and then having a final set point at 405 F helped keep the oven at 400 F.

I took the part out 12 minutes after the oven got to 400 F. Prismatic powders specifies 12 minutes once the metal is at 400 F. I didn't have a thermocouple on the part, so I assumed it kept pace with the oven since it was pretty slow.

When I took it out, the metal was 409 F. Techshop has a laser temperature sensor. Next time I think I'll bring a thermocouple on a multimeter and attach it to the part.

The finish was a little thin in some places, but overall excellent glossy surface with no orange peel.

Color is Astatic red from Prismatic powders. I think I used about a 1/10 of a pound.

2 hours to sandblast, clean and powder coat.