Ornate 1890s Letter Slot Restoration | Random Restoration

Ornate 1890s Letter Slot Restoration | Random Restoration

In today's video I will be restoring an old cast brass letter slot. This vintage mail slot was manufactured by Reading Hardware Company around the 1890s. It was apparent by the very crooked hinge holes that it had been a reject, and was abandoned by RHCo., as it would have been impossible to have installed the type of hinge they used on these letter slots. Where it had been sitting for over a century is anyone's guess, but I'm glad I came across it and was able to rescue it, repair it and get it in perfect working order!

There really wasn't any disassembly this time around, so I got started by giving it a very quick clean with some degreaser. Afterwards I moved onto fixing those awful hinge holes. I was able to drill them a bit larger and get them looking a lot better, but not perfect. Then it was time for the biggest part of the restoration - The metal work. This took a long time, as the casting was pretty poor unfortunately. The pitting was very deep in areas, and I ended up sanding some of the details away. I had to figure out how to restore those details, and ended up using a few different engraving bits with my Dremel tool and was luckily able to rebuild the details.

After this I hand sanded down all of the parts, and following that I went ahead and gave these lovely antique brass parts a mirror polish. I have separate polishing wheels so that I don't have to scrape off old polish from the polishing wheels when swapping between brass polishing and steel polishing, etc.

Now I had to do some DIY hinge work. I made two new hinge pins from screws, and let me say that took forever to do! I swear those were the hardest screws on planet earth, but I guess on the bright side those new hinges will never wear out haha. Then I went ahead and cut a new spring. I intentionally cut one of the hinges slightly longer so that I could fit a spring on it. I then hammered the hinges into place, and voila, there's now one more old letter slot in the world with a fresh makeover. Considering this sorry little letter slot was likely destined for the scrapyard, it's sort of a trash to treasure piece. This was a much faster restoration than normal, and although it may have not been the perfect restoration it is WAY better than it was originally, that's for sure!
Time Stamps:

0:00 Welcome!
0:15 Disassembly Begins
0:31 That Was a Quick Disassembly... Time for a Clean
1:17 Several Months Later...
1:34 Drilling Some Sweet New Hinge Holes
2:15 Filing/Sanding
3:51 A Properly Janky Intermission
4:15 Re-Engraving Lost Details
4:37 Making New Hinge Pins
5:26 Making a New Spring
6:29 Sanding and Polishing
7:56 Reassembly
8:33 Time for a Test
9:11 Before and After

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