What he said. I used to strip old machines back. Then I decided it was
a waste of time seeing as how I bought them to cut metal, not be museum
pieces, and any new paint job was gonna get damaged anyway. Now I just
clean off old caked oil, grease etc and put them into service.

PDW

In article , Grant Erwin
wrote:

Why remove all the filler? All this baloney about "gotta get down to bare
metal" I now think is pointless. If the stuff hangs on there like glue,
just PAINT OVER IT.

I learned this when I redid my Walker Turner band saw. I insisted on every
square millimeter of cast iron being clean and then I painted it. Sure, it
looked great. Now it's usually covered with chips, who cares?

GWE