Painted Stove Surface

Cleaning and re-touching paint

Painted Stove Surface.

To clean the painted surface, let the stove cool down and either wipe it with a dry soft lint free cloth or brush it with a soft brush such as a dustpan brush or clean dry paintbrush.

Use dry cleaning methods only. Some people vacuum their stoves, if you have suitable attachment and the stove and ash are both cold. If you need to re-touch your paint follow the guidance below

A Penguin's Promise

Painting your stove or stove flue

If you are painting your vitreous flue to match the stove colour or touching up an area of your stove there are 3 steps.

  1. Preparing the surface
  2. Applying the paint
  3. Curing or setting the paint

The most critcal step is surface preparation. The paint will adhere to the surface coat, if there is rust, it will fail. If the stove/flue has a coating that is peeling, blistering or chalking in any way, the topcoat will release in the same way. If there is oil/grease/contaminant the paint will not adhere.

01 Preparing the surface (click to reveal)

  1. Remove all rust; by sandblasting, grinding or sanding. Our paint will not stop oxidation, don’t paint over rust. A new stove/flue should arrive rust free, this will only be if you are be relevant if you are renovating an old stove.
  2. Remove oil, grease, contaminants. New flue can arrive with a chemical on the surface used during the manufacturing process. We recommend the use of an acetone based paint thinner and that you key the surface with fine sandpaper. This preparation is vital.

Trouble shooting
Paint coming off in patches indicates a problem with surface preparation. The remedy is to remove the paint, prepare the surface and start again.

02 Applying the paint (click to reveal)

(vapour and propellant are flammable, avoid all naked flames and sparks)

  1. Best results are acheived when the paint, the stove/flue surface and the air temp. are above 18C/66F -29C/85F. You can warm a cold can of paint by running a hot tap over it for 2 minutes. DO NOT expose to flames.
  2. Shake the paint for 2 minutes to thoroughly mix the pigments, metallics and solvents.
  3. Do a test spay onto a peice of cardboard, the first spray can be mostly propellant with no pigment.
  4. Apply the first of 2-3 light coats. The first coat should be a mist coat (it will look like dots on the surface). Apply from 12-15 inches, if you are too close the paint will drip/run, if you are too far away you will get a gritty finish.
  5. You can apply the second coat after 15 minutes. The paint will be touch dry in about 20 minutes. We recommend leaving it 4 hours before lighting the first fire, described above.
  6. If you are touching up a stove be aware that there are minute variations from batch to batch of paint so you may need to paint a whole surface to avoid these variations showing. eg if you are covering a mark on the top you may want to apply a coat to the whole top plate. YOU WILL BE
    COMPARING CURED PAINT WITH UNCURED PAINT SO THE DIFFERENCE WILL BE MORE APPARENT UNTIL THE NEW PAINT HAS CURED.

Trouble shooting
If paint peels/looks like shattered glass/comes off in thin strips, too much paint was applied. If the surface is gritty the spray was applied too far from the surface. The remedy is to remove as much paint as possible, prepare the surface and repaint.

03 Set or cure the stove paint (click to reveal)

See the advice at the top of the page, this applies to both stoves and flues.

Chilli Billie, charred red, Hide at St Donats, South Wales
Chilli Billie in enclosure, Elwy Valley shepherds hut
Chube Shorty, studio in Caerphilly
Woody, polar bear belly, chrome kettle
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