I've got a customer wanting me to help him restore an old VC stove that's currently enameled. I will blast all the enamel off, and repaint for him but my question is has anyone gotten stove brite "brushable" in the pint or quart containers, and thinned it out to run through a normal paint gun? In my case I would just use a gravity gun, or I could run it through my pressure pot depending on how much there really ends up being to paint. Stove Brite is advising my customer their "brush on" paint is NOT thinnable, and I find that hard to believe as any solvent borne paint can be thinned whether it's "recommended" or not. I suspect more so that they have made a product that's already on the edge of being VOC compliant, and they have to tell people in order to cover themselves as a company that it cannot be thinned and sprayed, which would only add to the VOC percentages. This is especially a concern for paints like this that are available to the general public rather than "professional use only" because most people aren't spraying in any type of controlled environment/paint booth. I've sprayed all sorts of industrial high heats at our shop but in general we do not use residential grade coatings. So my question is...has anyone sprayed that stuff out of a paint gun?
Why not just use the spray can? It works just fine, especially for high temp paint, which is not hard to get to lay down nicely...
Anything in a spray can is like water, and especially over blasted cast iron it's just going to take forever to make it look right because that substrate soaks it all up like a sponge. It will cost more in material for that reason, more in labor on my end etc etc. You can get a far better finish, film build and efficient job shooting from a spray gun vs aerosol can. We run a busy industrial shop, so jobs like this are in no way our bread and butter but I do enjoy doing them, but if it came down to using spray cans on this it's just simply not worth my time. This would be similar to recommending a body shop do paint correction on your car with spray paint. They just wouldn't.
Why not prep the stove and a piece of scrap at the same time, thin the Stove Brite and shoot the scrap, then if results are good move on to the stove?
I could, but the real test would be how it does over time once it's actually brought to it's running temp and that would mean once the stove is all re-assembled, paid for, reinstalled etc. Last thing I'd want is a customer paying me good money and then the thing bubbles up or cracks during its heat up because the paint wasn't actually cured properly. I got a hard time believing that Stove Brite is overly unique in that it "can't be thinned" as they say but it's one of those situations where I would rather not find out the hard way. It's not like the big manufacturers who coat their stoves at the factory with stove brite are using spray cans or brushing it on....They are absolutely spraying them. Stove Brite reps can't even tell the customer if their paint can just be used right over his old enamel!! They made him go through some chain of command there and now he's waiting for an official answer from them. I would think that should be a pretty simple "NO" answer... I tried to just push the guy to use Rustoleum BBQ paint - the tech data sheet even mentions it being good for stoves too, it's thinnable, sprayable, etc. I've used this on other stuff for customers who requested it, like fireplace surround panels and such. Sometimes this is why the "side jobs" turn into way more of a headache than they are worth.
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I like that stuff...they have a flat and a satin option, Ive done some stoves with the body flat and the door satin, turned out looking really nice!
Rustoleum has figured out how to make practically all of their products just about fool proof and there's certainly something to be said for that! I tried to push it but the customer didn't seem too interested. I think he's stuck on a certain stove brite color that of course is only available in spray cans.
