Painting steel

[Alistair Hosie]

A small paint brush will work with most paints even watercolours .Don't be conned by hard selling ads to the contrary .On metal I always use enamel pait about £6.99 ish per small ish tin about 250ml it works great the kind I use is (I think ) cp90 or something like it. Alistair

[oxford]

I would think depending how "polished" they are you might need to rough them up a little for the paint/primer to bite in. I would also say that powdercoating might be the way to go, you can buy a gun for pretty cheap and since you are doing small parts you might get by with just a toaster oven and do them in a couple of batches.

[Black_Moons]

Instead of filling your oven with toxic chemicals, Just get those cheapo 500W halogen lamps and point it directly at the surface within a foot or two after painting. The IR will cook the paint hard (Spray paints, Not 'bake on' powder coats) within 24 hours and it offgases greatly without the need to heat up a huge area or make some dangerious cardboard box+heater arrangement. Can be done in the garage.

That said, those 500W bulbs are a fire hazard in themselfs, don't have anything flamable near the bulb or near where the stand could be knocked over by pets or children.

[Dr Stan]

As others have recommended I also say go with one of the cheap powder coat systems. I have an old electric oven I use as my dedicated powder coat oven. Two things, don't ever use it for food again and do not use a gas oven, electric only.

For the prep, hit it with a sand blaster to give the paint something to grab.

[PaulT]

The halogen lamp method will work, but a big advantage of the toaster oven approach is that they have regulated temperatures and are also more efficient as they contain the heat, plus they're cheap. With the Rustoleum and Krylon spray cans we use you don't want to get temp over 250 F or so.

The little racks they have inside the ovens also work well for our parts. Also there are a lot of different sizes, all pretty affordable, for $100. you can get a pretty big one and you can get them with timer's so its just "set and forget".

I'm looking at a part that we cooked this morning and it came out really nice. It was 1018 steel, machined, then cleaned in Acetone (no more lacquer thinner here in Kalifornia).

It was then spray bombed with a single coat of Rustoleum gloss black enamel and baked in the oven at 250F for about an hour.

It came out really nice, definitely much tougher than without any baking.

We have a real problem with paints here in Kalifornia in that they have taken pretty much all of the solvents out of them so they never really get hard, so baking is the only way to go, otherwise you can totally dent the paint with light pressure with your fingernail, even after several days.

The baking does knock some of the gloss off compared to an unbaked part but I actually prefer it, somehow it looks more professional than the fully gloss look before baking, it looks more like a powder coating.

[Clevelander]

Why not make up a lot for several months and get them treated as a job lot it's probably cheaper than your time will be and a more durable finish as well.

[armedandsafe]

Why not make up a lot for several months and get them treated as a job lot it's probably cheaper than your time will be and a more durable finish as well.

Nearest treatment shop is 150 miles away. Some who have used them say you need to be there and watch the quality.

At 73yo, with an expected market of 200 to 300 per year after the initial pent-up demand is finished, I don't expect my time is worth as much as if I were doing this to support family and shop.

Pops