Ok, I bought a big pile of painting kit, nearly all hammerite branded, so should have been fine, surely?

Striped the frame with nitromors

Roughed it up with a wire brush attachment

Painted it with hammerite rust eater (the white to black stuff)

Painted it with 3 coats of hammerite primer, sanded betwen coats, wiped down with a damp cloth, threads cleaned with white spirit to prevent buildup.

Put the topcoat on (more hammerite) and it wouldn't stick! I tried thinning it with WS, I tried sanding it down again, I tried everything, but hammerite wont stick to hammerite primer! It just wont go on, the thinner coats just shrink back, and the thiocker ones just go blotchy and run off. What have I done wrong? Has the primer somehow absorbed enough water to repel the top coat?

Next time I'm rattle caning it and stuff the several weekends of carefull preperation!

get down ya local powdercoaters. Sorry not helpful, but cheaper and better.

Hammerite is NOT thinned with white spirit!!
You have to use Hammereite thinners.

The brush on stuff is really difficult to get a nice job done with – use the spray can stuff – If you have to have Hammerite.
I prefer the smoothrite paint but to be honest I would go with the powdercoating too.

Hammereite thinners

which smells utterly divine in a toxic 3-sniffs-and-you're dead way…

Trichloromethylene I think

Trichloromethylene

thought that stuff was banned a long time ago??

OOOH Hammerite thinners. Lovely stuff. Ethyl methyl ketoxime is the active ingredient in the paint. Not to be messed with if you want a long and happy life, but definitely not to be thinned with white spirit.

thought that stuff was banned a long time ago??

possibly. It just smells too good. But I did smell some the other day when the gas people had the road dug up. Might be used as a solvent for the pipes ?

hmmm, I'd been using WS to polish the primer coats before sanding (seemed like an easy way to get rid of the big runs).

There's no way they are using trichloromethane.

I assume you've read the tins of what you're painting? Is the topcoat suitable for the primer you've used? I know they should be but they might make different topcoats that will only go over certain primers.

The other thing is recoat intervals, do they give a time in which the primer can be overcoated?

Sounds like a surface tension issue. Have you tried roughening the surface of the primer?

And finally on thinning, only use the recommended thinners. Someone has spent a long time deciding what solvents work best in that paint and if you just bung in some ws it will mess everything up and probably won't work.

yea, looks like its the White spirit thats the problem,

Has anyone succesfuly applied a rattle can to hammerite primer (will save me having to take it back to bare metal).