Heavy Duty All-Welded Athletic Lockers - Football

Painted with Epoxy
Completed: 07/17/07

Painted Inside and Outside
New Lock Hole Cover Plates, Number Tags
and Tuff Stuff® Plastic Locker Bottoms

 Original Color: Medium Blue 
 New Colors: Custom Blue

Like many all-welded athletic lockers, these were showing some wear and tear after many years of service;
especially in the bottoms where rusting caused by damp clothing was significant.   

Rusty Locker Bottoms
Before and After Painting

   

Even after considerable sanding with palm sanders and heavy grit paper, the newly painted bottoms remain rough
as seen in the photo on the right.  Although not shown, Tuff Stuff® plastic locker bottoms were installed over top
of the newly primed and painted locker bottoms.  

The Tuff Stuff® plastic bottoms presented somewhat of a challenge in that all-welded lockers are hand assembled
 at the factory and not of a uniform size.  Although all the lockers were the same dimensions front to back,
 they varied considerably in width.  Our only alternative to successfully put plastic bottoms in these lockers was
 to custom trim two sides of each bottom with a circular saw to fit each particular locker.  While not difficult,
 it was a much more time consuming process than if the bottoms had fit as originally intended.  Once attached
to the old metal bottoms with sheet metal screws, they made a tremendous and lasting improvement.

Prior to painting, maintenance was performed to insure proper functionality.
The old number tags were removed.

Being constructed of heavy duty wire mesh with perforated doors, repainting required that they be painted inside and outside.
This presents some difficulty with electrostatic as there is no air pressure coming out of the end of the paint gun to 
"push" paint into interior corners.  Paint is drawn to the parts only by static attraction and thus goes to the closest metal,
which in some cases is not the corners.  The solution is to "spot" the corners (or any other inaccessible area)
 with an air assisted system first.  We choose to use HVLP systems because of reduced overspray.
Even with HVLP and paint flow adjusted almost to minimum; falling overspray is still significant on the floor
area immediately adjacent to the work, thus the need for covering the floor completely.  

Because the color we were painting was a clear base paint and scuffing, chipping, and rust were 
significant; pre-priming was required.  The extremely rusty bottoms were very heavily sanded,
primed, and painted as a rust preventive measure prior to the Tuff Stuff® plastic bottoms being installed.

One coat of primer was applied and allowed to dry overnight.  Two coats of catalyzed epoxy were applied the following day.

Various work in progress photos

         

     

The Finished results 
   
        

             

New number tags were installed to give the job a more finished look.