Kilz on radiator

Jess811

Painted a radiator that hadn't been painted in decades with rustoleum oil-based enamel. almost a year later the vapor is in off-gassing are still unbearable stripped a few layers of the paint off as it was super super thick going on not sure if it was supposed to be or not use some gel paint stripper and a sanding pad and the terrible tubes are gone but now in place of those terrible fumes I have what smells like just old metal fumes. Of course it's in the room that I spend the most time in and sleep in. Can Kilz be used on a cast iron baseboard? 

PC7060

Well it sounds like your experience wasn’t very good. I would clean up as much as I could using sandpaper wire brush or whatever you can get into the cracks with.  Rustoleum makes a decent water-based primer for metal that will probably work better for your purposes.

As you’ve discovered sometimes it just doesn’t work out the first time, just keep trying and you’ll come up with a solution you like and learn a good bit along the way. Good luck!

KC_Jones

I wouldn’t use Kilz for anything, it’s not a very good quality primer.  I’d be looking at a Benjamin Moore or Sherwin Williams product.  Go to a dealer for one of those two and explain your situation and see what they recommend.

Jamie Hall

In answer to your direct question -- yes, Kilz could be used, but B.I.N. is a much better primer. Follow up with a high quality acrylic, such as Benjamin Moore's Aura.

Avoid any oil-base or epoxy primer or finish coat!

psb75

Kilz and B.I.N. are shellac-based primers. Shellac is a secretion from tropical bugs. Its good for sealing water-staining, and other tannin created stains on walls and wood trim mostly. It is also supposed to seal knots from "bleeding through" on wood panelling. Not sure that it is great for metal priming. Just about any coating (paints) you put on radiators will have a period of "off gassing" with the initial heat-ups after applying. Eventually, that will end.

Jamie Hall

@psb75 's comments are quite true. The thing with the shellac base primers is this: they cure completely very quickly -- within a few hours at most -- and the cure is complete at room temperature.

There is no further off gassing. Once cured, variations in temperature -- such as might be on a radiator -- make no difference, unlike any oil or acrylic primer, where the degree of cure is related both to time -- and temperature -- with the result that raising the temperature of a "cured" film, even months on, beyond what it has seen been will create off gassing.

There's no "eventually that will end" as there is with even acrylic primers but certainly with oil base

They adhere tenaciously to metal.

What they do not do is work well when exposed to weather (occasional wetting won't hurt), so outdoor applications need something else.