Posted 9 years ago
Otaco4me
(175 items)
Picked up this sad Tonka for free with the intention of sanding and repainting in some non original colour. I enjoy tinkering with toys, and the challenge of turning junk into something useful. Grabbed some 60 grit and started to take off the black paint to get it back to bare metal. Being built 'Tonka Tough', I noticed the decal was still on it. So I proceeded a little more carefully and turned it into an almost decent little Tonka Farms horse trailer. Wasted a couple of hours total, and with a resale in mint shape of under 40 bucks, it was not cost effective to do for profit, but was great therapy for relaxing and gave me the joy of taking what was trash to most into less than trash now. Still not much of a display item, and needs a little more work. But after working on this mess, all my other tin toy cleanings seem easy.
There are model guys that spend more time than that making a new one look like yours, weathered, as you would see going down the road.
I have a bunch of old trucks to redo sometime.
I hear you Tom. Some guys do a great job of it. I might do a big tin wrecking yard diorama.. This should work nicely for that. I won't fake the rust, I have some good rusty stuff naturally.