Sanding/painting Hendey lathe casting (was The snowball effect)

What did Britney Spears say? Oops, I did it again. So I brought my new to me Hendey 12 x 4 lathe home a few days ago now. The original plan was to dismantle it, clean it up, and reassemble. Easy peasy right? Ha! Once apart I figured I'd just blow a quick coat of paint on it. That has turned into breaking out the chemical stripper, wire wheels, and flapper discs. At the moment I'm on the oil pan. Which oddly enough is the roughest casting on the machine. Someone in the past used a body filler to "smooth" it out (Without much success). That was fun to remove. So now the plan is to grind out the high spots and epoxy the bottom to get it somewhat leveled out. This will be awesome when it's done but dang it why can't I just do things the simple way? Anyways my tennis elbow is beating the crap out of me but that's not gonna stop me. The parts that I have painted already look great. Not perfect but what the heck, I'm not restoring this thing to look pretty in some museum. Back to grinding....

Related Thread

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/.../finally-got-me-metal-lathe-woot-woot-359399/

Here is an example of what Patrick can do with a little elbow grease and a PAINT BRUSH

Hendey 14 by 6 Tie-Bar Rehab

glaze help

Patrick did a great job, nice looking tie bar Hendey. I have a few newer gear drive Hendeys plus a few others but they are working machines and I don't have time to think and will never have the time to do a great job like he did. But!! I would like to do some quick finish repairs. A while ago I had a job longer than my 96" bed length L&S model X could handle. I had to shorten 6" X 10' rollers that had a little longer than 11' shaft welded in the center of the outer 6" tube. To do it I had to remove the tail stock. Quite heavy so I disassembled it and removed it in pieces. Completed the job. Rather than just put the tail stock back on and having 4 additional lathes I took time and did any minor repairs. Having some body putty I filled most of the chips in the original glaze and painted it. Looks great but out of place on the lathe that is in excellent shape but has quite a few glaze pot holes and poor painting. I would like to make it look like the tail stock but don't want to spend large amount of time.
I'm not an autobody man so I know very little about body putty. Reading feedback on Amazon a few complain about the fast setting of a few putties. Others say to start excess removal before the putty completely hardens.
My question is: I'd like to know if anyone knows of a good glaze that hardens slowly so I have time to apply it. Something that can sit until I get the time to work on it again though I might use the lathe. Yet when I do get the time not be rock hard and difficult to sand. I traded a guy on here for a P&W 16" late model lathe. It had issues. I completely disassembled it, did repairs. If the process I painted all the parts that were painted and patched most of the pot holes, Lathe looks and runs great though not as great as Patrick's tie bar but took well over a 2 years. When it came in it looked worse than my other lathes! The lead screw shifter clutch dogs will need resurfacing on my 14" Hendey, they do still work OK. When I get the notion to repair them I plan to give it a paint job too so that it looks as good as the P&W. The L&S too, the tail stocks looks like a new car parked in the driveway of an falling down house.
Any ideas as to what I can use to cover the glaze pot holes?

Any ideas as to what I can use to cover the glaze pot holes?

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I imagine the original product used was lacquer putty, just very thick primer that was troweled on. Now there is 2k products, catalyzed so it sets solid, doesn't absorb solvents from the paint, which leads of problems, like bleed through, shrinkage and such.
Even Rust Oleum primer can be wet sanded after it has dried for a week or two.

There are a couple of options. West system epoxy is formulated for boat repairs however it can be used for many applications. They make a "fairing compound" powder that you mix with the epoxy. It thickens the epoxy and the powder is actually micro-balloons which sand very easily. In fact, i've used a wood plane to flatten it. Another option would be to use the sandable primer sold at tractor supply. It is very thick and sets up slowly. When i paint my hendey tiebar, i'll likely use this on the cast parts.

I'm doing my cleanup on the super cheap so I'm using rustoleum paint and system three epoxy that I already have. I plan to only use the epoxy on the chip pan. That guy did a beautiful job on his Hendey.

Jerk said:

I'm doing my cleanup on the super cheap so I'm using rustoleum paint and system three epoxy that I already have. I plan to only use the epoxy on the chip pan. That guy did a beautiful job on his Hendey.

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If using only rustoleum adding a hardener also helps the regular rustoleum sand better and gives it a better shine.

mllud22 said:

Adding a hardener also helps the rustoleum sand better and gives it a better shine.

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Thereby restoring accuracy to the ways, tightening up the spindle bearings, and
making the machine "just-like-new".....

digger doug said:

Thereby restoring accuracy to the ways, tightening up the spindle bearings, and
making the machine "just-like-new".....

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That's most important. The discussion was about paint. Some on this forum like to make it look good. Me included.

digger doug said:

Thereby restoring accuracy to the ways, tightening up the spindle bearings, and
making the machine "just-like-new".....

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Crap, I didn't add hardener... I didn't realize it would restore accuracy. I had to do all that "other stuff" by hand and it took me months.

Anyone that paints without addressing the mechanical needs of a machine is wasting their time. Machinery dealers do that. Paint to sell.
I've always liked taking an old machine and bringing the mechanical condition and appearance back to what it was or better.
Rebuilding a classic car is only about the drive trane. Paint is a waste of time. No different. These machines are built to make money. Why did the builders fill casting imperfections and paint. That's part of the whole picture. [It's just taking pride in what you do.]
Paint is not mandatory.

I'm not running an inaccurate lathe. All the lathes I have are in perfect running condition and hold .0005 or less. I agree that fixing the mechanical problems is a priority. I'm sure you paint your house but it would be stupid to waste time and money painting if the roof leaked bad! My intention is not to make the lathe look dealer show room perfect in appearance. From time to time I've seen YouTube videos on machining, I have to laugh at some of their stupidity and see them running machines that looked like they came out of a show room the day before and the shop don't have a chip anywhere! With that thought I'm reminded of seeing the owner of Suburban Tool showing how to us an edge finder the wrong way!

I put a straight edge on the ways when I inspected the machine originally. Spindle bearings are good. I wanted to dismantle the machine so I can get all the moving parts spotless clean and polish shafts and bores. While I've got it dismantled figured I'd blow some paint on it. I'm not filling any casting marks other than the chip pan. That's what gives the thing character.

I pondered the paint or don't-paint question. At the end of the day, for me, it's a question of whether or not i can keep the machine clean. I have some WWII vintage machines that, while the paint is chipped in places, it is not failing and i can keep the shop grime off by wiping them down with kerosene every couple of months. I have other, older machines where the paint is peeling and any attempt to clean off the decades of grease just results in a mess. If i can't tell where the grime ends and the paint begins, i will paint it.