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Painting of Stainless Steel Lemur Tail for themed play area

March 20, 2009

I am a landscape designer working on a project in California that includes a children's play area with a lemur theme. We've selected a couple of pieces of stainless steel play equipment that are to be themed as ring-tail lemur tails ù see attached images.

Our original intent was to have the pre-made pieces of play equipment painted with black and white rings to represent lemur tails. I have since learned (and should have known already) that it's pretty tricky to get paint to stick to stainless steel so I'm looking for other options to get a similar effect. Whatever we use will have to hold up to exterior conditions and lots of kid-fueled wear and tear.

One importation limitation is that we have to modify the pre-fabricated piece of equipment (which has already been evaluated for the extensive safety requirements that apply to play equipment) rather than building the piece from scratch. This seems to limit our options for finishing since anything we do to modify the piece will have to leave the rubber footrest and other components intact.

I know powder coating is plenty durable but would be difficult to apply in stripes and poses challenges with a pre-manufactured piece. I've been looking into other options for blackening the steel in the striped areas (leaving the plain stainless finish in the white stripes) but I'm concerned that something like a black oxide treatment would rub off on little hands and wouldn't be durable in the long term. Maybe we could add a sealer over the blackening treatment? Or etch the steel first to help protect the finish? Maybe someone knows of a metal prep and paint combination that will actually adhere to stainless?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Kara Weaver
Landscape Architect - Seattle, Washington, USA

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If nothing else, varying the finish (matte vs. polished) can be used to give a striped effect. I think anodizing-based stainless coloring processes should be quite durable, also.

Ray Kremer
Stellar Solutions, Inc.

McHenry, Illinois

April 15, 2009