A New Way of Restoring Old Office Furniture – Electrostatic Paint

It seems that instead of buying new office furniture to replace the old furniture, it is possible to restore it at a fraction of the cost. This is by using electrostatic paint that gives the product in question a factory finish look.

This method was realised in America by Pat McMurry, an interior finish contractor for Missouri Painting. With this method, he managed to restore all the chipped and worn lockers in the Catherine Webb Art Studios building at Stephens College and made them look brand new. To quote McMurry “The electrostatic sprayer is called a Ransburg No. 2, and it is really the only sprayer like it in the industry”. How this works is that the sprayer charges the paint with a positive charge and when you ground the object you wish to paint, it will attract the paint to the objects surface.

This differs from conventional paint sprayers in that the paint is spun in a circular cylinder and it is released out of the sprayer with almost no directional velocity. In essence just a small mist is released and then the electric charge attracts the paint. Other conventional sprayers just force the paint out and can be a messy business as paint tends to go everywhere.

The best paint to use is epoxy paint that will give a smooth factory finish. As outlined before, there can be overspray when using this kind of paint with conventional sprayers however with the electrostatic paint sprayer, all that needs to be done is to cover the floor (as the floor is grounded) about 3 feet around the object. It is estimated that 90% of the paint that comes out of the electrostatic sprayer is used, however only 30% is used from a normal sprayer due to overspray.

The furniture that can be used is metal furniture such as desk legs, metal pedestals, lockers, tambour cupboards etc…