Vintage Stainless Steel Restoration

1376 Views 8 Replies 5 Participants Last post by davrx, May 23, 2014

davrx

Discussion Starter · May 21, 2014 (Edited)

I just finished restoring an unusual size/shape stainless tank from the 30's, 40's? that I bought a couple of years ago. I resealed it from the inside with some black silicone and spent a couple of hours with a drill, buffing wheels, and buffing compounds to try to get the stainless steel back to what it must have originally looked like. It must be a low grade stainless because a magnet sticks to it like regular steel but it shines up like regular stainless. It was in such bad shape that I wasn't even sure what kind of metal it was when I first got it. Because of it's unusual size, 7" X 7" X 10", and nice bulb edge glass that isn't made anymore, I decided to spend the time restoring it. I measured 1.75 gal. to within about a half inch of the top. Its size is nice as it doesn't take up much real estate on my computer desk. I used some Azoo substrate, a piece of mopani wood, Najas roraima, and a ZooMed Micro Clean 304 internal filter as the new home for my betta. The ZooMed Micro Clean 304 is the smallest filter I can find now that the Tom Dive Clean Micros are no longer being made. They're made in Italy which is different from most filters on the market. I've also used the ZooMed 501 filter for my nano tanks and I really like their filters and I'm not just saying that because I know the company CEO, I really do think they have high quality filters for a good price.

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Korya

· #2 · May 21, 2014

That looks really cool.

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davrx

Discussion Starter · #3 · May 21, 2014

Korya said:
That looks really cool.

Thanks

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someoldguy

· #4 · May 21, 2014

That's neat !!! ... Wonder if it was originally an aquarium or some sort of terrarium or lab gear from the '20's

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davrx

Discussion Starter · #5 · May 21, 2014

someoldguy said:
That's neat !!! ... Wonder if it was originally an aquarium or some sort of terrarium or lab gear from the '20's

It was an aquarium but not sure which decade, the type of glass makes it before the 50's.

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fish_fasinated

· #6 · May 22, 2014

Beautiful tank, so much potential I'm sure the original owners never dreamed of

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

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davrx

Discussion Starter · #7 · May 22, 2014

fish_fasinated said:
Beautiful tank, so much potential I'm sure the original owners never dreamed of

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Thanks, wish I knew what this oddly shaped tank's original purpose was, possibly as I mentioned earlier, takes up less space, so could pack more small tanks on the shelf of a pet store?

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GraphicGr8s

· #8 · May 22, 2014

Nice little tank.

I doubt it's stainless steel however if your time is any where near accurate. It is probably regular steel that had a lacquer coating to protect it. (Lacquer was popular right around that time and was being used by GM on their cars.)
I have a feeling though that it might be so small because of the cost of manufacturing glass around that time.

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davrx

Discussion Starter · #9 · May 23, 2014

GraphicGr8s said:
Nice little tank.

I doubt it's stainless steel however if your time is any where near accurate. It is probably regular steel that had a lacquer coating to protect it. (Lacquer was popular right around that time and was being used by GM on their cars.)
I have a feeling though that it might be so small because of the cost of manufacturing glass around that time.

Thank you. It could be but I would have thought there would have been some rust after all these years if it was just regular steel and there was no rust on this. It definitely had some sort of patina, I wish I had taken a before photo, I left the bottom untouched but I'm not about to try to take a photo of it now while it's set up. Anyway, I still think it's steel with some chromium in it but not a grade that is probably produced anymore. As far as the glass goes, there are other tanks using this same type of glass that are much larger than this one so I don't think it was the price of the glass, it just seems to me that this size was for some specific purpose as I've never seen it before.

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