Good sources of high temp enamel paints.

[David G4EBT]

I know that a lot of forum members own lathes and other workshop equipment, which may not be in the best of shape cosmetically. My own little Lorch (German) watchmakers lathe is 120 years old and was given to me as a rusting heap of scrap. I refurbished it, but I left it unpainted.

I'm a member of the UK Workshop forum, where questions often arise about how to find out what was the exact colour of paint used by particular manufacturers of lathes, pillar drills, milling machines, vices etc, and where to find it. From there, I've learnt of a firm ('Paragon Paints') who specialise in providing colour-matched brush-applied enamel paint for several makes of equipment, which I thought might be of some interest. (EG: Myford, Record, Boxford, Colchester, Warco etc). They also have a range of military colours, pantone colours, hammered paints, and by the looks of it, all BSI colours.

Machinery Colours:

https://www.paragonpaints.co.uk/Work...y-Colours.html

Military colours:

https://www.paragonpaints.co.uk/Military-Colours.html

Hammered finish colours:

https://www.paragonpaints.co.uk/hamm...h-colours.html

Useful advice on the application of paints, with a flowchart:

https://www.paragonpaints.co.uk/Painting-Advice.html

Hope that might be of interest and use.

[Craig Sawyers]

Good links David!

In the past I used Hammerite, but they have discontinued most of their hammer finish paints now.

Then I used Granville to restore my bandsaw - mid green hammered. They now don't do that either - just dark green.

The fate of Hammerite (Wikipedia):

Hammerite paint was first developed in 1962 by Allen Forster and later manufactured at the Finnigan's factory in Prudhoe, Northumberland. The company also produced the anti-corrosion treatment Waxoyl. In the early 1980s, the company was acquired by Hunting plc who later sold it on to Williams Holdings in 1993. Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) acquired the company from Williams Holdings in 1998. In 2008, ICI was acquired by AkzoNobel.

The downhill slope in reduction of colour range of Hammer Finish paint seemed to coincide with Akzo getting their paws on the company.

So Paragon is a great find!

Craig

[pmmunro]

Rustoleum also produce a range of hammered finish paints;

https://www.rustoleum.com/product-ca...hammered-spray

I haven't used these but found their Combi-colour direct to metal pain to be good, though expensive and only available in 750 mL cans. They claim it is "Available in 4,400+ colours, inc. RAL, RAL Design, BS, NCS, NCS 2050 and Metallics" and I have been able to buy very specific colours from one of their dealers. In one case I wanted the colour originally used on Record vices, (BS110 -Roundel Blue).

Unfortunately, these specialist paints need a corresponding thinner/cleaner which adds to the cost of using them.

Their data sheets give full technical details which treat the customer as having some inteliigence.

PMM

[Craig Sawyers]

Another good shout!

Craig

[Bazz4CQJ]

Interesting supplier. The first thing I looked at was what they use as primer paint, and for the enamel it says no primer is needed. I am a huge fan of zinc phosphate (ZnP) primers and Paragon do make those. I suspect there is some fine print to read in among their datasheets.

For quite a long time, companies making ZnP primers have only included about 1% of that material (a corrosion inhibitor), but more recently, some companies are using 5-10% ZnP. I've not yet dug out the detail from Paragon.

B

[fetteler]

I remember Trimite used to do a good range of hammer finish colours and nice tough enamel paint too . I wonder if they are still going?

Steve

[Nanozeugma]

Originally Posted by fetteler

I remember Trimite used to do a good range of hammer finish colours and nice tough enamel paint too . I wonder if they are still going?

Steve

It would appear so...
https://www.trimite.com/

[Bazz4CQJ]

Trimite might or might not make good paint, but I really hate their website. A search for "metal primer" gets no hits, but they certainly have several.

Most unusually, you cannot get the Safety Data Sheet for any of their paints unless you ask for it by email. Why important, well, for example, they have a particular primer, and I'd like to know some details about it, but it seems like the only place that will tell you that is the SDS. It's very common now for paint makers to tuck key info that you'd expect to be in the Technical Data Sheet to be in the SDS's - I have at least 2 suspicions as to why that should be.

However, putting key info in the SDS and then not putting the the SDS on the website is odd; something I don't appreciate at all. The technical support you get from most paint companies is poor in my experience; different members of staff often giving different opinions

Like very many "traditional" UK paint-makers, Trimite looks to be part of a multinational conglomerate now.

B