Practically Classics Forum

I have a big bench vice in my garage, It is older than me (in fact, it is older than my dad). It has surface rust all over it as it was living outside when I found it but it works fine. Assuming that it is OK to use the same rust converters on iron as it is on steel, is there any particular hard wearing paint to use on tools after I have brushed all the rust off? Do I have to etch prime, prime, etc or as it lives in the garage can I "just paint it"?

My old vice is protected with a thin wipe over every so often with some silicon grease on a duster, this has kept it rust free, yet unpainted as original, for all the years I've had it and the time it spent with Dad before he gave it to me some eight years ago when he splashed out on a new shed with a comprehensive machine shop to keep him entertained turning out such things as brass priests and clock parts that he sells among his old business contacts from years ago.

I did consider giving it a lick of blue enamel and technically, etch primer should work on any metallic surface. However I've grown to like it in its bare, original finish and am just thankful that it can't talk because if it could, it would tell some tales of bodges improvised pieces of work in whose execution it has been involved since Dad got it in 1952, when he had finished serving his time in aeronautical engineering and had started his RAF service. I look at that old vice and imagine it being used to grip various bits of Vulcan while a younger version of the old boy battered seventy shades of crap out of them!
My emotional involvement with my tools and workshop equipment shouldn't prevent your painting that vice though, and etch primer from a rattle can followed by enamel should be durable and easy to touch in when you miss the job and take paint off the vice with a lump hammer.