Lately I have started watching metal restoration videos on YouTube as a sleep aid, and I don’t know why I find them relaxing and inspiring.
The videos are largely the same. There’s no talking. There’s no music. The lighting is stark and the color palate is flat. There’s a nondescript workbench with a white background, sometimes adorned with a sign bearing the name of the channel. The hands of the solitary worker (almost always solitary) places a broken, rusty, neglected metal object or device on the workbench. The camera inspects the poor thing from all angles. It is dented. It is covered in rust and dirt. The hands will pull a handle or push a level to demonstrate that the mechanism doesn’t work. The thing is junk. It is pitiful. It is beyond redemption.
But then the work begins. First is always disassembly. The hands unscrew the screws. Often a rusty screw will resist and need lubricant. Some will still resist and need to be blowtorched. Rarely, the hands will have to drill out the most stubborn screw and push the broken metal through the screw hole with a pin and hammer. One by one the pieces are removed, held up for us to see, and placed gently off camera. Finally, the whole object is reduced to its various rusty pieces, laid out on the workbench in a tidy order. Rusty bolts, bent metal frames and struts, broken springs, pitted hunks of iron.
And then comes the cleaning. One by one we spend time with each piece. The hands wash the dirt, soak pieces in acidic liquids (showing the label on the bottle to the camera before pouring it into a clear plastic tub) to remove rust. Sometimes the hands apply electricity. The video jumps in time and the pieces are removed from the now opaque liquid and the hands scrub them with brushes. Invariably a piece needs to be sandblasted. This is probably my favorite thing. Some special camera lets us see inside the sandblasting chamber as thick-gloved hands direct a stream of invisible but powerful sand at a metal piece, removing rust and revealing gleaming metal. Of course these sandblasted pieces have pits left from the removed rust and these must be filled with a welding torch. And then the weld globs must be ground smooth and sanded and polished.
This whole process can go on for an hour. Each piece subjected to a deep clean and reconstruction. Often some piece is beyond repair and must be replaced. The hands will make a new screw using a lathe. The hands will cut and bend a piece of sheet metal, weld and smooth the seams, hold it up to another piece to confirm it is the correct shape.
Some pieces undergo a process called “bluing” which is something I learned from these videos. A bit of metal—a screw or a latch or plate—is heated with a torch and submerged in oil. Or it might be painted with some magical elixir called “cold bluing” which, true to the name, does not require heating. These pieces end up a clean-looking black color. How this works or what it is for and why the hands choose to do it to some pieces and not others, I do not know. But I love it with my entire heart.
Pieces are painted. Primed, sanded, hung on wires, and spritzed with spray paint. The result is infinitely satisfying. Clean, colorful, shiny, and smooth pieces of metal are now laid out on the workbench where once there was an array of corroded, broken, hopeless junk.
And finally, if I am still awake, comes the reassembly. Each piece is screwed and bolted back into place. Springs are hooked over tabs to connect moving parts. Grease is applied where metal moves against metal. Within minutes, the metal object is reconstituted from this process. And when the hands have finished, we get to see the new metal object. The hands will turn the crank or twist the knob to demonstrate how it works. If the object has a function (waffle-maker, miniature pinball game, candy extruder, or somesuch), the hands will demonstrate that it works (by making a waffle, playing pinball, extruding candy, or what-have-you).
And we will see flashbacks to the object in its original, dilapidated state intercut with shots of the fixed object from the same angles. We will be reminded that this thing was once broken trash, and shown that it never really was broken trash it was just unloved. These hands, which over time have come to feel like our own hands, have used skill and patience and attention and love to resurrect the soul of a long-discarded, forgotten thing.
I think I love to fall asleep to these videos because their message is comforting. They are like a prayer before bed. None of us is beyond repair. With enough time and care we can break ourselves down, sandblast the pieces, make bits to replace the ones that have failed, polish, prime and paint, and finally rebuild ourselves into what we used to be: new, functional, full of promise.
Also sandblasters and “bluing” are just really cool. And maybe that’s enough.
Here are some good ones:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb5FtntbT5M&pp=ygUYbWV0YWwgcmVzdG9yYXRpb24gdmlkZW9z
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frjAjHl54rg&t=268s&pp=ygUYbWV0YWwgcmVzdG9yYXRpb24gdmlkZW9z
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKr8U578ug4&pp=ygUYbWV0YWwgcmVzdG9yYXRpb24gdmlkZW9z
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ragEZiT_4&pp=ygUYbWV0YWwgcmVzdG9yYXRpb24gdmlkZW9z
I could go on. There are hundreds!
Significant Interaction 