Refinishing Antique Metal Bed Frame

A. For those of you needing to remove the rust ...consider having the metal bed sand, or better yet, soda blasted. This can be cost effective.

As for painting it ...the old finished look at home can be achieved by using a painters kit from a paint supply store. our local home depot has this, works well. Otherwise seek a professional restorer.

If restoration isn't what you want to achieve & this is a child/teen's bed a good idea that will last a life time is have it powder coated or painted with automotive paint for a more durable finish.

Hope this helps,

A. Anyone can strip paint easily at home with available paint strippers but it's fairly messy and won't remove any rust. I strip everything together with an easy media (plastic) or (soda) blasting which leaves the raw, already prepped, metal. Any repairs such as straightening, welding or fiberglas filling can be done at this time. Unfortunately, the old original patina is pretty much impossible to repair perfectly, but a similar color/finish can be accomplished with spraying. Look up "sandblasting" in the yellow pages to find someone to blast it for you (tell them what you have and you don't want "sand" used). You can take it to a local body shop for finishing or there are lots of products available in spray cans also. Always use a metal primer before painting. Any "decals" or "appliques" probably were put on after it was made and will probably be lost. I'm refinishing a copper bathtub for a customer now from 1890 and I'm using all of the above technics including removing and polishing the copper interior (lots of dents removed) and rebuilding and polishing the original brass and bronze faucet and drains plus refinishing the original curved oak top surround, and blasting and painting the ornate cast iron legs and frame. The outer "shell" is sheet steel and needed blasting and fiberglassing in order to smooth out and fill slight rust pockets. Obviously this is a complicated and expensive piece to rebuild, but I just wanted you all to know what's possible and how it's done. Good luck, I hope this helped . . . . . .

A. I own a sandblasting business and have done quite a few iron bed frames and lawn furniture. I used recycled glass at about 50 psi in my sandblaster. Every piece I've done the clients were very very happy as they had been trying to strip these items by hand for weeks and had gotten nowhere.

A. Hi, Jessica. Metal, and especially steel, has to get quite hot to affect its properties. Below 500 °F you will not affect the steel at all. For something that is non mission critical, like a bed part rather than an airplane part, you could probably go significantly higher with no worries. I don't think a heat gun could get steel anywhere close to where you have to worry about it.

Regards,

A. I am working on refinishing my second iron bed. I have had wonderful luck with a local welding business. They custom made me rails & attachments so the beds will fit my queen size mattress.

A. Hi Sarah. Agreed that Google ain't what it used to be, now that we're all "bubbled", and search results are based more on what you've bought and where you've travelled than on the search terms you try to use -- but "sandblasting service atlanta" might work unless you do it from near a big box store (in which case about the only results you'll ever get are things from that store)

Or try the same term in the duckduckgo.com search engine; it doesn't bubble you, and the results look promising to me. And the printed yellow pages book stills works. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Marilyn. First you have to determine what it's actually made of because welding/brazing techniques that work on steel will destroy aluminum and vice versa. A magnet will at least tell you if it's steel or something else.

But I have faith in epoxy as being much easier and, if done well on clean metal, very strong and reliable -- much stronger than you'll ever need for attaching knobs.

Regards,

Thank you for your advice, the epoxy makes sense. I had asked my "welder" brother-in-law and he was of no use whatsoever :-)
Great site.

A. Hi Don. Single component clearcoats like brass lacquer or Protectaclear from Everbrite [a finishing.com supporting advertiser] are the easiest. Two-component (2K) clearcoats like automotive clearcoat are harder to apply, but are thicker and more protective than single component stuff.

As for removing the rust first, the question involves adhesion. If some areas of rust are thick and powdery, applying a clearcoat to them may only mean that the clearcoat will stick to the rust but the clearcoat and rust will simply fall off together. But using naval jelly to convert the red rust to black rust may change the character of the look, and may affect those old layers of paint. I guess what I would try is a wire brush wherever the rust is thick and powdery, and that's all.

Regards,