Upkeep for Iron Railings (with a Bit of Rust)
The rust converter, or rust converting primer is a good choice when you want to avoid the pitting or textures that would be created by stripping down the rust. But will it penetrate and convert all the rust? It takes more skill and judgment to use it well. The more rust, the less enthusiastic I’d be about it. Based on the pics thought, I’d wire wheel those spots bare and paint them properly.
Also some sources indicate you should degrease the site you are painting, and that may be true. For something like this I would sometimes skip that step. Why would there be grease on the fence I just stripped? But one day I’m sure my comeuppance will arrive for that, so try to follow the manufacturers directions.
hkapstein
in Exteriors 3 years and 10 months ago
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desert-island | 3 years and 10 months ago
The iron railings on our stoop were redone about five years ago. Overall they’re still in good shape, but in some areas we’ve seen paint has chipped off and a little bit of rust has resulted. We want to get those cleaned up before they get worse.
An independent contractor we work with a lot and trust says it’ll be about two days’ worth of work to scrape off the paint surrounding the rusting spots and then to repaint both railings. He’ll cover the steps as he does that too.
Just wondering if anyone else has advice on how best to perform upkeep maintenance on these railings. Thanks in advance.
Some snapshots here:
[Top of railing](https://share.getcloudapp.com/JruDWlZk)
[Rust near post](https://share.getcloudapp.com/lluNyQAg)
[Rust spots in decorative ironwork 1](https://share.getcloudapp.com/E0uAq6NG)
[Rust spots in decorative ironwork 2](https://share.getcloudapp.com/xQu7glkW)
krobertson
in Exteriors 3 years and 10 months ago
Video from this old house.
https://www.thisoldhouse.com/painting/21124752/how-to-repaint-a-rusty-metal-hand-rail . Get to the chips early before they rust. 2 full days sounds like a lot of time unless you have a lot of railing, a lot of chips, or very intricate patterns, or he’s factoring in time for the paint to dry and repaint.
andriywww1990 | 3 years and 10 months ago
on this iron, a light steel brushing will do to remove loose paint and loose scale rust. i would not worry about tight rust as shown in the top railing photo. A Rusty Metal Primer should be applied. the rusty metal primer is that oxide red stuff you sometimes see people using on these fences and rails. Rustoleum is the well known one but others make them. after that, two coats of oil base paint for metal.
in my opinion, and i have done a lot of this, the primer is more important than the paint. a lot of “painters” no longer want to prime and will argue against it.
because it takes like 12 hours for these oil base products to dry before recoat (we always allow overnight, never the same day, ever), i would think it would run like this: 1st day, a longer day of scrape and dust and spot prime. second day, a shorter day of paint, entire. and third day, shorter day, paint entire.
hkapstein | 3 years and 10 months ago
You have several options to deal with this. The problem is probably poor painting technique to begin with, as steve suggests. Personally, I would do this job myself. a wire wheel attached to a drill will take the rust spots down to bare metal easily. A self etching primer could then be used to primer the bare metal and and then paint can be applied. A good strategy is two contrasting colors painted on so when the first layer of paint starts to fail, you might see it requires recoating before rust starts to form. This will give you a good paint system on those areas that seem most senstive to rust, but if the entire railing is poorly painted, you will probably find yourself doing frequent spot repairs, and ultimately needing to have the railing full stripped and recoated off-site to ensure a reliable paint system is established.
Another option which won’t be as reliable is to use a rust converting primer. Brush off loose rust by hand, and apply the primer. This will convert the rust chemically into a different subtance that is solid enough to paint over. But for reasons I won’t get into but you can probably figure out, I don’t think it would be a the best choice here.
A third choice would be to brush off loose rust by hand, and encapsulate the well adhered rust with a por15. This is used to paint over rusty surfaces, seal in the rust, and prevent further rusting of the surface. But painting the por15 over old paint would negate it’s effectives, and if you have to strip, you may as will spend the extra time to get it down to bare metal and paint it properly.
If you paint it properly, it will hold up. I’ve done many projects like this, and steve is right, shortcuts are what leads to problems. How often do you see a car built in the last 20 years with paint chipping and rusting away? That’s because engineers have figured out how to properly paint metal. Even touch up paint on a car should last at least 5 years and probably a lot longer if applied properly.
Follow the directions from the manufacturer, that’s how you’ll know about things like recoat times, and what kind of primers are compatible with the paint. And don’t buy cheap products for this, it’s not worth the time. There a plenty of resources from folks who know more than I do about painting metal, and I do recomend doing a little homework.
The main takeaway is if you want to stop rust in an area, stripping it to bare metal and painting it properly is what’s going to give you the most reliable results.
andriywww1990 | 3 years and 10 months ago
i would not try to get the iron down to bare metal with a wire wheel or self etching primer. the reason is, when you start doing this, you are really working in a manner that approaches auto body work ( i did a full restore on a 1972 VW beetle in the mid ’80’s) and unless you have people who are committed to removing “all of the cancer” you will have issues later and no matter what, it will appear in a few years someplace else.
this is not a restoration (it can be it you want it to be; i can write out the steps you need to get that metal clean and what grit to sand to and what acids to use and spec the primers and paints but that would be foolish). this is a maintenance project. short of getting all that rust, you want to remove the loose stuff and use the rusty metal primer to really retard the new growth and spread. so don’t waste your money. Plain on doing a “maintenance” on it every three years. save money, do it your self. this is why we have teenagers – they all know it all; put all that knowledge to work, hand them a wire brush, drop cloth, som e rags and a paint brush, the primer, paint, and mineral spirits and tell them to show you how much they know.
for eons (back to 1980’s), i used Rustoleum product for this kind of work – the rusty metal primer and the top coat. a few years back i decided to call Ben Moore and follow their instructions and use different primers for different situations and it did not work as well as the plain old Rustoleum products.
andriywww1990 | 3 years and 10 months ago
urban dad mentions “rust converting primer” . i know people who use these and i bought one of those iron things that are in horses stalls for their water to make a planter out of (i still have it, it could be for sale). i used a rust converting primer on it, no paint on top, and left it in my yard for two whole winters. and it held. i was sort of surprised and might consider using it but it comes in small containers and that means “expensive”.