Adriatic posted:Skip powder coating and do quality painting. Unfortunately for powder coating the metal must be clean, and raw, likely requiring dissassembly again too.. It fattens parts and your tabs would not only be unable to fit back in place, but once bent, the coating is likely to crack too.
Working with tabs, heating anneals them making the metal softer and less likely to break. Each bending hardens the metal (work hardened) making it a touch more brittle. Its not so much the metal was that much better, but more like they tended to use softer, thicker metals to begin with. Sometimes today's harder metals are more a result of speeding the process by quicker cooling. (Really just somewhat educated guesses on the metal, no research)
A good idea conveyed to me here on how to heat the metal before bending a tab was using a soldering iron vs flame that could attack the paint.
It doesn't take a lot of heat to "anneal" most metals. Aluminum can really benefit from in spectacular degrees. Research each metal type firsthand its not "hard".
Hello Adriatic..
I forgotten to memtioned that I used the red locite for the screws and nuts so I guess that means it will be better to repaint it then ? It was repainted sloppy before from someone else but the bridge is much stronger when bolted together now. Wondering what's the best paint to paint at cold temps like 50 degrees outside ? I will have to strip paint off and primer it , oh its a messy smelly job to do !!!
"So let us try as hard as we can to enter God's place of rest. We must try hard so that none of us will be lost by following the example of those who refuse to obey God". Hebrews 4:11 ERV (easy to Read version)
Tiffany
