Respraying Rusty Gym Weights

[sitalchauhan]

Managed to get 300kg of gym weight for free because the owner didnt use them anymore. But the catch was that they had been kept in the garden so were rusty

Going to restore and respray them to make them useable in my indoor gym.

A quick google search showed up using a wire brush to remove the loose rust, and then using Hammerite Hammered paint to respray them (doesnt need primer, quick drying, etc).
But Ive got over 40 plates, so buying 2L of Hammerite paint would cost me ~£50!

Ive used a wire brush and got rid of a lot of the rust, and they have come out not too bad.

Just wondering if its ok to use a standard metal primer and some cheapish black metal spraypaint to respray them instead of the branded Hammerite stuff?

Wanted to make sure that the paint wouldnt start flaking off really easily would it? (My gym has a carpet and is indoors, so im not bashing the weights around and there's no moisure)

And the Hammerite Hammered paint doesnt have anything special in it does it?

Thanks

[Funkstar]

I was going to sugest you contact a local industrial coatings place to get them shot blasted (or glass blasted) and then properly sprayed or powder coated. But then you baulked at £50 for the Hammerite

You should be ok, just make sure the surface doesn't need to be bright shiney metal before applying the undercoat. A power drill with a wire head would get you a much better finish than just a simple wire brush. Or there are also chemicals that will strip the rust and gingering from the surface.

[CaseyV9]

Will they still weigh the same after?

[JPreston]

Nice freebie there, worth at least £300! Get one of those wire brush attachments for a power drill and blast the rust off with that. You could get by without respraying them at all I reckon, but see how you get on with cheap spraypaint with/without primer if you like - you can always redo them. Consider sponging them with a light coating of oil too. I really think you should put a large carpet offcut down, a bench in regular use would quickly wear through your carpet with flaky paint being the least of your worries.

If you haven't already got one, it's well worth getting a weight tree with the £50 you save on Hammerite to save space, and your carpet like this one.
I highly recommend that company, if you can get to showroom it's well worth a visit, I bought an ex-showroom powerframe and a decent multibench from them for ~£200. I'd say you need that as a minimum, and if you add a cable attachment for the frame (which I wish I'd done) you can do lat pulldowns etc too - a complete gym you'd have then.

I'm not sure how strong your floor is though. I wouldn't be comfortable chucking around all that weight inside my house (eg doing squats is easily 300kg bouncing up and down on the spot) - I've got it in a concrete-floored garage, and if I didn't have that I'd look to knock up a large shed/outbuilding in the garden. I'm not saying a standard domestic floor wouldn't be OK, I've never looked into it, but I definitely recommend you look into how structurally strong your floor is before you risk damaging it/yourself!

[Funkstar]

Will they still weigh the same after?

virtually, yes.

Might be slightly different, but nothing that would matter for weight training. You are talking grams probably.

[sitalchauhan]

Bought one of those wire brush drill attachments from B&Q and hopefully it lasts for all of the plates and doesnt wear down too quickly.

Got a bit of Rust Killer in my garage too (phosphoric acid) but its hardly any, Ill just save that for any trouble rust spots.

My weights are all upstairs in the house lol, havnt crashed through the floor yet though! But the carpet in that room needs a change anyway so im not too worried about damaging the carpet. Just didnt want the plates flaking because then when walkin in and out of the room didnt want the flakes spreading throughout the whole house Been thinking about converting the garage to a gym, but I dont think I could ever handle it in the winter with no heating in the garage.

The price for the Hammerite in my first post was the B&Q prices. Just placed an order for 750ml of it for £12 from an online store. Somebody on a weightlifting forum said they painted 200kg of plates with a 500ml tin, so hopefully this should be enough for me

[Clunk]

I just did some big wrought iron gates with hammerite today. The brush on stuff goes quite a long way, but if you've got any bare metal you'll need 2 coats or it'll show through.

[sitalchauhan]

Ok thanks clunk, all my weights will be bare metal after ive sanded and stripped the paint off, and I bought the paint on Hammerite, not the spray.
Ill see how 1 coat goes first, will probably need another tin if it needs 2 coats I guess