[TheForge] thin black paint

[RIES NIEMI]

Paint isnt permanent. All the grand ironwork of europe that is painted was
repainted regularly by the everpresent servant class. The same people who
polished all the brass handrails weekly.
 We have this myth now, particularly in the construction industry, that we
should be able to guarantee things forever. Its true, a lot of modern
coatings do last a long time, and our standards have gotten higher. It used
to be expected that you would have to have your car repainted every few
years. Now people are upset if the paint starts to peel on a 20 year old car
that has been parked outside in the sun and rain the whole time.

I have tried a lot of different paints for indoor furniture pieces made of
steel- over the years I have sent thousands of pieces out into the world. It
seems as if there is NO perfect finish- I usually would compromise in the
direction of durability, because I didnt want to deal with returns,
particularly when I was shipping stuff all over the country. So I went with
either baked on catalysed finishes, or powder coating. Both of which leave
quite a bit of thickness on the material. I usually tried to make those
particular lemons into lemonade, by not texturing the metal first, but using
textured paint finishes.
Not what you want for your music stand.

There are a couple of finishes you might try on a sample piece.

I like semi-flat or semi-gloss black spray paints for this type of thing-
usually a krylon type paint will be much thinner and look better on metal
than a thicker, rustoleum type paint. Also, krylon dries much faster, and is
easier to avoid drips as a result.

The other thing you might try, assuming the piece is not too big, is model
train paint. Not model airplane paint, but train paint. They make a wide
variety of really cool washes, inks, and thin paints for model trains,
because on small scale stuff thick paint looks really tacky. My wife did a
series of steel sculptures in the late 80's, painted it with this model
train paint, and they still look nice today. Very thin, very finely ground
paint, and the jars only cost a few dollars each. hundreds of colors,
including quite a few in the dark gray- black range, including some
interesting graphite colors with just the slightest bit of metallic to them.
The brand she liked to use was "railroad colors" made by the floquil company
out of amsterdam Ny.

As far as prep goes, I would be leary of pickle because of the chance of
ongoing rust from the acid. I would recommend sandblast, instead. But she
had pretty good adhesion with the train paint on hot rolled, just sanding
off any loose mill scale first.

You have to accept though, that thin paint will wear more easily, and may
need recoating sooner.