To tackle the wear and tear from the elements on these pieces of high quality patio furniture we had to break out the big guns! The fastest and most thorough way to strip metal is with a chemical bath. However, we are not that kind of operation, and the costs for those services (which often does not include delivery) well exceed the clients budget regardless. So the next best way it to abrade the metal, and this where is helps to have some old school corded power tools.
We used a corded drill with a 3 in wire brush cup wheel attachment to work over every, and I mean EVERY surface of these chairs… one at a time. Try running your cordless drill with this type of application for an hour and see how far your battery will get you?? My guess is not more than 20 minutes. It was right about an hour for each piece, working steadily with the pieces on a table at a comfortable height. Also, don’t forget the safety gear! Wearing eye protection and a dust mask are required, even though we were set up outside taking advantage of the few nice days we’ve had here in May so far.
This step is our “insurance” policy against the rust rearing its ugly head and discoloring our clients beautiful new paint job. Rust is a very tricky animal, while researching this project we discovered an issue known as “flash rusting.” This little known property of rust whereby the tiny-microscopic particles of rust left behind after even the most thorough of striping processes can cause the new exposed bare metal to rust in as little as fifteen minutes if left untreated!! 15 MINUTES!! That’s “flash” rusting alright.
To prevent this insidious characteristic of rust to ruin our project we took some extra precautions. The chairs were stripped one at a time, outside and with the compressor and air hose going to blast away all of the rust as were stripping if off along with the defective paint too, of course. Here is the critical step, as soon as the piece was completely gone over with the wire brush & drill it was moved to the spray area and covered in a rust converter.
What is a Rust Converter? Good question! Here is the answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_converter
Basically this stabilizes the rust, chemically converting it into a surface that can be painted and prevent any further corrosion from the rust. By coating all the exposed bare metal, and old paint surfaces with the rust converter within minutes of completely abrading the piece we greatly lessen the chance for any “flash rusting” to occur while we work on the other pieces.
Our rust conversion process requires that the pieces all dry and cure 24 hours before you can begin painting. So after a day of resting we set up our spray area again to prevent wind and sun from fast curing our paint and ruining the enamels ability to self level and help restore the smooth surface of the metal over the small edges from the paint surfaces left behind. I find using cardboard is the best way to manage spraying paint and for moving big pieces like these patio chairs I was using large sheets of heavy cardboard. This allowed me to handle the pieces only once during the spray to flip them for the underside (don’t skip the underside!), as well as move them out of the spray area to dry without being handled.
Rotating through the various coats, and colors, each piece was coated twice with the color chosen by the client and allowed to dry a minimum of 1 hour before re-coating. Then they were set to dry in the sun and wind for several hours to allow for safe handling, and a gentle, but safe transport and delivery.
