Remember this key? Its a 1958 Vibroplex Original De Luxe I won on eBay about a month ago. It's been in its box, rattling around in my SUV the entire month of April. I finally brought it in today, finally, to confront what a piece of crap I bought for my money.
It was a sobering reminder that you can't polish a turd.
I decided to completely disassemble the key and see what I've got here. As I originally determined, this key spent a lot of time either underwater or very near it. It's got salt crust on the threads of many of the adjustment screws, and what looks like algae resident dried on the base.
I used Flitz on the base, and the only thing that did was rub off small flecks of the terribly pitted chrome base. What you see there, the dark areas, is rusty steel. The base, as you can see, is pitiful.
The upper parts of the key looked pretty bad too. I cleaned and polished all the parts, and was pleased to find that only the damper seems to have suffered from pitting. And I'm not sure of that, the finish may have just been that rough to start with.
The good news is all the rest of the parts cleaned up to like-near or nearly so. Even the lever cleaned up OK. I finally got the dash lever unstuck, it was rusted or corroded stuck.
I could plunk down $70 for a new chrome base and I would have a pretty nice key. The frame is still a little rough, but passable.
Instead of that, I've decided that this is the key that I will paint the base to resemble the old japanned base bugs, with the gold pinstriping and everything. All I need to do is to sand down the rest of the chrome finish from the base, prep it and paint it. Glossy black lacquer! I've got a couple of “test” keys from the late 1950s — the plain Jane grey base Originals — that I was going to use as test subjects. Instead, I'm going to literally attempt to polish this turd.
If I'm successful, I'll have a key I can use and be proud of. Otherwise I've had pissed away about $80 for a piece of crap!
I've not purchased any additional keys lately since the 1945 Original came recently. It was my second strike out on keys … the chrome parts look really really bad, with lots of pitting and corrosion. I've set that one aside, another $50 lesson. I don't know what Ill do with that one, but it's going to be used for something.
The “turd” Original I first mentioned may be resurrected now that I have a plan. I have a hard time just parting the thing out, it's just not a good idea. But rather than part it out, I'll make something unique from it. Trust me, it couldn't have any value as the rusted piece of shit that it was when I bought it.
Enough key talk, I'm out of here for now. I have my eye on a Vibroplex Original Deluxe that's a Buy It Now for only $85 — a pretty good deal! I keep looking around reminding myself that I'm overrun with bug keys, I sure as hell don't need another one.
Yeah, right sure! LOL
I'm out of here for now .. 73 es CUL … de KY4Z SK ….. dit dit …