I'm having a go at repainting our front gates - they are fairly heavy, presumably iron or steel, and I've got rid of most of the peeled/cracked paint leaving parts of exposed metal. What paint or paints should I use? I've got some Hammerite direct to metal paint - can I use this for the painted bits too as an extra coat? Also found some oxide primer in the shed.
Here's a pic:
Thanks
E.
Also - does it looks as though this is galvanised metal (how to tell?) which I think needs a different type of paint?
first treat with a phosphoric acid de-ruster. IIRC jenolite is the thing.
All I know is you need to be careful with wrought iron gates as I allowed somebody to dip my front gate in some kind of back to metal bath at his work and several of the joints needed to be rewelded afterwards! Brian
I think the gates may be galvanised as it doesn't look like there has been major rust incursion - is there a way to tell?
The bare metal looks rusty. If there is rust, it isn't galv.
Bill
Given the gates have been long neglected I would expect rust to have eaten into the structure but that doesn't seem to be the case - could it just be tarnishing on the a galvanised surface? It has been painted with a red undercoat as well.
E.
I'm with Bill here. The colour in the photo might imply there could be a zinc coating, but I'm presuming that the colour is a feature of the light and the conditions when you took the photo and what we can see is actually polished rust. Also the surface is uneven implying that layers of rust have been removed.
Zinc coating are silvery, and stay silvery but polished rust is still brown. Where a zinc layer has been compromised you would see brown rust peeking through.
Doesn't look galvanised to me. The texture of the painted parts look like regions which have suffered long term pitting corrosion in the past (cleaned off for repainting). I'd use oxide primer, then any "metal paint" except Hammerite. It's welded, so not "quality" wrought iron although it looks like quite a nice "hand-made" piece. Dipping in caustic soda should not cause it to fall apart.
Many thanks - when it stops raining (bucketing down in London) I'll take a close up and presuambly with this rain a fine new layer of rust should appear soon. I'm not too sure how old the gates are - probably about 25 years and put in by previous owners who bodged almost everything. The reason I asked about galvanising is that I thought most gates in recent years would be galvanised as standard.
E.
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