Materials & Steel
Two weeks for paint to dry
There is an oven that would do the same job in under an hour. We do not use it, and it costs us a fair amount.
· 1 min read
In the factory we could dry a painted column in under an hour. Painted Fontealta pieces instead dry on their own, at room temperature, for two weeks.
It is a choice with a precise cost: two weeks mean occupied space, idle capital and longer deliveries to explain. We make it anyway, for a reason that only shows several years later.
Hot curing pulls the paint. It hardens it fast and makes it rigid. As long as the piece stays indoors, at a more or less constant temperature, nothing happens.
But an outdoor shower column does not live at a constant temperature. In summer, in direct sun, the steel surface goes above sixty degrees. In winter, in the mountains, it drops below zero. And steel expands as it heats up: it moves more than the paint it wears.
At that point a rigid paint does the only thing it can. It cracks. First micro-cracks you cannot see, then lifting, then flaking. And under a crack, with the salt, everything else begins.
A slowly cured paint stays elastic. It follows the metal as it moves, stretches and settles back. It withstands a range from minus twenty degrees to over sixty without opening up.
Two weeks of waiting against ten years of durability. We do not find it a hard trade.