The most miserable piece of metal I've ever met

There were a lot of times during the process of restoring this Norton rear hub cover when I thought to myself "why even bother". This thing was literally junk. It had been heavily oxidized over the years, looked like it spent some time under water and had a couple of dents to top it all off. These things only cost about $20 to replace, but as stated before, I've got more time than money, so I'm always looking to restore parts rather than to replace them. There's a weird satisfaction to save and restore an original part, rather than just being lazy and buying a pattern replacement. Obviously not all parts can be replaced, and structural items as well as motor / gearbox wear and tear items, should be replaced. I don't restore old valves for instance.

But something this simple shouldn't be too hard, right? Wrong. This is literally the most miserable piece of metal I've ever met. After working out the dents, I sanded it more than probably any other piece of metal I've ever messed with. All the oxidation had pitted the metal substantially, and obviously it's quite thin, so you have to be careful and sort of massage it with fine grit paper. I worked on this piece off and on for at least 4 months now. I left it sitting on my desk during the process so that it was staring me in the face constantly and reminding me that I needed to finish it. The whole thing became a sort of task based on dumb pride and the refusal to be beaten into quitting.

The funny thing is, I never used these covers. I actually prefer the stripped down look of the stock Norton hub, without it's cover. But this piece is going on a Norton Electra that I'm restoring back to basically a stock set up. So the traditional look of this cover, is appropriate for the bike.

It sure wasn't fun, but it's done now. And in person, I think it looks even better than in this photo.