Update

I'm just not feeling the sanding this week, so I'm taking a week off. There are four panels left to sand and I will get to them next week sometime. After I take care of these panels, there is some work that has to be done to the bottom of the trunk and then I can start staining and reconditioning this thing. Ughh, I hate sanding ! Check back soon for updates .

Remove Steam Trunk Handles

It's time to remove those old crappy worn out steam trunk handles. The one is severely dry rotted and the other one is completely broke. Once these handles are removed from the steam trunk I can finally finish sanding this thing. I love sanding :(

Broken steam trunk handle, no repairing this, this thing has to go !

I purchased a tack puller from the local hardware store. At the store I shopped at they were mixed in with the screwdrivers. The tack puller only cost $5.97 and was well worth the investment. It made removing the steam trunk nails much easier.

Basic tack puller purchased at hardware store.

 The first thing I did was find the nails on the inside of the trunk. I had to scrape a bit of the old interior away but the nails were fairly easy to find.

The nails can be found inside the trunk bent into the wood.

You then get your tack puller and gently try to get behind the nail and bend it up. Once you have the nails bent up, you can give them a little tap with your hammer to help loosen the trunk handle. Be carefull not to crack the nails, I broke two of them. Considering that they're close to 100 years old they seemed a bit brittle.

Carefully try and pull the nails out without breaking the nails, you want to save these and use them to reattach the new handle.

After the nails were tapped, take the tack puller and see if you can gently pry the handle from the trunk. Be careful not to bend or further damage the steam trunk handle assembly.

Once you have the nails straightened out a bit, give them a light tap with the hammer to further loosen them.

Gently pry the handle and loosen it a bit more.

Now take a pair of nippers, and gently pull the nails out. Save all the parts, especially the leather handle. If you can't find a suitable handle, you can use the broken one as a pattern and make your own. That's probably what I'm going to do.

Take your nippers and gently pull out nails.

Save all parts, the leather can be used to make a pattern for the new handle.

 That's it. This was another fairly easy part of the project. It took me about an hour to do the one side, mostly because I'm all thumbs and had no clue what I was doing. After I figured out the process, the other side took less than twenty minutes. This part of the project took roughly 1.5 hours to complete.

Yea, now I can get back to my favorite task of sanding and try to get this old steam trunk prepped for stain.

Project time for this post : 1.5 hours
Total time spent on project so far : 33 hours 15 minutes
Total project cost so far : $39.59 USD

Remove Steam Trunk Interior

Finally, a part of this project that was fairly simple. I removed the interior of the steam trunk the other day. It was a pretty easy part of the project and only took about an hour.

Ugly old steam trunk interior. Just hideous ! If this was the original interior I would of never removed it.

 I removed the interior for a number of reasons. One, it was pretty ugly ! Two, it wasn't the original interior. Three, I wanted to see if the bottom of the trunk was dry rotted, (something I should of done before I got into doing all this sanding, luckily it looks good). Finally, it's a pretty old trunk, it sat in an attic, a basement, a garage and God knows where else, so I wanted to make sure no creepy crawly things were living in there. Luckily, no creepy things. If you have an original interior in your trunk, I wouldn't remove it unless it's in really bad shape. The original interior would increase the value of your steam trunk considerably.

Cut along the bottom edge and one side. I couldn't believe how easy this was.

So, I got my razor knife and cut along the edge of the bottom and the one side. I pulled up the edge and it came out in almost one piece. Finally, a part of this project that I think I got lucky on.

Once you cut the edges, just pull up.

Any stubborn stuff that didn't come off on the first pull, I scraped with an old putty knife or paint scraper. The stubborn stuff really wasn't that stubborn.

Take a putty knife or paint scrapper and remove any stubborn stuff that doesn't pull up on the first try.

Some of the original interior was still under the replacement interior. It was tan with purple pin stripes. I left this, though I may ruff it up a bit with sandpaper before I install the new interior. Both interiors seemed to be nothing more than wallpaper and was really easy to remove.

This was the original interior, still ugly but I would of never removed this if it wasn't already ruined by the replacement interior.

A word of warning, the wallpaper interior in my trunk was pretty sharp on the edges and I got a small boo boo on my hand, a paper cut really, but it shocked me and could of been worse had I moved my hand just a little bit quicker. 

That wallpapers sharp, luckily I was working slowly, if I would of moved my  hand just a little bit quicker this could of been nasty.

For the next post, I plan on removing the broken leather handle straps.

Broken steam trunk handle, this is the next part of the project.Then I'm back to sanding :(

Project time for this post : 1 hour
Total time spent on project so far : 31 hours 45 minutes
Total project cost so far : $33.62 USD

Steam trunk, now awaiting a new interior for its new life.