Very nice! Congrats on the pickup! Can't wait to see her restored! Surprised you didn’t post this one in the Online Finds section prior to getting it.
LOL
I probably would have lost it if I had even taken time time to post it. Almost as soon as I saw it I told her I will buy it. There was one other person that was messaging about the same time. However, they were asking questions about the kettle and condition rather than just saying I will take it so I got lucky. After I was the first one to say I would buy it and the seller agreed to the sale, I think the STL crew (and likely others) started bombarding her with messages. I once again got lucky that the seller simply marked the item as SOLD rather than starting a bidding war. Then on Tuesday night we met up as agreed and the seller totally understood the kettle head way of driving 6+ hours round trip to pick up a Weber kettle because their father is a kettle head.
The whole thing (with exception to my angry wife) was awesome. I gave the seller an extra $10 and said their next drink/coffee or whatever was one me for being honest and sticking to the deal even though other people were messaging. I doubt things will ever go so smooth again, but I sure hope it does!
So far a lot of the original yellow is still on the bottom bowl, but there is a fair amount of rust around the leg sockets and the bottom rim where the rusty charcoal grate sat for decades. I am going to keep scrubbing and doing short rounds of exposure to evapo-rust to break the rust down and clean it away. I was too afraid to leave it sit in the evapo-rust over night because I could only imagine the horror if the evapo-rust worked too well and I pulled the kettle out without a leg socket still attached.