I got very little done over the summer, since our kitchen was being remodeled, and the garage was full of building materials and contractors’ tools.
But I am in the middle of fixing up the stainless steel radiator shell. It had several fairly deep scratches and a few small dents, and I had to bump out and file the dents, and sand out the scratches with fairly coarse sandpaper. Then I had to go over the entire thing with fine and extra fine wet-or-dry sandpaper, and buff it twice, with emery and then stainless compound. I ended up doing the sanding and buffing about three times, since after the first polishing I could see lots of scratches from the coarser sandpaper that were hidden, but not actually removed, by the finer grades. Stainless steel is a very tough metal that takes a lot of work to sand and polish, and the radiator shell is pretty big.
Once it was polished up all nice, I carefully masked off the painted plain steel inset panel at the top, and bead-blasted the remains of the old paint, without damaging any of the polished stainless steel. I did the masking with heavy duct tape, since bead-blasting does not penetrate it. In the next few days I will prime and paint that panel with the body color, and also paint the lower panel black.
I also fixed up the oval stainless steel “Ford” emblem that goes on the top of the radiator shell. I sanded and buffed it, sprayed it with black paint, and wiped off the paint, leaving paint only in the recessed lettering. After it dried, it looked quite handsome.