I’ve been home the past couple days to attend to some projects — getting an aluminum patio cover installed and having shutters put in on most of the windows. My time’s been occupied by holiday season preparation, general housecleaning, and shuttling the kids to their activities. In the downtime I’ve dropped back into a few of my favorite tool restoration YouTube channels to see what’s new.

I watched this great new one from Black Beard Projects where he restores a 1950s-era bench grinder. Degreaser, paint stripper, electrolysis, and a load of elbow grease convert this thing back into a fully functional grinder you could put right back to regular use. I love the new tool he’s got for corrosion removal from small parts: an ultrasonic cleaner:

This one from the LADB channel was great: an antique corn sheller that goes from having spent a number of decades exposed to the elements back to its original yellow glory:

It’s hard to watch that beautiful, deep metallic oiled steel get covered up with paint. But I suppose if it’s about restoring a 100 year-old tool to be alive for another century, I guess I see the point.

And one close to my personal interests: the My Mechanics channel restoring an old coffee grinder. I’ve watched a ton of these videos and I’m surprised that this one’s the first where I’ve seen a sandblaster for cleaning parts. Maybe since most of these folks are doing this in their garages that’s too specialized of a tool, but it seriously reduces the labor required in cleaning many smaller parts. This restore is pretty extreme; he even machines his own screws with a CNC lathe.

I’d love to try my hand at some simple stuff restoring small hand tools and see what I could do.