Stainless Steel Panel

[TEMinator]

Hello everyone, I have a question. Can a stainless steel panel be gessoed without the possibility of the gesso flaking, chipping or just falling off before I even begin to paint the surface?

I have completely sanded the surface, then used a grinding wheel to give it a little tooth and then applied the gesso, but it tends to flake and chip when lightly sanded. Would gluing cheesecloth help bind everything down better? Any suggestions?

Please feel free to laugh, at the moment that all I can do. :-)

Thanks,

TEM

[RobM]

Tem,
Why stainless steel?
Sounds expensive and a lot of extra work.
There were discussions on the old forum about using aluminium but I just cannot see the reason why. Perhaps you can enlighten me and everyone else.
Rob

[TEMinator]

I found a few pieces large enough to serve as a canvas and had the ends bent twice to give a false depth of two inches. I thought as an experiment that I would try painting on it and after going through a few hundred books I came to the conclusion that I should search on-line to see if it has been done before successfully before going any further. It is very thick stainless and very stable, approx 100 thou thick.

The biggest reason was the price, three pieces of found metal, 0 dollars. :grin:

[DLH]

TEM,

I’m not sure gesso would stick well to SS, even if it did I would worry about shock. Gesso is brittle, Wood panels are resilient and absorb the energy from blows to the edge. With SS the same insult would likely cause cracking. That said, if you first epoxy fabric to the roughened metal and apply gesso to that, adhesion problems may be mitigated.

Of course oil painters regularly and successfully paint on metal. Apply a lead/oil primer, allow it three months to dry and your good to go.

Doug

[TEMinator]

Thanks DLH! I will try that.

Now it's time for a confession. I am actually an oil painter, but accidently joined your site when I was trying to join another forum for oil painters. :oops:

On the plus side, I actually received an answer from this forum first. Thank you one and all. Do you mind if I pop in every once in awhile? At some point in the future I hope to try my hand at Eggtempura painting and may need help in that arena also.

Oh, one more drawback for the stainless is that since I have had it bent the stainless now rings and vibrates like a bell. I am going to mount it on a few hardwood strips in hopes of dampening the effect and if you had a praying Emoticon this is where I would use it. :grin:

Regards,

Phil

[TEMinator]

TEM,

I’m not sure gesso would stick well to SS, even if it did I would worry about shock.

Doug

Yesterday I tried sanding off the gesso with an electric sander and although it did flake off around the edges I could not remove it from the other 95% of the panels. So I've decided it's on to stay since it would take an hour or two to remove all the gesso. :shock: I'll add some cheesecloth in the hopes of dampening the shock.

If anyone is interested, I'll keep you updated as to weather this silly experiment works.

Phil

[TEMinator]

I have finished several painting on stainless and to thank the members for there help I will post at least one of them if I can figure out how to do so on this board.