In November of 2008 I bought a 20 qt Hobart mixer for my wife’s Birthday for $1100 on CL. They go for $1200 to $1800 on Ebay depending on condition. It was built in 1969 and weighs 200 lbs. I brought it home and marveled at it and thought it would be neat to do a restoration with a PC finish. It’s built like an old Fod 8N tractor. So before she even used it I completely tore it down to bare castings. I went on CL and bought a 2 stage compressor and convection oven, then got a sandblast cabinet, IR temp sensor and the Caswell import gun.
Here is what it looked like when I brought it home:

And it sat that way till about a month ago. She went on strike and said she was not going to bake any bread till I put the damn thing back together. So I had to get my butt in gear. A lot of lurking on this forum gave me the confidence to get started.

The castings were very heavy; and I was very intimidated at this for a first project. Prepping the castings took a lot of work (stripping, filling and smoothing). That old cast iron is HARD. The convection oven helped heat things up more uniformly and the temp sensor was indespensible.

I replaced all the bearings and seals in the 3 speed transmission. I’d be embarrassed to say how many hours I have in the whole project.