Hammerite - facts and a guerilla story - paint straight onto rusty metal and make it look great (Hammerite Metal Finish)

Member Name: dmandrew

Product:	Hammerite Metal Finish
Date:	18/08/09 (109 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small tins but this stuff does what it says on them - exactly!

Disadvantages: Quite expensive, and you have to buy a specialist paint brush cleaner

This review will contain lots of facts and opinions and will then end with a little tale from Cumbria. Read on!

And before you start, despite there being suggestions that Hammerite have finished trading, I can report both that the website is alive and kicking and that I have had no problems buying paint recently.

Hammerite is an extraordinary product. It says on the tin that you don't need to prime or use an undercoat. You just prepare the surface and paint. And you can do it directly on to rust. Those are some claims to live up to.

The metal paint is available in smooth, hammered or satin finish. They do what they say. It defeats me how the hammered finish gets there because you paint it on the same way as the smooth and it looks the same in the tin but it comes out hammered just like an army of little men have been out there with little metal hammers about half an hour after you have done your work with the brush. The smooth is just smooth. I have not seen or used the satin - sorry!
You get a reasonable choice of colours - about seven in hammered, eight in smooth and just black or white in satin.

Cost

It's about £5.50 for a 250 ml tin, and £10 for 500 ml. BUT you have also to buy Hammerite Brush Cleaner and Thinners if you ever want to use your brush again, as it is based on solvents other than the usual white spirit. A good sized tin of this costs another five or ten pounds, so really you have to think long term about using Hammerite, or simply buy cheap brushes and bin them, although I am not keen on that approach environmentally.

One of the great things about this paint is that you don't have to go overboard on preparation. You do have to do some. It isn't just a question of prising the lid open and slapping the paint on. But you don't have to remove every last vestige of rust - just sand it down to a reasonable surface. You need to have surfaces clean and free of grease, as is normal.

It's positively gloopy, this paint. If you were to tip a tin upside down, it would eventually come out, but it would have a good think about it first. The reason for this viscosity is to get the paint on thick, so that you put the equivalent of three or four coats on in one go. You just both load the brush and paint normally except that you have to work quite fast with complicated surfaces as it dries quickly, being touch dry in 30 minutes. This means that you have to have a painting strategy. Aha!

Once you have got your tactics organised, then you don't have to wait long between coats. You should do at least two coats, and get the second one on within one to three hours, or wait about six months and then do it, as it takes that long to cure fully, apparently.

The effect on what might have been a rusty old gate is magical. I can write with assurance about rusty old gates because that is what we had. NOW, we have a handsome green one that I go out to look at for pleasure.

You can also get Hammerite in spray form - which might be OK for large flat surfaces. There are also preparatory paints for very very rusty surfaces and for metals that don't rust, like aluminium, both galvanized and stainless steel, chrome, brass and copper.

(PS If you ever go by train to Oxenholme in the Lake District and drive from there to Sedbergh, at one point quite soon you have to turn off from the B5254 into Hayclose Lane. There's a pub on this corner but I forget the name. If you saw the road sign, you can thank me and a friend because one day, a few years ago, we were so fed up that it had become almost illegible, we went and did a guerilla painting job on it in black and white Hammerite. We both left the area and so never got back for the second coat, so I would love to know how it's looking.)

Summary: I always use this for exterior metalwork restoration