Kegbot Action!

So here’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. Well ok, it’s the moment *I’ve* been waiting for. You’ve been waiting for it *maybe*. But this project has finally arrived at a middle, where things start to get better fast. After a cold galvanizing primer, I finished everything inside the cold box in a Rustoleum hammered-silver. I find this stuff to be tough as nails, doesn’t chip or scratch and the texture is forgiving of rough surfaces.

I reinstalled the floor grate, sanded and cleaned all the plastic threshold side and top pieces and replaced all the rusty screws. The bottom threshold got bead-blasted in our last episode so it also got primer, painted and reinstalled with its stainless screws (after they spent some time getting to know the wire wheel.) I left the adjustable shelf brackets out, less to clean. (How would you ever have a keg AND a shelf in there?) The shelf itself had been used as another layer of floor grating, which seems like a pretty good idea to me. It also got bead-blasted and I finished it in black satin Rustoluem (my favorite spray paint of all time… wut?… you have one of those too right?). I figure it will take most of the abuse of the kegs scraping in and out so it’ll be easy to take out and repaint as needed. So there you go. I can almost start working on the fun part - ROBOT STUFF!

But first I need to check out the rust around the drain hole on the side… uh-oh. Dayum. It’s not all ponies and rainbows in there. Looks like that will be the next episode.

So here are just a few more before pix to help you enjoy the impossible transformation. At this point, it occurred to me that I might want to plug this thing in and see if it even gets cold. Well worry not, it does get cold. Real Cold. RUSSIAN BEER COLD. Whew! I removed the door and hardware so I could take a wire brush wheel to it all and remove the years of scale and peeling chrome. I pried up the threshold… oh my. rustalicious! Next I pulled the floor grates aside because they would bee a bitch to grind (Bead blasting to the rescue - Thanks Ron… and Ben!). Then I took a grinder to the floor of the cold box. The rust came off pretty easily… but so did most of the galvanizing. So I decided to go with a rust-oleum cold galvanizing primer. Enh, might work, might not, but it seemed pretty solid and didn’t scrape off when I when I went at it with a putty knife, so there you go. Next up: things get better… then worse.

Ok, so i’ve been doing more working on kegbot than posting about it. I’m actually done restoring the inside cold box, but here are some shots of repairing the top to catch you up. The particle board top came off in moldy pieces, which is fine, we won’t be using that. I like it about as much as overly-compressed jpegs. I have a nice stainless piece that is going to work great. The drain was missing pieces and basically the beer was just pouring all over the top and running through a hole into the box. rusty as fuck. the metal is pretty thick though (advantage of its age - this thing is solid) and the rust didn’t go all the way through. So grinder, flap wheels and wire brushed to death, then a rustoleum primer and lots of top coats. Just need new insulation and we’ll be good to go for this part. 

Kegerator Before:

And so the Elwood’s Kegbot project begins. After returning from a quick road trip to Eugene with @pberry to pick this up from @shward and a little detour to Boston, I’m starting the teardown and rebuilding of this awesome older model Perlick commercial kegerator. I’ll be replacing all the lines, removing a lot of surface rust, replacing the damaged top, adapting to 2-3 taps, doing something about the wood grain Formica door, and y’know, turning it into a robot. Here we go.

Creating a  Junkyard Jumbotron for the Elwood’s stage for Friday’s show. This makes me very happy.

voilà! …huh? wut is it? it’s a conference room credenza OF COURSE! …GOD, NEVER MIND!

making furniture (and a LOT of sparks)

I’m amongst cheese lovers… but Pac-Man haters.