S10 Blazer Upgrades Part 2 - Trailer Hitch and Bumper Guard

During my Project I decided to improve upon the little hitch bumper I found last year. And it would just look funny if I hadn't redone the trailer hitch itself, which was rusted and covered in undercoating.
 uprades were done with the help of www.techshop.ws

I started out by cutting the old hitch bumper/step off so I just had the insert that fit in the hitch. I then found some metal in the garage and made a frame that went around the license plate. I had to be careful when designing this so that the tailgate could still open when the piece was on the vehicle. Once I made some pieces I tacked it up.

Once I had achieved a good piece I liked, I finished fully welding up the metal. After the welding was done, I ground down the welds so that they were flush with the rest of the metal. I could have sanded them further down and made then really nice, but it is a winter truck and they will rust eventually.

After the metal was done I sandblasted the frame, this was pretty quick compared to sandblasting the trailer hitch, and it was amazing compared to the aluminum rims. After it was cleaned up I sprayed it all with a coat of primer and set it to dry.

Once the primer had dried, I shot the hitch and insert with the black paint to match the rims and set it aside to dry. after giving it an hour or two to dry, I took them up to Techshop and baked the paint in their powdercoating oven. Curing the paint in their oven dried it quickly so I could put them on the truck the next day. Paint takes a full 30 days to cure completely, even longer in cold weather, Techshop allowed me to cure them in about an hour.