Best Paint for Window Latches and Hinges

[phil]

Rustoleum is fine. make sure the metal is free of any oils or grease. Its best if the parts are a little on the warm side. do a very light coat first, wait 5 minutes then load the surface enough that it flows but don't go crazy in one coat. You can do a light sanding and repeat if it is pitted or if it goes on rough.

dont' repaint it too soon or it can crinkle if the layer below is still offgassing.

you can use a primer, it's optional.

I usually wash my metal with acetone prior to painting. If it is previously painted that will break the glaze of the old paint and give it grip. If the old paint is stuck well you may not need to remove every bit, if it is compatible.
The rustoleum is a good product easy to use, Just do thin coats. shake the crap out of it and the can and the metal should be room temperature, not cold. turn the can upside down and spray to clear the nozzle after each use. it dries best if it is warm but if you dry it where you live and spend time the smell will drive you nuts. dont paint in the cold for some reason it can affect the bond. If it's high humidity you might try warming the parts with a blowtorch to drive the moisture out and warm it just a bit. the paint will sort of cling and gell instead of run if it's a bit warmer but not hot by any means.

the first thin coat covers the item. the second coat a few minutes behind sticks to the sticky first coat and bonds somewhat and that allows you to load the surface a bit more before you get issues with runs. If it runs stop, let dry completely , sand off the runs, next time use less.

I order it by the case and use lots of it at work because I'm often called upon to make things from metal.

If you want harder wearing, use a good two part epoxy . that's tougher but it might be overkill depending what you are doing. There are other tougher paints but home depot sells consumer grade stuff not commercial finishes. Speak to an auto body shop or supplier if you want tougher finishes.

if it were something like a gas tank on a motorcycle you'd want something you can bounce a wrench off, that gasoline and other solvents wont' wreck and that you can polish out to a perfect shine. on other stuff like a gate a softer paint like trem clad might be perfectly suitable. If it were something like the bottom of a battery box in a car where it may get exposed to acids, or maybe something like a window frame that is hard to access and prone to rust, use a two part epoxy since you wouldn't want to remove it for painting ever again.

a lot of car restorers, the ones who will strip a car to its frame and have it dipped will use epoxy because they are putting so much into their work that they really dont want peeling paint later.

most cars are painted with a basecoat clearcoat technique now. the paint gives the color , then the clearcoat can be built up and polished out as long as they dont go back into the base coat. Modern body shops are used to working with it. They reduced the VOCs a lot that way in more recent years. they may use UV cured coatings.

a lot of the commercially made stuff we buy now. like windows , outdoor furniture, you name it is done with powder coat, you can take things to have them sandblasted and powder coated. for some things it makes sense but it might be a bit much for a little hardware. the process requires that the metal be super clean and free of paint so it is usually sandblasted or etched right before coating. Its usually pretty scratch resistant and unlikely to peel. powder coat doesn't use a solvent so it lowers the VOC's That's good for commercial production but not for at home use. you can usually do a light sanding and redcoat with something like rustoleum. In order to re- powdercoat you'd need to remove every bit of paint because the process requires that the metal not be insulated by old paint. sometimes people will send things out to be blasted and powdercoated for them and there are places that specialize in that.

unless it's a big project, like for hardware and things I'd use the spray cans because it goes on nicer than with a brush. If you are brushing it you can play with the viscosity and the type of brush and maybe get it on quite nicely but i find the spray bombs easier to use and as long as you do clean the tip they seem to last for years if partly used. If I use more than one can in a row I use the same tip from the first can. I then save that unused tip in case I get an old can with a plugged up spray nozzle. you can wash then in acetone if the paint isn't completely dried up. lots of times people throw the can out because they didn't look after the tip when they used a part can. I usually invert them and spray into a rag for a few seconds. , then take a little acetone and wash the outside of the tip. then next time the tip isn't plugged up. if they sputter and dont spray right I toss them in a little dish of acetone for a minute then , give them a wipe and try to restart them again. always best to test on something to make sure the spray pattern is working right before you start painting with a used can. occasionally if i wan to do a little work with a small brush I just spray some into the cap. Its a bit too thin at first but it will gell up a little in a few minutes so you can use the brush for touch ups etc.

unlike lacquer and shellac , these paints do not intermix with underneath layers, they form layers over top of the old layers. they attach by grip so light sanding is good, they do not melt into the old paint and become part of the underlying layers, but lacquer and shellac does.

This difference affects what happens when you build layers. it works a bit different with lacquer because that will dissolve into underlying layers and meld together. Enamel is different. If you spray enamal over top of uncured layers you can cause it to bubble and look horrible. You can also see effects like that if you put lacquer over uncured enamel. all of a sudden you can see the paint bubbling and going all weird. try not to mix them. you can use laquer or enamal but not both..

that said I remember painting a car with an experienced bodyman. we used laquer paint for the door jams so it would dry up fast so we could close the doors. we then continued painting all of the outside of the car with acrylic enamal. for some reason the laquer would dry then the emnamal did not go all weird but if you try the reverse yoiu might find it turns all bubbly..

some rust proofing primers are lacquer and were meant to be topcoated with enamals.. so its funny but I will say if you mix them in the wrong way you'll start painting and see it's all go rough and bumpy. the only fix for that is to let it dry , sand do it over and learn from it to pay attention to paint compatibility. I think you'll see this effect if you spray lacquer over acrylic enamel that is not fully cured. It looks like sandpaper or crinkle paint. you can get a similar effect if you dont let your enamel dry then do more coats too soon. letting each coat dry a day in a warm place will usually prevent any issues.

if you are super fussy about the finish, you can build several coats and between each scrub it with wet or dry sandpaper about 400 grit, wit the paper wet with water, then do light coats towards the end and you can get the sort of perfection in the shine and you'd expect on a car or similar that's too much for a gate but if it's something really visible you can get it free of any visible imperfections.

I'd probably only use the primer if it's something that is going outside because these paints work fine with no primer. If you are real fussy you can do an acid etch then primer and some of the primers are designed to help the bond but for most things its fine to skip the primer Just wipe it with acetone first to kill any grease and give it better surface adhesion. If you choose you can use an epoxy to get the really good bond it offers , then sand and use spray bombs of rustoleum or similar to build the shine and color you prefer, since you may not wan to buy the epoxy in a bunch of different colors.

Ill add that you can get crinkle paint. Its fun to use and leaves a wrinkly effect like you may see on old scientific instruments. It can hide imperfections and you can use black wrinkle paint (you'll only find it in black or grey usually ) then a light coat of your favorite color to get wrinkle paint in the color you like. Its not used that often but in some cases it can have a neat effect. This paint is designed to spray on normal, then wrinkles up.. Its fun to play with.

[GinaC]

Phil, on a related subject, have you ever painted a fuel oil tank in situ? My tank is fairly new, but my fuel oil company suggested that I paint it to make it last longer. It's in a corner in my (very small) basement.

(And I plan on painting it pink. Just because I can.)

[phil]

I was in an thrift and found three quarts ( yes quarts!) of "tank paint" that dates the paint back to at least before metric.. we switched around 1970..
It never said what kind of tank but it is bright blue. I wondered if the color had significance.

I painted a rusty trailer with it, it really lasted.. I figured it's for oil tanks or something because I dont see too many army tanks in bright blue boy did it stink ! but it was really good paint.
with your tank . Id just really clean the outside, use something strong like lacquer thinners or acetone on a rag , keep using new dampened rags until they aren't pulling oily contaminants off, it will probably dull the paint on the tank.

once its clean I'd spray it with something like the rustoleum. you can get more colors in the auto parts place if they dont have pink rustoleum.

now if they are saying that its because it looks rusty so you ll have to worry about how to get it reasonably clean , no point painting over loose rust. also depending on the paint and if its not really cured and if you spill oil then it might take some of it off. I wouldn't worry too much..

the oily coating it might develop, because it is a tank of oil.. is a rust inhibitor. but paint wont stick to anything oily. most oils "creep" so they sort of crawl along the surface. of course you wouldn't think it would have any leakage but maybe if they overfill or splash a little the oily stuff stays around. this is heating oil, close to diesel fuel, so it isn't very viscous but it's still oily and paint wont stick to oil.


of course the solvents and the paints and the tank should be considered flammable. Id get it warm in the basement paint it then open a door while it dries to get the stink out. dont pile up your stinky rags. get them outside as soon as you use them. you have to take responsibility for your own PPG that might be fans goggles, gloves etc.

dont try to paint over anything greasy or oily, it'll only fall off and be a mess.

the tank likely should have some warning that it's flammable. You could probably get a safety label for it if you wanted. If you really didn't wan the furnace oil to wreck up the paint you can use some super industrial paint but maybe that's overkill... epoxy would stand up better but at a cost.

you could always call the fire hall and see if there is some importance to the color of the tank. I'm not sure, often they are red but I dont know if it's important to them. Maybe they would ask you to put a label on it or something.

the fire departments also have a registry here for oil tanks so they may want it on the list, and if you dig them out you can report that they are removed. maybe if they have it on file that you have a tank of oil in your basement then they might alter their firefighting techniques if you ever did have a fire in your house. they will know more... sometimes people freak out about buried tanks, the real estate agents get them all worked up about them and often use this as a bargaining tool.. the worry is that they leak and contaminate soil. if yours is in your basement you are lucky.

[GinaC]

Thanks! It was on my list for the summer, but I just plain forgot about it. I think I'll wait until next summer because I'm running my furnace at night nowadays and I don't want to take any chances with anything highly flammable around it.

When I say the tank is pretty new, I mean it has no rust on it at all. When I first bought the house in March, there was a slight leak right where the pipes go into the tank, but I had the guys come out and fix it right away because I have a really sensitive nose.

They said to just use Rustoleum paint, and I was wondering if you or anyone else had any tips for getting around behind it as much as I can.

Oh, and around here in the NEK of Vermont, there are no housing codes. And there are no gas pockets here, so most folks have fuel oil tanks in their basement, or have buried propane tanks.

[phil]

sounds like the leak was a loose fitting, not rust. Its pretty well protected inside by the oil and if the outside isn't getting rusty I doubt you have an issue.

Id wait till summer, then disconnect the oil line so you can access and do a good job of cleaning and painting if you want to make it look nice. try to use the oil up as much as you can so it isn't too heavy. you can likely shift it around with a pry bar once the line is disconnected. You can source a plug for while you have the line undone. if you paint it now you'll want ventilation while the paint dries. doesn't sound urgent.

if it was getting wet then the water would want to run underneath, the top and sides would repel the water due to the slope.

no natural gas there? here it would be rare to use oil , it's really only used out of the city where gas isn't available.