Painting metal door handle

[AlanAudio]

The most used entrance to our house is through the kitchen door and the door handle is an ornate design, made from cast aluminium alloy with a glossy black finish. However the paint is badly worn away from the handle and around the keyhole.

What would be the best type of paint to use on this ? It needs to be very hard wearing and suitable for exterior use. Would it benefit from any special preparation ?

 

[emilybronte]

Any chance of a photo of it?

 

[AlanAudio]

This is the door handle.

I did buy a what I thought was a replacement one by mail order, but it wasn't quite the same, so I need to restore the original one and another one on a second door.

Untitled

• AlanAudio
• 4 Oct 2014
• 1

 

[AlanAudio]

As nobody appears to have any specific suggestions, can anybody answer some of my questions ?

My two thoughts are to either use Hammerite smooth finish spray paint, or cellulose spray paint. Which would be the most durable, or is there a better option ?

Obviously the durability and finish will depend on proper preparation. The bare metal will need to be primed, but I'm not sure what to do about the existing sound areas of paint. I'm not even sure if it's painted or powder coated. Is there an easy way to find out ?

 

[misterhelpful]

I painted my uPVC front door handle a while back with some Flag special metals primer and a couple of coats of Fortress Satin Black. It was just some leftover stuff I had lying around and it more or less matched the existing powder coating. I ended up getting a new handle a year or so later but the paint was still good.

I've never been a fan of Hammerite but maybe their spray would be ok. If the aluminium has a powdery/chalky surface then you may need to use a primer like BullsEye.