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Royal Chef Restoration

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Hepcats Haven

Here is our Royal Chef as we purchased it. As you can see, there is a lot of surface rust and dirt.

The first thing I did was break the whole grill down so I could start the painting process.

Unfortunately, there are not many color choices when it comes to high temperature BBQ paint. I was able to find a gun steel blue high temperature spray paint online. I also wanted to buy high temperature primer as well.

Here is the main body of the grill in primer.

After the primer had dried, I painted it. I do like the color. It may be hard to tell, but there is a metal flake in the paint.

After a lot of sanding and cleaning, I managed to get the whole grill repainted. I reassembled it and here it is!

I painted the inside of the grill with black grill paint. I also refinished the rotisserie and got it working again!

I am soo glad the paint isn’t in a flat finish, more like something between eggshell and semigloss.

I am very happy with the coverage of this paint. This lower tray had a lot of surface rust. The paint and primer makes it look like new.

I think I will take this over to my upholstery guy Bill from B&T Upholstery to make a cover for it. I will have him sew the two letters “R C” Royal Chef on the cover. Now that this is done, onto the next thing!

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Posted in Restorations and tagged 1960's, 1960's Barbecue, 1960's grill, 1963 grill, 1963 royal chef, 60's, 60's Barbecue, 60's grill, 63 grill, 63 royal chef, Barbecue, BBQ, mid century, mid century Barbecue, mid century bbq, mid century grill, mid century grills, midcentury, retro, retro Barbecue, retro bbq, retro grill, retro grills, Royal Chef Barbecue, royal chef bbq, royal chef grill, vintage, vintage Barbecue, vintage bbq, vintage grill, vintage grills. Bookmark the permalink.

1963 Royal Chef BBQ Grill

Posted on December 24, 2013 by Hepcats Haven

Mel and I have been looking for a cool BBQ for a while now. The problem is that when most people are not using their BBQ, they leave it out in the weather. Rust and corrosion slowly ravish the BBQ and it turns into rusty yard art. I was searching eBay for a vintage grill and came across this one locally!

We purchased this from a lady who sells off left over estate items. She said that this came from an elderly married couple that passed. They were the original owners. As you can see, this is in great condition for being over 50 years old! I plan to work my magic on this unit to bring it back to life. All the rust is just surface rust and should sand off easily.

The grill has a hammered blue finish that I am going to try and covert to red color using heat resistant paint. Grills can easily reach up to 1000 degrees, so it can’t just be regular paint. Unfortunately the only real choices for BBQ paint are black, silver & red.

The chrome on this unit isn’t perfect, but it is in really good shape.

This unit has a clip on side shelf with a Formica top. The Formica is in fantastic shape and really doesn’t need replacement.

This is the original rotisserie motor that came with the grill. It currently does not work, but I plan to take it apart and to see if I can salvage it.

Here is the makers badge. Unfortunately, there is no real info on this particular grill that I could locate.

Here is our very grill in a 1963 issue of Better Homes and Gardens!

This will be a winter project I will try to have done by the time summer returns. Hopefully, we’ll be in our new place and ready to entertain. We are going through pain staking efforts to make deliberate purchases that will compliment the home we will be in. We really want to be as faithful to that era as possible. Since I have been looking, I came across other cool models I thought I would share with you.

This is a simple little unit with vintage styling.

This one looks like it is in almost new condition. I am sure its owner is very proud to own this copper colored dream.

This grill is on eBay currently for $2,100. It looks very original and I would love to have this parked in our backyard.

This is the “Holy Grail” of vintage BBQ’s. This is the 1956 General Electric Partio Cart. It came with an electric oven, electric stove, electric griddle, and on the other side a charcoal grill. Oh, and it had an umbrella. This is ridiculous. Here are some links that will tell you more about this cart: 1 , 2 , 3 .