Hammerite thinners

[John Rumm]

I thought I would spray some old rusty metal cabinets with a coat of hammerite, and so popped out to get a can of thinners. When I saw the price (about £6.50 for a 250ml tin) I would have fallen off my chair had I have been sat down!

Anyway, one walletectomy later and the jobs a good-un. However, an inadvertent snort of the thinners suggests they have a fair bit in common with ordinary cellulose thinners, and a quick look at the safety data sheets for some of them suggests they certainly share a number of common ingredients.

Has anyone ignored the dire hammerite warnings, and successfully used other thinners?

[R]

Used synthetic car paint thinners successfully. Around £13 a gallon !

[Roger Mills]

I've never sprayed Hammerite, but I *always* clean my brushes with ordinary cellulose thinners after using it - and it's perfectly ok.

[Dave Baker]

It's always interested me too why Hammerite says you need their special super expensive thinners and in fact is one reason I stopped using the stuff. Anyway digging through Google the MSDS says the ingredients in decreasing order of abundance by weight are Acetone, Naphtha and Butyl Acetate. Acetone is the main ingredient in nail varnish remover as well as in lacquer paint thinners.

Further digging and this general purpose lacquer thinner

gallon for $18.99 although having to go to New England for it might be a hindrance but it shows you much Hammerite are ripping us off over here.

However.

litre of hammered paint thinner for £6. Doesn't say what's in it though but I suspect one can guess.

I reckon it would also be well worth giving cheap nail polish remover a go.

for 99p. £2.50 a litre.

[The Natural Philosopher]

1/. if you believe it, its more profitable. 2/. it may be that the hammerite that has the hammer finish only works well with that particular witches brew.

That's a good price.

[Peter Parry]

It is a leftover from the days of real Hammerite when it used

1,1,1-trichloroethane as the solvent. If you added any of the usual thinners such as acetone/cellulose thinners or white spirit it simply formed a sticky paste of globs of paint.

When they changed to Acetone (after the Montreal protocol banned real solvents) the warning remained presumable because the sale of the thinners brought in money.

Or glassfibre suppliers

for £8

25L for £28

you need to add £7 carriage.

That usually contains dissolved oils or fats so would not be a good idea.

[Dave Liquorice]

Curious, the time of genuine Hammerite Thinners/Brush Cleaner I have says it's xylene, which is a set of bezene carbon ring related substances, nothing like acetone. This is a fairly old tin, somewhere between 5 and 10 years.

However wandering over to the Hammerite site and getting the list of ingredients of the Brush Cleaner & Thinners it is now, as you say Acetone, Naptha and Butyl Acetate. Presumably the H&S lot have forced the change as xylene is not particularyly nice stuff:

you I don't know how acetone compares, it's not directly listed here:

do the merkins call acetone?

[Dave Baker]

Puzzled. You say acetone/cellulose thinners doesn't work and then they changed to acetone. Clarification?

[Roger Mills]

I assumed he meant that when the composition of the paint itself was changed to have an acetone base, you could then use acetone thinners with it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

acetone.

[Derek Geldard]

I've used gallons of it cleaning 1" Ampex helical scan VTR head drums.

AFAIK it's not properly called acetone here nowadays,

Dimethylketone; or 2-propanone; or dimethylketal

Derek

[Peter Parry]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. The paint formulation was changed. In the past it used trichloroethane, a chlorinated hydrocarbon as the solvent. Xylene, an aromatic hydrocarbon was sold as their brush cleaner and thinner. The former was banned as a paint solvent by the Montreal Protocol of 1989 on ozone depleting chemicals so the paint was reformulated to use an acetone solvent base with acetone also sold as the brush cleaner/thinners.

[John Rumm]

I also noticed that Lawson do the official product at quite a discount compared to the likes of B&Q...

I will have a go with some "ordinary" cellulose (seems to have a reasonable acetone content) and see how that goes.

[Dave Liquorice]

Must have taken quite a while for the paint formulation to change. The tin of paint I have here with the xylene thinners bought at the same time is no more than 10 years old...

[christopher warneford]

Yes I tried standard thinners but it took the gloss out and the paint did not flow to form a smooth surface just looked like sand paper but did dry ok so rubbed down and tried again with the hammerite thinners and that went fine. Standard thinners do clean the gun and any brushes fine if you finish off with soapy water and a good rinse under a running tap of hot water

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

2009 ?? Is somebody in a time warp around here? Brian

[John Rumm]

I can't remember when Hammerite reformulated the product and switched solvent - so it may be out of date anyway.

[Scott]

As an aside, I remember the radiator enamel where they instructed you to put the heating on at maximum temperature. The 'aroma' was unbelievable. I assume this is banned now.