Any tips or cheats for re-painting outdoor metal gates?

[MisterBoy]

I have 3 metal side gates all painted black but showing wear - flaking paint, surface rust, etc.

Normal practice I think is to sand them smooth, get them clean then paint with hammerite. Not an unpleasant task but quite time-consuming since everything will probably need hand-sanding, nots of fiddly bits to paint too.

Are there any good techniques or handy products that would make this quicker? e.g. are there good quality spray-paints? I've seen there are products which claim to transform rusty metal into a paint-ready surface but that sounds too good to be true.

Is this one of those "just do it the old fashioned way" jobs?

 

[sparkwright]

I took some old gates to be sandblasted.

They also had the facility to spray paint them (black).
Which they did.

That was in 1998, and they are still in very good condition.