This Old House: Good painters remove or cover door hardware before they paint. The other kind of painter just slops it over any exposed metal and ruins the door's appearance. Fortunately, any knob, escutcheon plate, or hinge can easily be made to shine again without the need for noxious chemicals, expensive tools, or uncomfortable gear.
13 comments:
This is a pretty good tip to come across. I have never thought about adding heat into the equation to help with this sort of thing, but it makes sense to me. I am always looking for a reason to get rid of some of the more caustic chemicals that we use in our industry and this seems like a promising way to get rid of some of our paint strippers. I have used citristrip in the past which is an all natural paint stripper, and that works fairly well, but tends to leave behind some amount of residue no matter what. I guess you would have to get a dedicated crock pot for your shop for this to really work. I wonder if it would be used often enough to justify that. I always like to hear what This Old House has to say about anything like this, because I know it is going to be useful and actually work.
Ok, I never thought my crockpot was as versatile as this. It makes a great pot roast and now I have found a new use for it. Though I have to admit that I don’t have any painted hardware that needs a bath in a crockpot. Though what I didn’t see mentioned in the article is what type of liquid detergent to use. Different detergents can do different things to metals. It is why I don’t use citrus based detergents with flatware or silver as it can cause pitting or scratches. I am not a fan of using harsh chemicals. I will if I need to, but if something is antique (such as a lot of door and window hardware) it is good to know that there is an alternative. I just have to remember that is a slow process as it involves time. Not something that can be done instantly (Unless you use harsh chemicals). I like This Old House and have been known to watch it from time to time. Shows like this can provide some really great tools and tricks to do things.
Wow, this is a fantastic idea! I never would have thought of this. Like Josh said, who knew a crockpot could be this versatile. I do wonder if this tip differs based on the type of paint used? Would a lead based paint work in this scenario? Either way, this seems like a good solution for a lot of ‘do it yourselfers’ at home and any scenic or paint shop. Crockpots also are not that expensive to begin with. I think I got mine from Target for about $30?
This is also a good way to avoid using more chemicals that could be dangerous is handled incorrectly. Like Al, this investment is definitely better than having to send someone to the hospital for a really bad chemical burn.
Another question I think of is how often is this needed? If you have a solid paint department, this may not be that big of an issue. Though, since it is not too expensive, it still is not something that would hurt to invest in.
A short and simple yet completely informative article. I really love and appreciate this method of stripping and cleaning the door hardware, because it doesn’t involve anything too out of budget or potentially dangerous for the user’s health (chemicals). This method is accessible for anyone, from the most efficient and professional scene shops, to within someone’s own home, and in each scenario, it will work just the same. I’ve actually run into this problem several times, while working in my high school’s shop. As a low budget theatre department, we reuse everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. Some of the door handles and hinges that we had were at least 18 years old. With our build team being mostly athletes are required to graduate with an arts credit, they don’t pay much attention to being delicate with the paint—they slop it over the hardware. When I go in with scenic painting, the uneven layers of paint and other gunk on the hardware prevents me from finishing them smoothly. Good to know this crockpot tip, potentially working in shops in the future!
This is a very interesting article. I never would have thought of putting hardware in a crockpot in order to get paint out. It's definitely more affordable, and it's definitely not as dangerous as using some toxic chemicals to strip the paint. Similar to Natalie, in my high school scene shop, we reused as much as we could. My school was K-12, and sometimes there would be a middle school class taking a "technical theatre" elective. They would often be asked to prime or paint the basecoat of many pieces of scenery. Knowing this tip would have saved me and some not so happy crewmates of mine quite a few hours of scraping paint off of hinges and door handles.
Attempting to copy hardware for an old house is a big challenge that I’ve unfortunately tried to do before. This trick for being able to revive old paint-covered hardware is a major game-changer. However, I don’t know if most people would be excited to use their crockpots for icky-paint. Side note: painting your house hardware is mean and should literally never be done, just be careful. Older hardware tends to be a lot heftier and is more likely to survive a chemical bath of some sort. This might not work on more modern hardware simply because the metal is probably not as tough and my guess is that there is a protective coating to give it the look they wanted. I wonder if there’s a tool used by professional restoration artists to pull the paint off that’s not just an everyday crock-pot. I will definitely keep this trick in mind the next time I need a piece of old hardware, not throwing away the historic one and trying desperately to match it.
Renew of any kind of hardware is a rabbit hole that deep enough for people to spend quite an amount of time to master. I like to think it is same set of process just like doing theater art. The major common area is the broad knowledge that this might involve. I have been following some restoration channels and documentaries since high school. But over and over again, I am still impressed by how people working in restoration industry can be creative while still focus on their job itself. Interestingly, all the little tricks and special processes that came from whether ancient knowledge or somebody's garage are applied and working well, as long as we practice and put time and effort into them. Gathering the small tips like this and integrating them into our tool kit are investments that might repay in the future really well, especially we are doing different things every time on the stage.
While I understand that this article is written for people painting houses and other buildings designed to be permanent structures, I only slightly resented the "only sloppy painters don't remove hardware first" notion because in theatre there are so many instances where that is more inconvenient than cleaning the hardware off after or just completely impossible. That being said, I actually think this was a decently useful article that could definitely be applied to theatre (since we do so often end up painting with hardware on and run into these kinds of issues frequently). I think this could be especially useful for props, where we often paint over hardware on purpose to change the colour without having to purchase new pieces, and when the next designer inevitably wants everything back to the original colour and condition. I especially appreciated how this could be used on delicate/vintage pieces to some degree which are often so hard to find duplicates for when you have a particularly constraining budget.
I definitely would have never thought in order to get paint off of something to soak it in water in a Crock-Pot overnight but as the article shows I guess it is a very functional solution. Though I don't think you would ever want to use that crock pot for food again and I don't know about necessity of strictly having painted Hardware Crock-Pot but I suppose if you were in the industry for redesign, decoration or house flipping it might be a feasible solution. I do think it's a lot more likely that most people will just remain with stripping the paint chemically however it does give people a non-chemically harsh solution to the issue. I suppose this is also a good example of looking for solution outside of the box particularly when we're looking for greener solutions. I don't think this has much of any practicality for our industry and implementing this solution would feel like we should have just remove the hardware for the painting process in the first place. I find it would be a lot more likely that there would be a necessity for one of the quicker chemical stripping Solutions.
This is such an informative article, but still very simple and to the point. In our industry that is built on never having enough time or resources, and scrounging around for antique parts in order to satisfy the lovely scenic designer, sharing useful tips and hacks like this one is so incredibly important. We all love to work smarter and not harder, but in order to do so we have to share our useful ideas and be open to receiving them. I also really appreciate any idea that can reduce the amount of chemicals we expose ourselves to in every various corner of our work. It is always important to remember that there are methods outside of strong and harmful chemicals out there as long as we have time to use them. I also really enjoy that the crockpot has found another use. It is actually one of the most versatile little machines and almost everyone with a kitchen has one. I just love hearing about the creative and strange ways people utilize this device.
Wow this article was extremely informative! Since I grew up in an old house, my parents were always looking for old key escutcheons that would match the style of our house at garage sales and antique stores. But, nine times out of ten these pieces of old hardware are covered in at least one layer of paint. I know from watching my parents that it can be very difficult to find ways to get old paint off of these pieces of hardware especially since some of them are so detailed. I’m sure that the prop and scenic shops struggle with the same thing when doing a period production. The idea of soaking off the paint in a crock pot with soap is so innovative and helpful. I’m going to send this article to my parents because I think they would really appreciate it. I love the before and after photos because it’s so satisfying to see the end result of the clean escutcheon.
I am currently in the stagecraft mini for paints, so I am learning quite a bit about different paints and how they work with other materials. Understanding different ways to reuse and repaint hardware pieces can be helpful for achieving a specific look. The use of a common household crockpot does seem a little dubious, however. Paint is not really necessarily meant to be consumed, so a thorough cleaning of a chemical filled crock pot seems essential if a person would want to use the crockpot again for food. This article does seem relevant for shows that require the reuse of different metal elements on the scenery. This would avoid the time and money of purchasing and acquiring new pieces for use in a different show. It would save time by allowing the people working to strip the paint from the hardware to do so in a much more efficient manner.
One of the most common notes handed out during a paints call is “please back paint this scenery, BUT DO NOT PAINT THE HARDWARE”, so, in my mind, this has always been an irrevocable offense, so reading about someone’s strategy to change that sounds exciting. I don’t think I would have ever reached the thought of adding heat to this process, but I guess it actually makes a lot of sense. What I really love about this idea is it avoids a lot of the really dangerous chemicals that we would usually think of to tackle this issue. The crockpot was a fun twist, but like….okay. This is a moment in which it reminds me that there is a reason we do those timed brainstorms where nothing is a stupid idea because, there is no way someone said “let’s put it in a crockpot” and everyone else was just like cool with that. Sometimes lateral movement and weird ideas are more valuable than the super crazy intellectual ones.
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