Rusty 1940s Ear Tagger Restoration | Random Restoration

Welcome! Today I'll be restoring this old rusty 1940s cast iron "Security Sealer" which was mostly used as an ear tagger for animals. I started the restoration on this rusty hand tool about eight and a half months ago and decided to finally finish the restoration before moving onto more interesting (mostly hardware related) projects.

I started this tool restoration by spraying it down with some penetrating fluid. It may not look like it in some shots, but this tool was very rusty in many areas. After the quick removal of a large sticker I was able to remove all the screws and bolts with relative ease. After disassembly it was time for a quick bit of paint stripping. I really couldn't tell what the original color was, but it seemed to either be a dark green or grey.

Next up in the tool restoration it was time for rust removal. I soaked all the parts in the rust remover for a day before removing them. Them I left them sitting in an old sour cream container for many months to slowly start rusting again - This thing really wanted to live life as a rusty tool haha. After returning to the project I soaked them again in the rust remover for a day before finally wire wheeling all the parts.

Now rust free and shiny I decided to clean up the large parts - I wanted to leave the original rough casting, but there were a few areas that required a bit of metal filing. After those touch ups it was time for painting. I used a black primer followed by a gloss navy blue paint. It is much darker in person compared to most shots in the video, and I think it fits the piece well, though maybe you'll disagree with my lacking sense of style haha.

Then it was time to restore the small parts. I started with sanding some of the small parts. This didn't take much time, but I noticed the threads on both the bolt and nut for the handle were damaged, so I re-threaded them both. Then it was good ol' bluing steel time. I only had to blue one screw, as the three springs that had been blued from the factory wore in shockingly perfect condition after all these years.

Finally the sealer was reassembled. I then looked around online and found the original patent for the sealer, which describes itself as a compression die for metal seals. These were used for animal ears, and alternatively attaching a seal to a skin or fur. Anyway, it was nice to get this restoration finally finished, as I have some pretty cool projects I really want to get to - The next two should be pretty cool, well in my opinion at least haha.

Time Stamps:

0:00 Welcome!
0:25 Disassembly
2:48 Paint Stripping
3:33 Rust Remover
3:49 Wire Wheeling
4:56 Test Fit
5:34 Filing Defects
6:34 Painting
7:27 Sanding Small Parts
8:17 Tapping New Threads
9:10 Bluing
9:51 Reassembly
12:26 Before and After

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