The jennies are black. We painted this one with a Sherwin Williams direct-to-metal (DTM) two-part urethane. The key, however, was in the preparation steps.

To remove the old paint and rust, we chose not to sand blast. Our philosophy is this: if you can't remove all the existing paint by wire wheeling or hand sanding, that paint is meant to stay there. (After all, it's been there for 40 years.) Besides, sand blasting etches the steel, exposing it to even more rust, so it would be necessary to prime the bare metal immediately before any flash rusting occurred. Flash rusting can happen in under an hour on a humid day, thus nullifying the effort of sandblasting to remove rust.

Another drawback of sand blasting is that if you do not clean the surface sufficiently ahead of time, sand blasting will simply drive the dirt and oil into the steel, causing a host of other problems when you go to paint.

So instead, we went with a a paint system designed for painting bridges, which simplified preparation and allowed more flexibility in timing the steps. This involved applying a reactive primer that chemically bonded with any rust that remained after hand sanding and wire wheeling. The primer's other unique property is that it is thin and will get into nooks and crannies. It must cure for at least 12 hours before you can topcoat.

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