Some projects are about steel tonnage. This one was about bringing a piece of nostalgia back to life: a vintage dime horse — a “Ride Big Broncos” 10-cent kiddie ride, the kind generations of kids rode outside the grocery store. We documented the whole restoration in a two-part series.
Part 1: Saving the “Ride Big Broncos” Base
Decades outdoors leave a mark, and the ride’s sheet-metal base wore all of them — but it also still carried its original hand-painted “Ride Big Broncos 10¢” lettering and rope graphics. On an antique, that patina is the history, so instead of blasting it away, we broke the base down and worked it by hand: careful scraping and sanding to clean up the panels while keeping the original artwork intact. Then we masked everything off and laid down fresh coats where the base needed them, so the machine reads as lovingly preserved rather than repainted over.
Part 2: Walnut Shell Blasting the Horse
The horse itself needed a full strip, and this is where media selection matters. We blasted it with crushed walnut shell — an abrasive gentle enough for a sculpted antique casting. Unlike chemical strippers or hand sanding, blasting reaches every contour of a piece like this and takes off old paint, rust, and grime in one controlled process, without gouging the metal or washing out the sculpted detail in the mane and body.
Smoothing and Priming
With the horse stripped, we smoothed out the dings and pitting it had collected over the decades — body filler worked over the low spots, then the whole body sanded down with an orbital sander until the casting was uniform again. The final step in our shop was a base coat of automotive primer over the freshly prepped metal: an even, sealed surface that protects the horse and gives the owner’s final paint scheme a perfect foundation to bond to. Blast, smooth, prime — ready for final paint by the customer.
Another restoration done start-to-finish in Northern Utah.