An amazing 8 years since the insides of these Dorade vents were painted. Despite being outside all year they have held up really well and the paint shows no signs of flaking at all.

It all began as an experiment really. Epifanes had just brought out a new product called Metal Primer. It was white in colour, not the usual grey or red. It seemed worth a try. Conveniently I had a couple of old brass dorade vents that needed to be repainted inside as all the old paint had flaked off over the years.

Painting metals is notoriously hard to do, or hard to keep the paint stuck to the surface at any rate. Once I had removed all the old paint from the inside of the dorades I sanded the surface with some 280 grit sandpaper and applied a coat of Epifiane’s Metal Primer.

The paint is not very thick nor opaque so the first coat looked pretty patchy. After 24 hours I applied another coat. In the end I needed to put on 4 coats to ensure a good non patchy finish. The paint flowed nicely all by itself and even though I used a disposable brush I was very happy with the end result.

Amazingly 8 years later, the paint is still not only in excellent condition but completely stuck to the metal with no signs of aging or flaking. This is really quite extraordinary and begs the question: How would it fare on other types of metal such as steel or aluminium? Having passed this test so well, it’s my guess that it would work very well indeed.

The instructions say that you must not paint over any epoxied surfaces but it doesn’t say why. I would imagine that you can paint over epoxy but the paint will not go off. I could be wrong as I never painted over over any epoxy. It could be that it will affect the epoxy but this I find unlikely.

So here is something that does exactly what it says on the tin!