my latest restoration

gday fellas,
i wasnt sure where to post this as i coudnt find a non car related off topic thread, but here we go anyway.

when we purchased our current house, the old owner left a bunch of junk behind the shed. i was going through it a couple months ago and came across an old metters copper boiler. they were originally used for washing clothes. the earlier models (such as mine) were wood fueled, they later moved to gas.

anyway, this thing was left out to rot and had a good 80years+ of weathering on it. and i think the previous owner had just used it as a crab cooker.
unfortunately i didnt take any before pictures of my own boiler, but this is what they tend to look like nowadays
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mine looked 10x worse than these, no handles, very little paint left, the copper was coated in thick charcoal/carbon on the outside, and the inside was heavily pitted and tarnished. it was quiet literally falling apart as all of the braces had rusted through.

I have re-purposed her to be a drinks cooler. so between the copper insert and the main housing it is completely insulated with expanda-foam(lining everything with baking paper was a royal pita). i have also retro fitted a drain to simplify getting rid of the water from the melted ice. Mine had none of its chimney left, so i made one out of pvc, and the chimney has also been re-purposed to be a stubby holder. the boiler was missing its lid aswel, so i made one out of a 44 gallon drum lid (one without bungs). it worked out to be the perfect size as the diameter of the boiler is 22.5" and the 44 lid is 23"... i dont have any pictures of the finished lid yet, as i havnt painted it, and the foam is still setting.
but here she is-
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i had a good old laugh when the ball valve arrived (look at the name on the handle)
finding a clear coat suitable for polished bare metal wasnt easy, i ended up getting some stuff from the u.s, i only found 3 brands that make something suitable.
-shineseal (formerly zoopseal)
-everbrite (protectaclear)
-nyalic
...normal acrylic clearcoat ruined the polished finish...made it very opaque/cloudy. and fish oil was only a temporary fix.

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