1954 Tonka Star Kist Tuna Truck Restoration Box Van Starkist 725 Refurbish Advertising Restore

I purchased this 1954 Tonka Star Kist Tuna Box Van Advertising Truck on eBay February of 2023 for $244.56. This is a pretty rare truck and made in only one year. Outside of missing two rear hub caps and one rear door handle, the truck was surprisingly complete for being almost 70 Years old. The body while extremely rusted and corroded was in great shape, only having minor dents and dings, the front hood had a pretty good dent, the grille was bend inward as many of these trucks are from being rammed into another truck, the box van body had several pretty decent dents as well. After sandblasting the body and completing the minor dent repairs, I used JB weld to fill any leftover pitting after the high build powder coat primer was wet sanded, then sprayed one additional coat of primer to give the uniform base coat color. I was very happy with how the body came out. The original wooden bed had two screws pulled out of it while disassembling and I found it was extremely brittle, thus I decided to make an entirely new one on the Thunder CO2 Laser. This is the first project using the CO2 laser and I have to say, it's extremely easy to use! I've been playing around with it a lot lately. After running the wood through a planer to get the correct thickness, I let the Thunder laser do all the hard work and simply stained the wood afterwards. My favorite part of this entire restoration was remanufacturing the hub caps. I CNC milled a stamping die out of 4140 tool steel, while I'm sure there are ways to speed up the process, I'm very conservative with speeds when using micro tooling sizes, so the entire milling process took over 22 hours! Then I used the Senfeng Fiber laser to cut 28-gauge mirror polished hub cap blanks to stamp. I used approx. 30 tons worth of force to stamp the hub caps which I absolutely love how they came out. Overall, this was a really fun restoration and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do! Thank you everyone for your support and watching!

Lathe details
Precision Matthews PM-1440TL
Check out their website at https://www.precisionmatthews.com/

CNC Fiber Laser Details
Senfeng 1.5KW SF1313G
Check out their website at https://www.senfenglaserusa.com/

Thunder CO2 Laser Details
100 Watt Nova 51 CO2
Check out their website at https://www.thunderlaserusa.com/machine/nova-51/

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Watch my Previous Videos Here
1955 Tonka Green Giant Brand Semi Truck and Trailer https://youtu.be/uybu9awhgE0
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