Rust-Be-Gone!!!

Working on this bus has given me a clearer picture on how to combat rust. When I was first grinding it off the walls, I was trying to take it off completely. WRONG! My goal was to just expose a layer by roughing it up. Chemicals sold at our nearby Fleet Farm were going to stop the deterioration once we brushed a coat of it on the scruffed-up rust.

Wherever the rust and this "rust coverter" met a black paint emerged a day later.

Now the second step was to cover the converted rust with paint. Uncle Frankie had the best solution - his shelf of salvaged spray paint! He likes to go to the local dump yard and get cans that people are trying to get rid of. Based on the graphics of what we found, these cans might have dated back to the 60s! And so many of them were full. 

Why did people not want these? They were probably done with them after they used a smidgen for a project. Some had broken nozzles and their previous owner didn't know the miracles of paint thinners. Who cares I thought. It saved us so much money to use them because we ended up spraying painting every part of the bus frame - even parts that didn't have rust! We used about 25 cans of spray paint and it was all free!

For a while, our bus looked as if a bunch of hippies had vandalized it in the middle of the night, but it was ok. It was going to be covered up with our new floor anyway.