Just painted my new to me Burke #4 mill with a polyurethane Interlux marine undercoat ( because I had some left over) and a top coat of polyurethane single part Interlux marine top sides in Kingstone Gray ( again had a quart left over). Degreased and prepped everything with acetone and white shop rags. Used a cheap chip brush on both. The marine top sides paints have a nice levelling agent and flow pretty smoothly. Didn't like the color so put a second coat on using existing left over custom dark gray-blue rustoleum enamel ( ahaha more left over) that matches my Dalton lathe. So both machines are properly color coordinated! If only the rest of my shop was in such good shape.
I was going to spray everything, but when I went to buy the spray gun, learned I needed a $200 high capacity air compressor - which made my $30 spray job jump to $350 once all the additional accessories were laid out. Apparently the small 5- 10 gallon air compressors don't put out enuf air, resulting in blobs of paint being intermittently thrown onto the work, rather than a smooth glossy finish.
So nixed that, and experimented with a 4" fine cell foam roller for the final top coat. The foam roller turned out great. I like it a lot better than brushing. Almost as good as spraying and a much better than brushing. No steaks or brush marks anywhere. So never going back to brushs for refurbishing machine tools again. Maybe when I find a decent second hand high capacity air compressor I might consider spray painting again - but for now, a $10 package of foam rollers does a fantastic job.
